On the occasion of the opening of Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch, join us for a panel conversation with the artist Shelley Niro and co-curators Melissa Bennett, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Hamilton; Greg A. Hill, Independent Curator, formerly Audain Senior Curator, Indigenous Art, National Gallery of Canada; and David Penney, formerly Associate Director of Museum Scholarship at the National Museum of the American Indian.

This talk will give audiences the special opportunity to learn more about the artworks on display from the artist herself and gain insight into the making of this touring retrospective, including which aspects of the exhibition are unique to the Vancouver presentation.

Niro is widely known for her ability to explore traditional stories, transgress boundaries and embody the ethos of her matriarchal culture. A member of the Kanyen’kehaka (Mohawk) Nation, she uses a wide variety of media, including photography, installation, film and painting, to bring greater visibility to Indigenous women and girls.

The event will include a brief introduction by Anthony Kiendl, CEO & Executive Director of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

This talk is free for Experience Members and above and ticketed at the reduced price of $5 for Ideas Members and $10 for Access Pass Holders. For non-members, the talk will be $10 in addition to the cost of Gallery admission.

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If cost is a barrier to you, please reach out to learn@vanartgallery.bc.ca.

If you have any access requests for this event, please email learn@vanartgallery.bc.ca or call 604 662 4700.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Born in Niagara Falls, New York, in 1954, Shelley Niro is a member of the Turtle Clan of the Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) Nation, from the Six Nations of the Grand River territory. Her visual art and film works have been featured across Canada and internationally. In 2009, her first feature film Kissed by Lightning premiered at Toronto’s imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival and won the Santa Fe Film Festival’s 2009 Milagro Award for Best Indigenous Film. Her short film The Shirt was presented at the 2003 Venice Biennale and the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Other films include: Honey Moccasin, It Starts with a Whisper, The Incredible 25th Year of Mitzi Bearclaw and Café Daughter. In 2019, Niro received an honorary doctorate from the Ontario College of Art and Design, where she completed her undergraduate studies. She was also the 2019 Laureate of the Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award for Photography. In 2017, Niro received both the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts and the Scotiabank Photography Award, two preeminent contemporary art awards in Canada. In 2017, Niro received the Hnatyshyn Foundation REVEAL Indigenous Artist Award and the Arts and Culture Award from the Dreamcatcher Charitable Foundation. In 2012, she was the inaugural recipient of the Aboriginal Arts Award, presented through the Ontario Arts Council. She completed her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Western Ontario.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Greg A. Hill is an artist and curator currently based in Chelsea, Quebec. From Fort Erie, Ontario, he is a Kanyen’kehaka member of the Six Nations of the Grand River. As a curator, Hill worked in museums and art galleries for nearly 30 years, most notably as the National Gallery of Canada’s Audain Senior Curator of Indigenous Art (2008–22), where he was dedicated to building the collection of Indigenous art, as well as curating and presenting a series of retrospective exhibitions for senior Indigenous artists—including Norval Morrisseau (2006), Carl Beam (2010), Alex Janvier (2016) and Shelley Niro (2023). He also established and co-curated an ongoing series of international Indigenous art exhibitions, beginning with Sakahán in 2013 and Àbadakone / Continuous Fire / Fue continuel in 2019–20. Through acquisitions from those exhibitions and from abroad, he founded a leading collection of works from many of the world’s most significant contemporary Indigenous artists.

Melissa Bennett is Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Hamilton (AGH) in Ontario. She received an MA in Art History and Graduate Diploma in Curatorial Studies at York University and a BFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. She has taught contemporary Canadian art history at the Ontario College of Art and Design, in addition to giving regular public lectures and university guest lectures on various topics of contemporary art and artists. Her current projects, in addition to the internationally touring retrospective Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch, include solo exhibitions of the works of Greg Staats and a retrospective-in-planning for Camille Turner. She has curated recent major solo exhibitions by Duane Linklater, Jan Wade (co-curated with Siobhan McCracken Nixon for AGH), Melissa General, Alex Jacobs-Blum, Michèle Pearson Clarke, Nathan Eugene Carson and Kareem-Anthony Ferreira with his father Roger Ferreira. She has written or edited over 15 art exhibition catalogues and has been recognized for her exhibition work in the annual awards of Galeries Ontario/Ontario Galleries (GOG).

David W. Penney is the former Associate Director of Museum Scholarship at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). Penney was appointed as the first Associate Director of the newly organized Museum Scholarship Group at NMAI in April of 2011, after a long career at The Detroit Institute of Arts, where he served as curator of Native American Art, Chief Curator and ultimately Vice President of Exhibitions and Collections Strategies. Penney earned a Ph.D. in art history and archaeology from Columbia University and his Bachelor of Arts degree in art history from New York University.

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