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Art in a time of climate crisis: Check out this new Burnaby exhibit

Against the backdrop of the climate crisis, a new exhibition at the Burnaby Art Gallery will force visitors to confront how industry reshapes our natural environment.
Genevieve Robertson, art
Genevieve Robertson’s Plankton (unidentified), is a 2017 work made of bitumen, coal, seawater and gouache on paper. It’s part of a new exhibition, Looking Through a Hole in the Earth, at Burnaby Art Gallery.

Against the backdrop of the climate crisis, a new exhibition at the Burnaby Art Gallery will force visitors to confront how industry reshapes our natural environment.

Looking Through a Hole in the Earth is Genevieve Robertson’s first solo exhibition at a Canadian art museum. Robertson, an interdisciplinary artist with a background in environmental studies and resource labour, works with found materials, linking biology, geology and environmental studies with contemporary drawing.

“It’s been four years now since I’ve been working with found (and sometimes gifted) materials as the basis of my drawing practice – silt, seawater, crude bitumen, found coal, forest fire-derived charcoal, found graphite, lichen, calcium carbonate, algae and plant dyes,” said Robertson in a press release. “This work has also been a lens to explore ecological grief, long cycles of life and death through the use of primordial geologic materials and the entanglement of human and more-than-human beings in a time of climate crisis and mass extinction.”

Looking Through A Hole in the Earth presents three series of Robertson’s recent explorations: works on paper composed with bitumen and seawater; forest-derived charcoal, coal and graphite; and algae and calcium carbonate.

The exhibition is set to run from Feb. 7 to March 22 at the Burnaby Art Gallery, with a few special events planned.

An opening reception is set for Thursday, Feb. 6 from 7 to 9 p.m. Robertson will host an artist talk at the gallery on Sunday, Feb. 9, starting at 2 p.m.

Robertson’s work will also inform the theme of two In the BAG Family Sundays, on Feb. 16 and March 8, in which people of all ages can explore the exhibition and then take part in family-friendly art projects in the gallery’s studio space. The 90-minute workshops begin at 1 p.m., with the final session starting at 3:30 p.m.

Burnaby Art Gallery is at 6344 Deer Lake Ave. It’s open from Tuesday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. For more information, see www.burnabyartgallery.ca or call 604-297-4422.