soundings: an exhibition in five parts

through, in between oceans

through, in between oceans part 1 Vinyl heat transfer in Kingston, ON speaking to lost histories between women in our family and decades of stories that will forever be silent but felt through the body.

through, in between oceans part 2 by Camille Georgeson-Usher is a beaded installation, completed during the isolation of the Spring 2020 pandemic. The artist worked from home in Toronto, a departure from her intention to spend several months on Galiano Island, BC, where she was raised. This time had been set aside to spend time and learn with her family, and to allow the work to unfold as stories were shared. Instead, Georgeson-Usher improvised by fashioning a beadwork net to be viewed from below speaking to an awkwardness that searching for knowledge and learning often entails. The iridescent blue, green and sparingly used red beads shimmer overhead, their threads trailing off in space. Diamond-shaped absences are drawn in the air, the installation evoking the unfinished dialogue between generations of women separated by time and geography.

Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, encountering the beadwork in the gallery, remarked on the Japanese Buddhist nenju, or prayer beads, and how she had learned that the set of nenju she inherited had sections missing. A shared experience of familial gaps, silences and ellipses informs Iwaasa’s interpretation of through, in between oceans part 2, developed in conversation with Georgeson-Usher and recorded at the School of Music’s Roy Barnett Hall on Sunday, November 8, 2020.