VIU’s View Gallery presents Taryn Walker, Echoes From a Time Not Yet Here

February 7, 2023

Vancouver Island University’s (VIU’s) View Gallery is honoured to host an exhibition by Indigenous artist Taryn Walker from February 16 to April 7.

With their exhibition Echoes From a Time Not Yet Here, Walker will bring their engaged imagination, compassion and sensitive touch to the drawings preserved in wax, large-scale wall drawings, and the video and field recordings that they will share with us for the next several weeks.

Walker’s multimedia, multidimensional expressions reflect a deep sensitivity and a powerful groundedness that create space for us to pause. To breathe. To listen. The fantastical figures they conjure out of the ethers reverberate for us with positive, forward-looking visions for our collective possibility.

Artist biography

Taryn Walker is a queer, interdisciplinary Indigenous artist of Nlaka’pamux, Syilx and mixed European ancestry whose work explores concepts of identity, tenderness, healing, cycles of life and death, spiralling time and futurity through drawing, printmaking, installation and video.

In 2018 Walker graduated from the University of Victoria’s Bachelor of Fine Arts program with a Major in Visual Arts and a Minor in Art History & Visual Studies. Currently, Walker is doing their Master of Fine Arts at Simon Fraser University in Interdisciplinary Contemporary Arts.

Walker was awarded the Diane Mary Hallam Achievement Award by the University of Victoria for academic excellence and commitment to the arts in 2018. In 2017 they were also longlisted for the Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize, awarded by the Presentation House Gallery for demonstrating excellence as an emerging video artist and photographer. Most recently, in 2022 they were shortlisted for the ohpinamake prize presented by the University of Saskatchewan.

Walker’s work has been presented in spaces, residencies and events across Western Canada and beyond. Their artistic research has also been granted support from the Edmonton Arts Council, the Indigenous Curatorial Collective, and the First Peoples Cultural Council.

An opening reception takes place on Thursday, February 16 from 5 to 7 pm and Walker will deliver an artist talk on Friday, February 17 at 12 pm, Building 356, Room 109. For more information, please contact Chai Duncan, VIU Visual Art Instructor and View Gallery Curator, at [email protected]

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Media Contact:

Rachel Stern, Communications Officer, Vancouver Island University

NT5