Uncontainable Collections Art Gallery of York University

Positioning the Present, the second installment of AGYU’s series Uncontainable Collections: Speculative Futures of Objects. This episode features a conversation between our guest, curator Crystal Mowry of the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina, and AGYU curators Clara Halpern, assistant curator, exhibitions, and Lillian O’Brien Davis, curator of collections and contemporary art engagement. This episode of our podcast series, Uncontainable Collections: Speculative Futures of Objects, centres on what it means to focus on “the present” as a stakeholder in public museum collections and how that has the potential to shape the futures of artworks and how communities access them. Through this dialogue, we discuss care and the role of contemporary artists and non-human intelligences in museums. Mowry gives insight into creating space for untold stories and change, touching on transitions, especially those instigated through acquisition, repatriation, and the recontextualization of objects through new research.

Crystal Mowry (she/her) is the Director of Programs at the MacKenzie Art Gallery. A recent arrival in the Prairies, she previously held the position of Senior Curator at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. Her work often explores the tension between perceived authenticity and troubled forms of representation. As a curator operating primarily within the context of a public art museum, she treats her role as equal parts co-conspirator and translator, often seeking ways to support artists in the development of new projects. Her solo projects with artists Deanna Bowen, Maggie Groat, and Ernest Daetwyler have received Exhibition of the Year Awards from Galeries Ontario / Ontario Galleries and in 2020 she was a recipient of a Waterloo Region Arts Award. She has written texts for various artist-focused books on the work of Brendan Fernandes, August Klintberg, Shary Boyle, and others.

Produced by Clara Halpern, Lillian O'Brien Davis and Zulfikar Hirji
Edited by Aaron Hutchinson
Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/hybridas/open-spaces
License code: QBRQKFQBLH3YYZ4O

Listeners Note: This podcast features some discussion of the Transatlantic slave trade and violence against women.

Vessels & Voyages, from AGYU’s series Uncontainable Collections: Speculative Futures of Objects, is the first of three conversations exploring the prospective and yet-unknown condition of the might-be through the lens of collections and contemporary art. This episode features the perspective of three critical scholars and artists, including Yvonne Adhiambo-Owuor, Ayana V. Jackson, and Camille Turner. They explore the theme of moving objects and peoples across multiple futures: stories within stories; the sea; floating objects; and shipwrecks as containers of memory, history, and spirits.

This podcast series is the third iteration in the Uncontainable Collections Research Project, and invites conversations with scholars, curators, and artists who engage with articulations, expressions, and representations of the (im)possible, the (extra)ordinary, and the (un)imaginable—or speculative—futures that diverse individuals, groups, communities, and societies are envisaging, dreaming of, composing, conjuring, striving for, imagining, and bringing into being.

Audio Note: There is some audio distortion for one guest speaker.

Links:
https://www.si.edu/exhibitions/deep-wake-drexciya-ayana-v-jackson%3Aevent-exhib-6673

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/159826/yvonne-adhiambo-owuor/

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/hybridas/open-spaces
License code: QBRQKFQBLH3YYZ4O