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Installation view of Jagdeep Raina: Chase, displaying various paintings installed on the walls of the gallery.
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Exhibitions
Current Exhibitions Upcoming Exhibitions Past Exhibitions Touring Exhibitions
Installation view of Jagdeep Raina: Chase, displaying various paintings installed on the walls of the gallery.
Collection
Online Collections Sculpture Park Resources
A red purse made from beadwork.
Participate
Programs Projects Special Events
Group of people sitting in a circle outside. They are sitting on rocks and the grass.
Learn
Education AGG Digital
Four people talking pictured in front of two drawings.
Support
Donate Become a Member Volunteer Join Our Team Shop

Exhibitions

Installation view of Jagdeep Raina: Chase, displaying various paintings installed on the walls of the gallery.

Collection

A red purse made from beadwork.

Participate

Group of people sitting in a circle outside. They are sitting on rocks and the grass.

Learn

Four people talking pictured in front of two drawings.

Support

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Home/Exhibitions/Past

150 Acts: A Selection

Building on 40 years of creative collaborations with Indigenous artists, communities, and organizations, the Art Gallery of Guelph launched 150 Acts: Art, Activism, Impact in the fall of 2017, an exhibition that provided a platform for diverse Indigenous narratives that imagine new social futures. 150 Acts coincided with Canada’s sesquicentennial, an essential moment of national reflection and an opportunity to query the relationship of nationhood itself to Indigeneity in Canada.

Throughout, the exhibition recognized art practices as simultaneously personal, conceptual, cultural, political, and social acts – and as meaningful responses to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action. From installation, film, new media, and performance to practices framed by traditional beadwork, textile, sculpture, drawing, and painting, the artworks explored both socio-cultural and physical terrain while mapping wholly new geographies through language, storytelling, and the land itself.

This is a selection of the foundational pieces from the AGG’s Indigenous collections and new art practices from across Canada that were included in 150 Acts: Art, Activism, Impact.

Image detail: Maureen Gruben, Message, 2017, Polar bear guard hair, cotton thread, black interface

Artists

KC Adams
Mary Anne Barkhouse
Rebecca Belmore
Maureen Gruben
Anique Jordan

Ken Maracle
Michael Massie
Norval Morrisseau
Shelley Niro
Victor Reece

Arthur Renwick
Don Russell
Jeff Thomas
Wayne Young
Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun

Related
Artwork made from acrylic paint depicts multiple people with top hats as well as there being blue coloured horses.
exhibition
150 Acts: Art, Activism, Impact
September 14.2017 / February 18.2018

150 Acts: Art, Activism, Impact provides a platform for diverse Indigenous narratives that imagine new social futures.
A photo of Meryl McMaster, who has long black hair and is surrounded by multiple trees and snow. Beside the photo is text that is fading out as you continue to read.
exhibition
150 Acts: Art, Activism, Impact II
January 17.2018 / February 18.2018

This exhibition provides a vital opportunity to re-narrate landscape through art practices that actively engage our collective histories and possible futures.
Two pictures side by side with the first one showing a picture of Niagara Falls with a text over the waterfall reading “ONGNIAAHRA”. The other picture is a depicting a piece of fabric that has text made from white beads that reads “FROM NIAGARA FALLS”.
exhibition
Shelley Niro: ONGNIAAHRA/Niagara
January 13.2018 / February 25.2018

This installation features Shelley Niro’s video Niagara with items associated with Niagara Falls from the William Reid collection of Haudenosaunee beadwork.

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A photograph of 7 panels hung behind a white wall, containing the same photo. These panels each have text panels below.

exhibition

Kara Springer: Death Defying Acts and Everyday Abstractions

January 19.2023 / April 30.2023

This work chronicles the artist’s experience of pregnancy amid reports of high maternal mortality rates experienced by Black women in the U.S.
A photograph of a person in the desert holding a white umbrella. The umbrella has text around the edge that reads "End the arms race not the human race.”

exhibition

Mary Kelly: To Witness the Future

January 19.2023 / May 14.2023

The first exhibition to explore pioneering feminist artist Mary Kelly’s long engagement with activist movements.
Vintage pachinko machine with a blue background and silver balls and other parts

exhibition

Jason Lujan: Under a Star-Filled Sky

January 19.2023 / April 30.2023

Connecting aspects of Indigenous cosmology to wider cultural meanings, this exhibition speaks to the idea of seeing through space.
A photograph of a piece of work that has flower patterns, with other unique shapes and colours. There’s a text on the work that reads “FATE IN YOUR HANDS.”.

exhibition

Creative Dissent

January 19.2023 / May 14.2023

This exhibition speaks to the connections between art and social activism and to the visual aesthetics that emerge from protest.
Five molded sculptures of faces with cracked appearances piled randomly on top of each other

exhibition

Insoon Ha: Dirge

January 19.2023 / April 30.2023

Taking root during pandemic lockdowns, this installation acknowledges loss while offering a space for grief and mourning.

exhibition

Homecoming

September 14.2022 / December 31.2022

Curated by Middlebrook Prize recipient Erin Szikora, Homecoming engages land, language, and community, offering strategies to rethink our relationships to home.

exhibition

Anahita Norouzi: Planting Displacement

September 14.2022 / December 31.2022

Examining intersections between botanical explorations and colonization, Anahita Norouzi focuses on the plant colloquially referred to as giant hogweed.

exhibition

For Catherine

September 14.2022 / December 31.2022

This exhibition of Haudenosaunee souvenir beadworks responds to the history of ethnographic collecting by celebrating personal, economic, and cultural value.
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