The Brewer Beaver
January 06, 2022
Description
The Fort Gallery is pleased to present The Brewer Beaver, an exhibition by artists Andrea Nunes and Brady Cranfield, which centres on a tiny replica of the same name, a weathervane located in downtown Honolulu, a relic from the tenure of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which operated there from 1829-1861.
A long shadow from a light cast on the replica will be the focal point of Nunes and Cranfield’s research-driven, multipart exhibition, which investigates Fort Langley’s interconnection with the Hawaiian Islands, past and present. Nunes and Cranfield put forth a collection of both historiographic and newly produced images and sounds, including a live shortwave broadcast from a time signal station located at the Barking Sands Missile Range on the island of Kauai. These materials are figures through which the relationship between the locations can be refracted, opening into a much wider and still ongoing constellation of social, political and economic systems, structures and interactions. Overlapping interconnections, lineages, and tensions are identified, the marks and traces of which are still currently legible today, defined by trade, labour, tourism and the enduring legacy of colonial exploitation and inequity.
The Brewer Beaver runs December 10-January 29 at the Fort Gallery. An online Philosopher’s Café featuring the artists and a number of local and Hawaiian knowledge keepers and thinkers will be held Sunday, January 23. A closing reception will be held on Friday, January 28. All are welcome to attend these events.