Thursday, November 27, 2025, 5 – 6:30 pm
Artist talk with Michael Belmore
Pavilion
A public talk by Michael Belmore, an accomplished artist whose work is in conversation with the natural environment, capturing liminal spaces between earth, body, and time. His work speaks to Anishnaabe identity and positionality, often using reflection and composition to create visual tensions between elementary materials. Natural and oxidized copper are Belmore’s colour pallet from which he pushes our perceptions of nature and land, turning stones into water, metal into light, and time into colour.
This public talk is on the occasion of our current exhibition Standing in the room together, featuring works by Belmore, Bob Boyer, Jack Bush, Edward Poitras, and Tariku Shiferaw. The exhibition was conceived through a conversation between Belmore and curator Lillian O’Brien Davis in relation to York University’s art collection. It brings together unlikely pairings of works and artists, beginning with the throughline of modernist abstraction in the University’s art collection and transforming into a narrative around Belmore’s history and influences as an artist.
Michael Belmore, Resolve, 2022– (ongoing). Stone and copper leaf. Courtesy the artist.
Michael Belmore is an Anishinaabe artist from the Obishikokaang (Lac Saul) First Nation. His extensive practice spans over 25 years, for which he is most known for working with wood, stone, and metals using processes such as carving and traditional metal smithing techniques. Belmore completed his studies at the Ontario College of Art & Design and graduated with his Masters of Fine Art from the University of Ottawa. He has an extensive exhibition history, with works featured in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Heard Museum, Phoenix; Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax; Art Museum, Toronto; and the McMichael, Kleinberg. His artworks are in included in numerous private and public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Art Gallery of Ontario; and the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC. His public artwork is widely presented in cities as well as rural areas across Canada and globally, including Toronto, Paris, Manitoulin Island, Thunder Bay, and Riding Mountain.
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