Pushing It: Becky Welter-Nolan

Pushing It is a performative project featuring a roughly 200 lb quilted soft-sculpture “boulder” pushed uphill in true Sisyphean style. The sculpture entitled Rocky III takes a cushiony, enticing and unwieldy form that visitors are welcome to collapse gently into while it is installed in the gallery. Documentation of recent performances in Halifax, NS will also be exhibited. Presented as a part of the [in]Sites Performance Series, two live public performances will explore the surrounding landscape of Del Crary Park and interior structure of the AGP ramp galleries prior to the opening. Pushing It is inspired by frustration. Testing the body and space through physical exertion, tension, and force, the work critiques labour and the narrative of success, and navigates between endurance and futility.

Born in Peterborough, ON, Becky Welter-Nolan is has been working in Halifax, NS, for over a decade and is currently based in Dartmouth, NS. Welter-Nolan’s work has been exhibited with artist-run centres such as the Centre for Art Tapes and White Rabbit Open Air Projects and recently exhibited a solo project at Dalhousie University Art Gallery with Eyelevel Gallery. As a member of the Hermes Artist Co-operative, Welter-Nolan has participated in solo and group projects since 2014. With a parallel career as an arts administrator, Welter-Nolan is an advocate of artist-run and collaborative projects in Atlantic Canada and is perhaps best known as the director/co-creator of Herding Cats, a light-hearted documentary exploring the curatorial practice of Peter Dykhuis.

This is Welter-Nolan’s first major solo exhibition in Ontario and was generously supported by Arts Nova Scotia.

Welter-Nolan was a part of a panel talk on site-specific practices on October 1, 2017 at the AGP with fellow panelists Brenda Francis Pelkey, Brian Solomon, and Vanessa Dion Fletcher.