The exhibition Carole Itter: Only when I’m hauling water do I wonder if I’m getting any stronger brings together a selection of the artist’s multidisciplinary works and archival materials from the 1960s to the present. Revealing her attention to locality, language and choreography, the title references Itter’s writing and points to her self-reflexive labour as an artist, as a woman and as an inhabitant of shacks, old houses and cooperatives on the West Coast.

Itter’s artistic ethos is evident in her consideration of the places and communities that have framed her life, in her written, drawn and material expression, and in her practice of designing conditions for performance. The artist’s focus on the local was part of a shared sensibility in Vancouver and beyond in the 1960s and has found renewed urgency and wisdom in the context of the climate crisis. Itter’s hand-hewn work reasserts the presence of the body through ecological, feminist and anti-capitalist lenses, and offers insight into how humans see themselves in relation to each other and other beings in the world.

Included in the exhibition are a selection of installations, photographs, sketches, costumes, films and writing that reveal the artist’s multi-valent practice, blurring the lines between art’s traditional containers. Humorously subverting the status quo, Itter’s hanging sculptural “rattles” are assembled from wood detritus collected from alleys, basements and second-hand shops. Made of spindles, spoons, dowels and chair legs, they signal the connection between deforestation, production, consumerism and disposal while offering a performative invitation to an imagined sonic and physical interaction. These works connect to her “spill” installations on floors and water, and lead into later installations such as The Inlet (2011-ongoing) that will be installed for the first time at the Belkin, which includes projection, collage and textile to continue an embodied connection to place.

More information on the event can be found here.