September 21 – December 1, 2019

Small Arms Inspection Building (2019)

Althea Thauberger + Kite, Battle Cry (Gift to the Shell Ensemble), 2019, 2-channel video with 6-channel audio. Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art. On view at Small Arms Inspection Building as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art (2019). Courtesy the artists.
Althea Thauberger + Kite, Battle Cry (Gift to the Shell Ensemble) (still), 2019, 2-channel video with 6-channel audio. Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art. On view at Small Arms Inspection Building as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art (2019). Courtesy the artists.
Althea Thauberger + Kite, Battle Cry (Gift to the Shell Ensemble) (still), 2019, 2-channel video with 6-channel audio. Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art. On view at Small Arms Inspection Building as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art (2019). Courtesy the artists.
Althea Thauberger & Kite, "Battle Cry (Gift the Shell Ensemble)," from "Call to Arms," 2019. Courtesy the artists.

Thauberger + Kite’s installation Call to Arms features audio and video recordings of their rehearsals with Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship (HMCS) York band in advance of a live performance of four musical scores by Kite during the Biennial’s opening weekend in addition to the band’s own repertoire. Boasting the country’s only conch shell sextet, the band will play in the drill hall housed within the Navy’s “stone ship,” a highly resonant space that is itself played like an instrument.

Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art and presented in partnership with HMCS York. Made possible with the generous support of Partners in Art and Ann and Harry Malcolmson.

Althea Thauberger + Kite were the recipients of an Honourable Mention prize for their work commissioned for the Toronto Biennial of Art. 

Bios

Althea Thauberger

Althea Thauberger (born in 1970, Saskatoon, Canada) is an artist and filmmaker whose work seeks to contribute to experimental and collaborative social documentary practices. Her place-based projects consistently involve a community of articulation and awareness around issues disclosed and discovered through collective research. She lives and works in xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ / Tsleil-Waututh Nation territory (Vancouver) and teaches visual art and theory at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

Kite

Kite, aka Suzanne Kite (born in 1990, Sylmar, USA) is an Oglala Lakota performance artist, visual artist and composer. She is a Ph.D. candidate at Concordia University, Montreal; Research Assistant for the Initiative for Indigenous Futures; a 2019 Trudeau Scholar; a 2020 Tulsa Artist Fellow; and a 2020 Women at Sundance x Adobe Fellow. Her research is concerned with contemporary Lakota ontologies through research-creation, computational media and performance practice.

Exhibition Site

Small Arms Inspection Building (2019)

Small Arms Inspection Building was originally part of a large munitions plant built in 1940 before it was acquired and renovated as an art centre by the City of Mississauga in 2018. With its female dominated workforce, Small Arms Limited manufactured thousands of rifles daily for the Canadian and Allied forces in WWII. In 1990, the TRCA conducted an environmental audit of the site, revealing the presence of polychlorinated biphenyl, volatile organic compounds, and combustible gases across nineteen acres. More than 70,000 tons of contaminated radioactive soil was removed to eventually transform the Arsenal Lands into a park.

1352 Lakeshore Road East
Mississauga ON
L5E 1E9