Judith Williams: WATER / COLOUR
January 17–March 7, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday January 17, 2–5pm & 7–10pm *Artist will be in attendance from 2–5pm
ARTIST TALK
Judith Williams
Date forthcoming
Judith Williams’ WATER / COLOUR features a sequence of paintings made solely with water collected from twenty-nine creeks and rivers up Bute Inlet, on the Pacific Coast of B.C., in ʔop qaymɩxʷ (Homalco) territory. Williams began the project in 2010 in response to corporate applications for seventeen run-of-river hydro projects in the Bute, as well as seven proposals to collect, bottle and export its fresh water. She collaborated with fishing guides, Homalco band members, loggers, mariners and mountaineers to collect the water.
The paintings express the fluidity of the element and the residue of aquatic geology, biology and botany that flows through it. Each image suspends phenomena that are usually in perpetual motion. The installation maps the geographical proximity of the waterways in the inlet, from south to north. Water is not segregated in this territory, and so Williams’ samples, marks and sequencing also conjure the symbiosis of the ecosystem.
WATER / COLOUR draws on Williams’ practice of making watercolour paintings of natural and cultural encounters on Redonda and Cortes islands, where she has lived since the 1970s. She is a keen observer of the way that human events shape places, habits and objects, and vice versa, which informs her approach to making paintings as well as books, assemblages and installations of experiential research and collected materials. In the 1990s, her long-term investment in the mid-coast islands sharpened her focus on the historical and living imprint of Indigenous communities on the territory, as well as the influence and impact of early European explorers and settlers.
Williams exploration of Bute Inlet led to her exhibition High Slack at UBC’s Museum of Anthropology (1993/4) and the publication of High Slack: Waddington’s Gold Road and the Bute Inlet Massacre of 1864 (1996). Through this project, she developed a methodology of “poetic archeology”, which informed her artistic practice and the research and writing of four more books about the region: Two Wolves at the Dawn of Time: Kingcome Inlet Pictographs, 1893–1998 (2001), Dynamite Stories (2003), Clam Gardens: Aboriginal Mariculture on Canada’s West Coast (2006), and Cougar Companions: Bute Inlet Country and the Legendary Schnarrs (2019).
Cougar Companions emerged following Williams’ introduction to Bute Wax, a beguiling substance that intermittently and inexplicably emerges in Bute’s waters. She was gifted a jar of the wax that was collected in the 1920s by the Schnarr family, who were early settlers in the inlet, and it is featured in WATER / COLOUR. As Williams collected water, she encountered oral and material data about cultural, geological and marine phenomena like the wax. This led her to explore stories from the Homalco Nation, historical settlers and current residents; as well as to research power projects from the 1920s to the present. In previous iterations of the exhibition, the investigative material she collected was presented in booklets and a display cabinet.
In 2021, Williams resumed gathering water after a significant landslide lurched down Elliot Creek into the Southgate River. The Homathko Icefield at the north end of the inlet––the third largest outside of the Arctic––was melting, and its recession exposed a large rock that separated from the mountain and fell into Elliot Lake, displacing a massive amount of fresh water, which in turn propelled the slide. The event was evidence that the inlet is threatened not only by industrial exploitation, but also by the rapid warming of the atmosphere.
Judith Margaret Williams is a visual artist and author living on Cortes Island, B.C., Canada. She was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia from 1979 to 2001. Her visual art has been exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA; Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis MN; Cranbrook Art Museum, Detroit MI; Vancouver Art Gallery, B.C.; UBC’s Museum of Anthropology, B.C.; The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, B.C.; Surrey Art Gallery, B.C.; and the Richmond Art Gallery, B.C., amongst others. She is the author of five books published with Harbour Publishing and New Star Books, that are listed above. She has also made numerous artist books and pamphlets to accompany her projects and exhibitions, including Naming and Claiming: the Creation of Bute Inlet (2011), Salmon Stock (2003) and High Slack (1994).
WATER / COLOUR was made on the territories of the toq qaymɩxʷ (Klahoose), ɬəʔamɛn qaymɩxʷ (Tla’amin) and ʔop qaymɩxʷ (Homalco) nations. The project is indebted to the collaboration of Homalco Chief Darren Blaney; mountaineers John Scott, Laurie and Rob Wood; Gizelle Uzell, Randy Kelloran, Chuck and Sheron Burchill of Homathko Camp; Iris and Volker Steigemann; boating companions Cathy and John Campbell, Isabelle Desmarais, Bobo Fraser, Mark Gomes, Susan Schell and Bryan Thompson. Pale Fire would like to thank Liz Magor, Anne Low and Josh Duncan for generously supporting this iteration of the exhibition. The project was previously exhibited at the Tidal Art Centre (2022), Lund, B.C., the Old School House Gallery (2022), Cortes Island, B.C., and the Old School House Arts Centre (2024), Qualicum Beach, B.C.