The Dalton Gallery and the Department of Art & Art History are excited to announce our fall 2021 exhibition on view; Strata. Strata is composed of site-specific projection artwork by Shannon Collis. You can book your visit today and read our current Covid-19 safety policy here. 

Strata, a project by interdisciplinary artist Shannon Collis, is an immersive exhibition offering a means of experiencing subtle interactions between sights and sounds to understand the sonic and spatial complexities of the remote regions of the Athabasca Oil Sands. 

For Strata, Collis collected audio and visual material in areas of the western Canadian province of Alberta to create an exhibition centered on regional oil industry activities, examining consequential environmental issues.  

The result of her work—including large-scale video projections mapped onto various-sized planar forms, as well as surround-sound audio that permeates the exhibition space—provides visitors with an immersive experience as they contemplate the moving images. The footage collected onsite is the source material for the installation—a sensory map of regional, industrial, and natural environments. Collis invites audiences who may otherwise be unable to see or hear the complex story of the Athabasca Oil Sands to enter and investigate the constructed sensory space. 

Moving away from the space of the flat screen and toward creating multimodal and immersive physical environments that highlight the embodied experience of hearing and seeing, this work seeks to build a deeper connection between the sensing body and the world, blurring the lines between physical and digital spaces while heightening participants’ awareness of their environment.

Strata is on view 9.20.21 through 12.7.21.