Artist Bill Horne's Stakes in the Peace (2017) is a 15-inch by 48-inch terracotta replica of the field of solidarity in the Peace Valley that is raising money to support the Prophet River and West Moberly First Nations' legal challenges against the Site C dam.
Artist Bill Horne rolling out the terracotta soil for his work Stakes in the Peace (2017). May 2017. Photo by Denis Gutiérrez-Ogrinc.
As the installation of Horne's artwork for the exhibition Disturbances in the Field progressed, the artist decided to open up the piece to the public in a new way, by allowing visitors to engage with the installation and the resistance campaign directly. Horne silkscreened over six hundred miniature wooden stakes that have stakeinthepeace.com on one side, and anti-Site C hastags on the other. With a five dollar donation, you can plant a one of these yellow stakes in the clay of Bill Horne’s artwork, or you can purchase a stake to take home and plant in your own garden bed. For every $100.00 raised through this artwork, a stake will be purchased through the official Yellow Stake Campaign (www.stakeinthepeace.com) on behalf of Northern British Columbia Artists.
Bill Horne's Stakes in the Peace transforming over the course of the exhibition opening, as donations were made and stakes were added to the terracotta base. May 2017. Photo by Denis Gutiérrez-Ogrinc.
Since the opening of the exhibition $300.00 has been raised, which is already enough for the purchase of three stakes. This donation campaign will continue through to the end of the exhibition on May 27th, 2017. Donations can be made while visiting the gallery at Omineca Arts Centre, or online via Bill Horne's website.
More information can be found at: https://bill-horne.net.
Bill Horne. Stakes in the Peace. 2017. Silkscreened wood, terracotta, reclaimed fir.
To read more about the impacts on the Site C Dam:
Amnesty International has published The Point of No Return, which illuminates the Human Rights violations this project entails. "The harm caused by the Site C dam would deny Indigenous peoples the ability to exercise fundamental human rights protected under both Canadian and international law." Read more here.
In his article, "Canada's $7 Billion Dam Tests the Limits of State Power", Dan Levin of the New York Times writes, "Despite the welter of opposition, provincial officials exempted the project from independent regulatory scrutiny, allowing work to begin last year [2015] — and turning the project into a major point of contention in the provincial election in May." Read more here.