Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity Opens SHARON LOCKHART, an Exhibition of Film and Photography inspired by Fogo Island in Newfoundland and Labrador
By
Banff Centre Communications
Posted on
October 22, 2025
Sharon Lockhart, still from WINDWARD, 2025. Co-commissioned and co-produced by Shorefast/Fogo Island Arts, The Vega Foundation, and the National Gallery of Canada, with the support of The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery and Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Courtesy the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin. © Sharon Lockhart, 2025
Featuring the film installation, WINDWARD, and a new series of photographs, titled Fogo Island Portrait Studio, artist Sharon Lockhart explores life on Fogo Island and its entwinement with geography and landscape in SHARON LOCKHART, on view from October 22, 2025 until January 7, 2026.
BANFF, AB, OCTOBER 22, 2025 – Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity invites the Canadian eastern shores onto its Rocky Mountain campus with SHARON LOCKHART, now open at Banff Centre’s Walter Phillips Gallery. Running from October 22, 2025 to January 7, 2026 the exhibition includes a new film installation and a series of photographs developed over four summers on Newfoundland and Labrador’s Fogo Island.
Both the film, WINDWARD, and the series of photographs, Fogo Island Portrait Studio, build upon core themes that have defined Lockhart’s career: an exploration of place and how people engage with landscapes, a durational approach to attention and focus through extended static takes, and a deep, long-term commitment to those who appear before her lens.
Fogo Island, the largest offshore island of Newfoundland and Labrador, is known for its rich fishing heritage and oceanside scenery. During her 2022 residency on the island, Lockhart encountered Colin Low’s film The Children of Fogo Island, one of twenty-seven films made between 1966 and 1968 that were a part of the participatory filmmaking project, The Fogo Process. With Low’s work as a symbol of Fogo’s past, Lockhart created WINDWARD, a filmic exploration of the site’s present.
In WINDWARD, Lockhart carefully observes the island’s geography, capturing its youth in structured play amid fields of tall grass, volcanic rocks, and crashing waves. Filmed on the island’s northern face—its windward end—the work takes cues from an unseen force: persistent gusts that descend uninterrupted from the Arctic, arriving on land as a presence inseparable from daily life.
Fogo Island Portrait Studio presents Lockhart’s subjects—Fogo Island’s children—in daylit portraits, their proximity countering their depiction in WINDWARD> as figures subsumed by the landscape. Posed with striking directness, each child is seen asserting an agency within their material and environmental conditions, positioning them as active participants in their own futures.
WINDWARD is co-commissioned and co-produced by Shorefast/Fogo Island Arts, The Vega Foundation, and the National Gallery of Canada, with the support of The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery and Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
Sharon Lockhart, still from WINDWARD, 2025. Co-commissioned and co-produced by Shorefast/Fogo Island Arts, The Vega Foundation, and the National Gallery of Canada, with the support of The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery and Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Courtesy the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin. © Sharon Lockhart, 2025
We are honoured to present Sharon Lockhart’s works on the community, culture and landscape of Fogo Island in Banff, and to support the artist’s important new film, WINDWARD alongside its co-commissioners.
Both WINDWARD and the series of photographs, Fogo Island Portrait Studio, are explorations of engagement with people and place that I feel will resonate deeply with artists and audiences here who are attuned to a very different, but no less striking landscape, as well as the challenges of making work within such a visually arresting context. The depiction of the experiences of children in the film and the youth’s deep engagement with their environment, presents a document of childhood that I feel will also connect with viewers here who value relationship to land and landscape.
Jacqueline Bell, Director, Walter Phillips Gallery and Collections at Banff Centre
SHARON LOCKHART will be celebrated with a free public event at Walter Phillips Gallery with the artist present on Wednesday, December 3 from 4 p.m. - 7 p.m. A free, public conversation with Sharon Lockhart and Kitty Scott, Strategic Director, Shorefast/Fogo Island Arts, will take place on Thursday, December 4, 2025. Both events are presented in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada.
- Dates: October 22, 2025 to January 7, 2026
- Venue: Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
- Address: 107 Tunnel Mountain Dr., Banff, Alberta
- Price: Free
- Hours: Wednesdays through Sundays, 12:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.
- Public Celebration: Wednesday, December 3, 2025
- Conversation with Sharon Lockhart and Kitty Scott: Thursday, December 4, 2025
The exhibition is made possible through the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Government of Canada and Government of Alberta.
To find out more about Walter Phillips Gallery exhibitions and events, please visit banffcentre.ca/walter-phillips-gallery.
Interviews are available with:
Jacqueline Bell - Director, Walter Phillips Gallery and Collections at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
Josephine Ridge - Executive Director, Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
Interviews with the artist may be available upon request.
See Banff Centre’s Media Room here.
For photos, information or interview requests, please contact:
Carly Maga
Director, Communications
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
tel: +1.403.763.6210
cell: +1.403.431.3423
carly_maga@banffcentre.ca
About Sharon Lockhart
Sharon Lockhart (b. 1964) creates installations, photography, film, painting and sculpture centered on the compelling and complex interactions between the various media and forms she employs, histories she encounters, and the communities and people with whom she collaborates.
In 2017, Lockhart represented Poland at the 57th Venice Biennale with her multidisciplinary project, Little Review. Solo exhibitions include: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Augarten, Vienna; The Jewish Museum, New York; Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, Lithuania; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Fonzadione Fotografia Modena, Italy; Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon, Portugal; and Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland. Lockhart’s films have been presented in the New York Film Festival, Vienna International Film Festival, FID Marseille, Berlin Film Festival, and Sundance Film Festival. Lockhart has been awarded the Herb Alpert Award, Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, D.A.A.D. Artist in Residence Fellowship, Berlin, Mike Kelly Foundation Artist Project Grant, and a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University, among others. Lockhart lives and works in Los Angeles. lockhartstudio.com
About Walter Phillips Gallery
Walter Phillips Gallery is exclusively committed to the production, presentation, collection and analysis of contemporary art and curatorial practice. For contemporary artists, particularly those engaged in alternative forms of practice, Walter Phillips Gallery remains an essential and principal site where art is presented to an audience for critical reception. banffcentre.ca/walter-phillips-gallery
About Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
Founded in 1933, Banff Centre is a post-secondary institution built upon an extraordinary legacy of excellence in artistic and leadership development. What started as a single course in drama has grown to become a global organization leading in arts, culture, and creative decision-making across dozens of disciplines, from the fine arts to Indigenous Wise Practices. From our home in the stunning Canadian Rocky Mountains, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity aims to move everyone who attends our campus - artists, leaders, thinkers, and audiences - to unleash their creative potential and realize their unique contribution to build an innovative, inspiring future through education, performances, convenings, and public outreach. banffcentre.ca