P/RESERVE: Audie Murray and Nico Williams

The verbs preserve and reserve share intentions to keep, save, and protect. Their prefixes speak to distinct safekeeping practices in relation to time: to preserve enacts care and continuity of ancestors’ gifts in the ongoing present, while to reserve considers what should be offered to future ancestors. P/RESERVE brings together new and recent works by Audie Murray (Métis and Cree / Flying Dust First Nation) and Nico Williams (Ojibwe, Aamjiwnaang First Nation) whose respective contemporary beading practices honor ancestral knowledge that has always been personal, relational, and responsive to change. From fully beaded sculptures to multimedia installations, the exhibition centers how beads’ ceremonial, utilitarian, and social functions are activated and extended, disrupting colonial notions of care to amplify sovereign expressions of p/reservation today.

P/RESERVE at Bockley Gallery is curated by Erin Robideaux Gleeson and marks the first exhibition for both artists in the Great Lakes region south of the Medicine Line. This is their second two-person presentation following Eat It Up (2024), The Bows, Mohkínstsis / Treaty 7 Territory (Calgary, Alberta, Canada). Both artists participated in the critically acclaimed recent exhibitions Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art and Self-Determination since 1969, Hessel Museum of Art, Munsee and Muhheaconneok lands (Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, USA) (2023), and Radical Stitch, The MacKenzie Art Gallery, oskana kâ-asastêki / Treaty 4 Territory (Saskatchewan, Regina, Canada) (2022). Their respective exhibition and award histories are extensive and include Canada’s most prestigious contemporary art prize, the Sobey Award, for which Murray was long-listed and Williams won in 2024.

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday through Saturday: noon to 5 pm

Image: Audie Murray, It’s Not Just Me, 2025. Courtesy the artist.