Thursday evenings, October 8th – 29th, 2026 | 6-8 pm
Join artist/author/curator Billy Flowery Allen in creating a unique collection of artists’ books that draw on personal stories, oral histories, and the NMAG archives, to be shared during the upcoming Remember the Dead event at the Nelson Cemetery.
Pre-registration is required, and space is limited. $40 for members, $45 for non-members, all materials included.
This 4-week creative workshop making artist books honouring the lives of those buried at Nelson Memorial Park will be facilitated by Billy Flowery Allen. Combining art making (drawing, collage, photography), research and writing, participants will develop their own projects drawing on personal stories, oral histories, and the NMAG archives, to produce unique illustrated publications. The artist books created during the workshops will form the Nelson Necrology, which will also include works by Billy Flowery Allen. This collection will be reproduced and shared as part of NMAG’s participation in the upcoming Remember the Dead event at Nelson Memorial Park (November 8th, 2026). Workshop participants will also have the opportunity to participate at the Remember the Dead event.
Necrology is a term that, while in common usage from the mid-19th through the early 20th century, has faded into obscurity. It refers to both a list of the dead related to a specific time, place or event, and a death notice accompanied by a biographical narrative (an obituary). The word combines the Latin necro (meaning “death” or “corpse”) with -logy (From the Greek logia = “to speak, tell”), so to speak of the dead, with a strong emphasis on honouring their memory. The term Necromancy is a ritual process of conjuring and communicating with the dead.
Billy Flowery Allen (aka Andrew Hunter) is an artist, writer, researcher, story-teller, and necromancer. Over a thirty-five year career in the arts they: produced exhibitions and publications for institutions across Canada and Internationally; held curatorial positions at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Hamilton and Kamloops Art Gallery, among others; taught graduate level courses (at OCADU and Waterloo Architecture); lectured widely on museum and curatorial practice, and on their own work; received numerous grants and awards. Their publications include: Colville; In The Ward; The Idea of North: Lawren Harris (with Steve Martin); Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood (with Anique Jordan), Cul-de-Sac; Hanksville (which received a Western Canada Magazine Award); and Billy’s Vision. They have written and lectured critically on the persistence of Whiteness and Colonial models in museums, curatorial practice, and public history, focusing on the ongoing erasure and marginalization of a true diversity of cultures and communities. They are consistently drawn to the lives of individuals who are barely present in traditional historical records and have been excluded because of their culture, class, appearance, beliefs, and neurodivergence; they employ techniques common to creative non-fiction to expand and extrapolate from these ghost narratives.
Most recently, Billy has focused on drawing/collage and the making of books, scrolls and maps that continue their engagement with archival material and necromancy.