Asterisms are easy to spot. They are familiar star patterns like Orion’s Belt or the Big Dipper that are created, shared, and recognized by people all over the world. As opposed to officially recognized constellations, anyone can chart their own asterism. As they shift over the seasons and years, one way of relating to the unending field of stars is to create patterns and stories from them. 

In 50 years of the Southern Alberta Art Gallery Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin, countless stars in the form of artists, staff, volunteers, funders, and visitors have come together to create their own asterisms in the relationships that continue to shape the Gallery. In this way, a gallery is not a building. It is an ever-evolving series of relationships where many versions of the same gallery overlap and coexist.

Asterisms is a four-part exhibition series presented across the Gallery’s 50th year that sees past exhibiting artists working in a peer-mentorship model with early-career artists of Treaty 7 Territory. The exhibition series is a non-hierarchical learning opportunity for artists at different stages in their careers to develop an exhibition together.

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For their Asterisms exhibition Water Ways, southern Alberta-based artists Rachael Chaisson and Rita McKeough consider two of Alberta’s distinct water ecosystems: ephemeral wetlands of the Prairie Pothole Region and the headwaters of the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains. The artists attune to the changing conditions in each habitat and the rippling repercussions for life reliant upon these waters. As artists with extensive experience combining electronic media, sound, and video with interactive sculpture, Chaisson and McKeough developed new works for the exhibition, inviting viewers to gather and listen to the tadpoles and bull trout that live there.

Chaisson’s installation Memories of Green is a personal investigation into equilibrium and time on the plains. Combining video, sound, interactivity, and textile sculpture, Memories of Green  requires visitors to move through dusty rose and pale blue curtains of a prairie dusk to lay on a pond-shaped bed. Resting on the bed activates floating video and audio field recordings of the unassuming, yet quietly thriving, life cycles within ghost ponds.

Also referred to as vernal pools, sloughs, or potholes, ghost ponds are glacially formed natural depressions in the landscape that hold water in wet months and disappear in drier seasons. Routinely ploughed over for more “productive” land, the ponds are crucial for many species by “sheltering the fleeting emergence of amphibians and invertebrates, beckoning migratory birds to rest, and holding water for travelling mammals,” Chaisson writes. “On the occasional wet spring, ghost ponds persist, a reminder that the land remembers what it once was.” [1]

In Overburdened, McKeough asks how we might listen to the species around us. Celebrated for her decades of allegorical, endearing, and incisive interactive audio-visual installations, McKeough invites the bull trout and Clark's nutcracker of the Eastern Slopes into conversation and song about the vital headwaters they call home.

On the floor of the gallery, animated projections of bull trout swim in two irregularly-shaped projection screens. Approaching the edge of the projected river eddy, the bull trout break into a mourning chorus, lamenting the noxious disarray of their homes. McKeough not only asks audiences to heed the bull trout’s warnings of worsening water quality, but to join the chorus and take action. [2] On the gallery walls, models of Clark’s nutcracker perch on branches while their calls and chirps are translated live to English via video screen. The songs of the trout and the bird forewarn of the precarious conditions of the life-giving waters of the Eastern Slopes. They also appeal for assistance, seeking human allies that can help them to create a better future.

In the waters across the prairie and into the mountains, animals big and small plead for an audience that will “listen to their stories, their plight, and their power,” as they “summon more collaborators grounded in respect, empathy, and solidarity.” [3]

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[1] Rachael Chaisson, e-mail correspondence with author, July 23, 2026.

[2] Jennifer Earle, “Alberta’s Bull Trout Need Our Respect — and Our Help,” Nature Alberta, 2020, https://naturealberta.ca/albertas-bull-trout-need-our-respect-and-our-help/.

[3] Rachael Chaisson and Rita McKeough, e-mail correspondence with author, July 29, 2026.

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Curated by: Adam Whitford, Curator & Exhibitions Manager
Lead Preparator: Arianna Richardson, Preparator: D. Hoffos

Rachael Chaisson is a multidisciplinary artist working with intersections between sound, movement and storytelling through objects. She creates immersive experiences with kinetic elements, interactive objects, electronics, and field recordings. Her work reimagines personal and collective histories attached to objects, landscapes, and memory, encouraging viewers to find reflection and take time. Recurring themes within her work are site specific daydreams, microcosms and macrocosms, and the murky waters of human relationships.

From Lyalta, Alberta, and currently residing in Lethbridge, she holds a BFA (2012) from the former Alberta College of Art + Design. She has shown in Calgary, AB, and participated in residencies at the Banff Centre, Island Mountain Arts, and the Canadian Wilderness Artist Residency on the Yukon River. She has a complicated tapestry of work lives that have influenced her greatly, from gallery preparator, fabricator, parks & heritage worker, and landscape custodian of cemeteries and sacred sites.

Rita McKeough is a performance and installation artist and musician. Born in Antigonish (NS), on the traditional and unceded land of the Mi’kmaq people, McKeough received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Calgary and Master of Fine Arts at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. McKeough works from a feminist perspective, and her recent work has focused on the impact of urban development and resource extraction on the lives and habitats of plants and animals. Rita is known for her large-scale, multilayered installations and performances, often comprised of complex audio works and electronic elements. McKeough uses sound as a medium to articulate the forces of resistance, giving her subjects voice and agency.

As a musician, McKeough is a drummer and has been a member of several bands dating back to the late 1970s, including The Permuters, Sit Com, Mode d’empoli, Almost Even, Demi Monde, Simian Crease, Confidence Band, Books All Over the Bed and most recently Sleepy Panther.

Memories of Green Credits
Rachael Chaisson would like to thank the following people for answering all of her questions about grasslands, land access, granting land access, and taking her for ride-alongs: Jane Lancaster, Julie Landry-DeBoer, Meg Knapton, Tyler Eresman, Justin Bartelen, the Kiyooka One Arts Centre, and a farmer named Doug.

Thank you to Arianna Richardson, Dave Hoffos, Kristen Krien for consultation and support throughout this process.

The artist would also like to acknowledge the support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

Overburdened Credits
I am indebted to all the people who assisted with the production of this work, and with gratitude, I offer my love and respect to everyone who helped with this exhibition. -Rita McKeough

Curator: Adam Whitford

Preparators: Arianna Richardson, Dave Hoffos

Programming and Technical Coordination: Alec Brilling

Video Production and Editing: Levin Ifko

Animation: Mo Ramsey

A/V Production Assistance: Alex Moon

Helen Pridmore and WL Altman: Vocals

3D Printing: Peter Redecopp

• 3D print model - #D model “Clark’s Nutcracker - Nucifraga columbiana” thanks to (https://skfb.ly/oxrXp) by MooreLab is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Laura Morel from CPAWS Southern Alberta for connecting me with some researchers and scientists.

Elliot Lindsay, Fisheries Technologist at Freshwater Conservation Canada, for sharing his videos and knowledge.

Josh from Out Fly Fishing

Production Assistance: Dara Huminski, Ann Thrale, Mars Reddick, Rachael Chaisson, Bridget Fairbank, Logan Lape, Dale Vandenberg, Alberta University of the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

The Southern Alberta Art Gallery Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin acknowledges the support of the City of Lethbridge, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.