Bingo is the first major solo museum exhibition by Sobey Award-winning artist Nico Williams, bringing together a vibrant collection of large-scale beadwork and sculpture, and featuring a newly commissioned artwork specifically made for Museum London.
A member of Aamjiwnaang First Nation and an alumnus of London’s H.B. Beal Secondary School, Williams draws inspiration from everyday objects and pop culture imagery. From VHS tapes and grocery flyers to clothing, packaging, and lottery tickets, he transforms the familiar into something unexpected. His work challenges the traditional divide between art and craft, inviting visitors to reconsider the value and meaning we attach to both.
The exhibition takes inspiration from the game of bingo and the many ideas it evokes: chance, value, exchange, and community. Williams’s interest in bingo led him to explore the game’s history, which traces back to Renaissance-era Italy and unfolds alongside the history of glass bead production. These histories intersect with the practice of beadwork across Turtle Island, where Indigenous peoples incorporated Venetian glass beads–brought by settlers as bartering tools–into longstanding artistic and cultural practices. Through generations of knowledge-sharing from elders, beadwork traditions have endured and continue to evolve today.
About the artist:
Nico Williams (b. 1989), is a member of Aamjiwnaang First Nation (Anishinaabe) and currently lives and works in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. In 2021, he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Concordia University. He has a multidisciplinary and often collaborative practice that is centred around sculptural beadwork. Williams is active within the urban Indigenous Montréal arts community and is a member of the Contemporary Geometric Beadwork research team. He has led workshops at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the McCord Stewart Museum, MOMA x AICH, and the University of Toronto. In 2021, he was awarded the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art, and in 2024, he was the laureate of the prestigious Sobey Art Award, for which he was longlisted in 2022.
For more information, please check: Nico Williams: Bingo | Museum London
