Tsimshian performance art at the Sydney Biennale
May 14, 2010
Sacred clown performance artist Skeena Reece slam dunked with her performance at the Sydney Biennale in her Tsimshian dominatrix of radical Indian politics she took over the space, conjuring injustice with a beatbox of video documentary images of secwepemc resistance, Mohawk protest and indigenous self determination. Spitting out rhymes and acts of resistance that rooted her to her role as a warrior and protector. Skeena’s work has always played with the discomfort in facing indigenous ongoing and historical injustice but in ways that leave you liberated and laughing. Outfitted in a Marlon Brando mask she mimed the silence of brando’s speech to the academy delivered by sacheen little feather wherein he rejected the award based on the treatment of native americans in cinema. The mask carved by Haida artist Corey Bulpitt stared out from skeena’s powerful figure. Her regalia a collaboration with Joseph Paul and infamous radical poltotical graphic artist gord hill ( kwagiulth) complete with glitter hand grenade button blanket and images of indigenous defiance on her corset completing her pan-Indian power suit for the 21 at century. Situating herself in a history of indigenous struggle for self determination she takes control and her defiant gaze dares the audience to become part of her subversion and laugh out loud at opression.
The Te Papa museum in Wellington New Zealand incorporates a unique bi-cultural approach to museums management. Strengthening the museum’s governence structure a progressive Maori staff work to hold the museum accountable to Maori protocol, and ceremony ensuring Maori histories, and contemporary communities are engaged especially when it comes to the museum’s significant Maori collections. A tour of the collections vault and the extensive Maori artifacts or Tonga (Maori cultural treasures) was conducted by adressing a prayer upon entering and a cleansing upon leaving. Maori staff and the bi-cultural approach at the museum create a sense of a dynamic culture representing themselves as opposed to the more mainstream or regular approach to museum work wherein indigenous culture and peoples are treated as frozen adressed in an ethnographic model preserving pre-contact cultures and holding them up as authentic while failing to adress contemporary communities. Currently developing a publication and exhibit on traditional cloaks Maori curator or Matauranga Awhina Tamarapa conducted a tour of other items in the collection. Particularily interesting was the way Maori staff learn from the collections for example looking at contemporary weaving in the development of the cloaks exhibition as well learning to play and carve traditional instruments based on examples in the collection. Another example can be seen in the Maori ceremony house commisioned by contemporary Maori carver Cliff Whiting that celebrates traditional carving and traditional structures but in a contemporary way in terms of the colour pallette and materials Cliff has used. A model museums should be encourged to adopt especially in the case of indigenous collections and representation.
A delegation of Aboriginal curators and a representation by Aboriginal artists promises to mix things up at the 17th Sydney Biennale. Attending as a curator I will be part of a Canada council for the arts funded delegation including Candice Hopkins, Michelle Lavallee, Cathy Mattes, David Garneau and Patricia Deadman. Vancouver area artists exhibiting/presenting will include Dana Claxton (Hunkpapa Lakota), Skeena Reece (Tsimshian), and Althea Thaurberger. A number of Aboriginal Australian artists and curators will also be attending and a talk hosted by the Sydney Biennale and Campbeltown Arts Centre in Sydney Australia will host a North South dialogue of Indigenous arts. A long flight awaits bur check back here for regular updates and highlights of Indigenous arts at the 17th Sydney Biennale.
Ice typography: Nicole Dextras environmental artist
April 20, 2010
Nicole Dextras‘ ephemeral installations of Ice typography are currently on exhibition at grunt gallery. Dextras, a Vancouver based environmental artist brings documentation of past site specific works to grunt gallery grunt gallery. Dextras is also completing a new series of ice letter installations in Vancouver throughout the month. Exploring our relationship to the natural and unnatural around us Dextras installations function as moments of investigation and meditation they continue to melt away throughout the day leaving no trace. Thoughts, intentions, statements and prayers evaporate transmutating form and state leaving little pools of thought.
As part of my curatorial residency with grunt gallery we will be presenting an exhibition by Nicholas Galanin, Oblique Drift.
The Curtis Legacy
grunt gallery presents:
116 – 350 E. 2nd, Vancouver, BC V5T 4R8 http://www.grunt.ca
Oblique Drift
Nicholas Galanin
October 23, 2009 – December 12, 2009
Opening – Friday Oct. 23rd, 8pm grunt gallery
Artist talk Saturday, October 24, 2009, 2:00 – 3:30 pm,
Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art
630 Hornby Street, Vancouver, British Columbia
http://www.billreidgallery.ca/
Alaskan artist Nicholas Galanin brings his transformative work to grunt gallery, which extends from his series, ‘The Imaginary Indian’ a series that juxtaposes manufactured Northwest Coast masks and French toile. Galanin explores the authentic and inauthentic and how interpretation, appropriation and “cultural drift ” inform Northwest Coast art . Showcasing new works from The Curtis Legacy Galanin strips masks, bodies and meaning down to reveal that ,”The real strength in survival of indigenous knowledge and culture lies within the ability to freely and creatively represent ourselves.” Shifting the colonial gaze from ethnography to pin-up The Curtis Legacy series includes nude models wearing Indonesian made Tlingit masks, referencing Edward Curtis photographs of the noble savage, these works lay bare the objectification of both the body and the sacred . Both series of works are brought together in Galnin’s examination of gloablized culture(s), freedom of cultural expression and the manifestations of change in a world of shifting cultures and ancestral echoes.
Nicholas Galanin was born in Sitka, Alaska, Nicholas Galanin has struck an intriguing balance between his origins and the course of his practice. Having trained extensively in ‘traditional’ as well as ‘contemporary’ approaches to art, he pursues them both in parallel paths. His stunning bodies of work simultaneously preserve his culture and explore new perceptual territory. Galanin comes from a long line of Northwest Coast artists, starting with his great-grandfather, who sculpted in wood, down through his father, who works in both precious metal and stone. Galanin studied at the London Guildhall University, where he received a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts with honors in Jewelry Design and Silversmithing. Soon after, Galanin discovered a graduate arts program at Massey University in New Zealand that meshed perfectly with his interests and concerns, and in 2004 he began earning a Master’s degree there in Indigenous Visual Arts. Valuing his culture as highly as his individuality, Galanin has created an unusual path for himself. He deftly navigates “the politics of cultural representation,” as he balances both ends of the aesthetic spectrum. With a fiercely independent spirit, Galanin has found the best of both worlds and has given them back to his audience in stunning form.
Stanley Park Environmental Art Project-Launch
August 5, 2009
Entwined, Tania Willard, cedar bark, hemlock, red alder and madder hand dyed wool dimensions variable. 2009
Entwined, explores the interconnectedness of Stanley Park’s ecology, and how the different uses, experiences and perspectives of both indigenous and non-indigenous people, plants and materials are interwoven. Referencing native-plant and material usage in the plaiting of cedar and in the dyes created from hemlock and red alder barks as well as the oyster shell buttons, this work is a meditation on the Cedar as a tree of life and asks this cedar to share it’s story.
Please join us on Sunday, August 9 as we premiere the semi-permanent artworks of the Stanley Park Environmental Art Project.
Walking tours to the works will begin at the Lost Lagoon Nature House.
The artists, Shirley Wiebe, Tania Willard, John Hemsworth, and T’Uy’Tanat Cease Wyss and Davide Pan, will be on-site to talk about their works and their environmental art practice.
Walking tours: 1-3pm, begin at the Lost Lagoon Nature House. Everyone welcome.
Please visit the project website for more information: www.vancouver.ca/spea
Curator in Residence-grunt gallery
June 15, 2009
Tania Willard Appointed grunt gallery Resident Curator
The grunt gallery welcomes Tania Willard as resident curator August 2009 – August 2010. This residency is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts Assistance to Aboriginal Curators for Residencies in Visual Arts program. During her residency Willard will be working on several projects. Initially she will focus on completing the exhibition and dissemination of Beat Nation and the editing of brunt issue 5. In the coming year she will be coordinating an exhibition of the work of Nicholas Galanin and developing an exhibition of emerging Northern Artists. One theme running through these projects is the transformation and resurgence of cultural knowledge and values through new forms and media whether it be hip hop, film and video or web based media.. These projects will involve travel based research investigating the contexts in which the next generation of emerging and young Inuit and Northern artists live and work.
Ndn Comix
June 15, 2009
Native Pride
Native artists have been working with carricature and image since early depictions of cowboy colonists on horseback getting an arrow shower. A recent exhibition at the Smithsonian American Indian Museum curates an outstanding collection of Aboriginal artists who work with comix or other allied illustrative styles. Including artists like Navajo artist Jolene Nenibah Yazzie and her Warrior Women series this show puts non-Native comix out there that feature Indians hunting dinosaurs or just being cannon fodder for cowboy’s to shame. My own work in comix has featured a re-telling of Aboriginal worker’s history as well as Secwepemc stories and legends. Working with Vancouver’s Healthy Aboriginal Network I have helped to letter and layout several great projects illustrated by Steven Keewatin Sanderson that use comix as a way to create positive messages and health issue awareness for Aboriginal youth. Inspired by comix like Super Shamoo, an Inuit superhero on the early Inuit Broadcasting Corporation turned comic to create awareness around glue sniffing, I worked with Redwire Magazine to create an all NDN comix version of the magazine that continues to be a collector’s edition of the mag. Native editorial and politic comics artist the late Everett Soop’s life and work was on display at the Galt Musuem, Everett Soop referred to himself as “the pit bull terrier of native journalism.” a member of the Kainai Nation, Everett’s biting commentary is an inspiration for many Aboriginal comic artists. I am excited to see his work memorialized. To read more about my own work and interest in Native comics check out this interview with Broken Pencil.
Bee’s Make Art and Honey
June 15, 2009
Burnaby Art Gallery exhibition
Local Lower Mainland artist Aganetha Dyck creates collaborative works with honey bees. Taking collaborative arts to new levels Aganetha recently exhibiting at Burnaby Art Gallery . I missed the show regrettably but I just wanted to mention her amazing work here. Awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual Art in 2007 this Winnipeg born artist has an interest in environmental issues and links her work with bee’s and interventions in the hives with an examination of the worlds of small things that have huge impacts in our human world. Bee’s pollinate an astounding amount of vegetables and staples of the human diet and commercial beekeeping has been plagued with Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that continues to perplex scientists. I say listen to the artists for a change, Aganetha Dyck is in touch with Bees in a way Scientists could never be, perhaps it is the creative that will help to resolve the CCD mystery.
A Woman’s Place is Everywhere
February 17, 2009
I am excited to have this show A Woman’s Place is Everywhere! A Century of Women and Work coming to Vancouver, a really great show with a bunch of amazing women artists I was grateful to be a part of come and check it our March 8th. And to top it off artist Favianna Rodriguez who I have blogged who has fantastic work is going to be here for a workshop…see details below!!!!
A powerful national collection of visual art works by contemporary Canadian artists including BC’s Tania Willard, produced by Workers Arts and Heritage Centre. Sponsored by HEU, BCGEU, CEP 467.
March 8-29
W2 Launch Pad
(116 W. Hastings Street)
International Women’s Day opening reception
Sunday, March 8 at 4pm
Gallery open Wed-Sun, 12-6pm
BY DONATION
Artist activist Favianna Rodriguez is one of Utne Reader magazine’s ‘Top 50 Visionaries’ of the year. She’ll talk about her art practice and how the Oakland Eastside Arts Alliance Center she’s co-founded – combining a community centre, youth programs, a media arts collective plus social housing offers an inspiring model for Vancouver’s downtown eastside. Sponsored by DTES Community Arts Network and Tides Canada Endswell Fund.
Sunday, March 8
W2 Launch Pad
(116 W. Hastings Street)
Workshop begins at 2pm
