Mouse Woman drawing by Luke J. Parnell
The Beat
A monthly newsletter about the art of
First Nations on Canada’s West Coast
Welcome to the thirteenth issue of The Beat, a free, independent newsletter that brings you up-to-date information on the art events of the First Nations on Canada’s Pacific Coast.
We respectfully acknowledge the Coast Salish Peoples, on whose traditional territories we live and work, and all the First Nations of the Pacific coast.
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Vancouver Art Gallery is The House of Ghosts
Friday October 3 marks the inauguration of a new and powerful work by prominent Kwakwaka’wakw artist Marianne Nicolson , from the village of Gwa’yi (Kingcome Inlet) on the British Columbia coast. Nicolson’s site-specific project The House of the Ghosts imaginatively transforms the Georgia Street façade of the Vancouver Art Gallery into a Northwest Coast ceremonial house. With the use of high-powered lighting, an image will be created of a house front and totem poles on the Gallery façade from dusk to dawn every night until January 11 2009. The Courthouse Building which houses the VAG was the scene of the infamous trials where the community leaders of BC’s First Nations were humiliated, imprisoned and condemned to harsh sentences for holding traditional ceremonies, such as the potlatch, in their communities. For more on the sad story of potlatch trials and the Chief’s imprisonment at the Vancouver Courthouse in the 1920’s, see Doreen Jensen’s essay http://www.ccca.ca/c/writing/j/jensen/jen001t.html
For more on Nicolson’s VAG project, one in a series, see
http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/the_exhibitions/exhibit_next_marianne_nicolson.html
First Nations Art in Berlin
One of the world great collections of Pacific First Nations art is at the Ethnology Museum in Berlin, Germany. The Curator’s assistant Dr. Rainer Hatoum has recently returned from the British Columbia coast. The main body of Berlin’s Northwest collection, about 7,000 objects, was brought there in the 1880’s by Johan Adrian Jacobsen, though the collection has grown well beyond this. At the moment, acquisition funds are scarce. Moreover, because of the sharp rise in prices of Northwest art recently, donations from German family collections to the museum have dropped off considerably.
In 1989-1990 Kwakwaka’wakw artist Simon Dick of Kingcome Inlet was commissioned to create a yellow cedar canoe seven metres long, now prominently displayed in the Berlin museum.
A new building is planned for the Ethnology Museum. The collection and exhibitions are currently housed in galleries which opened in 1998 in Dahlem, a suburb of the former West Berlin. A project is now underway to present the whole group of state collections of non-European cultural objects together, plus a new science museum and a vast library, in a new complex in central Berlin called the Humboldt Forum.
For more on that impressive undertaking and the history of the site: www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/bauen/palast_rueckbau/en/humboldtforum.shtml
At this time of renewal for the museum, and with a new kind of collaborative relationship with First Nations people envisioned, a review of exhibition strategies is underway. “Other voices” than the European will be heard in the new museum, says Dr. Hatoum. For an overview of the Dahlem Ethnology Museum, see
www.smb.spkberlin.de/smb/sammlungen/details.php?lang=en&objID=56&typeId=1
Of particular interest to artists, collectors and scholars, the Berlin Ethnology Museum is anticipating that it may join the “Reciprocal Research Network”, a joint project of Vancouver’s Museum of Anthropology, Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, Ottawa’s Canadian Museum of Civilization, Harvard University’s Peabody Museum and (already mentioned in The Beat) Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum. This website provides a valuable online archive of First Nations cultural collections and can be easily consulted by anyone who signs on and accepts simple conditions of use. For a look at the Reciprocal Research Network, request a password at: www.rrnpilot.org
A Theft Leaves Us All Poorer
During the night of September 1 2008, at the Fort Langley National Historic Site near Vancouver was robbed. Three masks, a drum and a basket on loan from the Kwantlen First Nation were stolen after the thieves entered by breaking a window. These were not antique objects and had a total market value of about $5500.
Canada ranks #11 in world art thefts.
Galleries
Grunt Gallery at #116-350 East 2 nd Avenue in Vancouver has expanded its hours to Tuesday to Saturday, 12 to 5 pm. On show from October 17 to November 29 is Yellow Quill (Salteaux) First Nation Wally Dion’s exhibition Red Worker . His large-scale panel paintings “reference the propaganda posters of the Chinese Revolution and Russian proletariat iconography, in order to speak to the effacement of First Nations contributions to the building and definition of Canada and Canadian cultural identity”. For more information, see www.grunt.bc.ca
Traditional Territory , an exhibition of work by fifteen artists from the Squamish Nation will be held from October 3 to 25 in North Vancouver at the Cityscape Community ArtSpace at 335 Lonsdale Avenue (near 4 th ). Gallery hours are Tuesday to Saturday, noon to 5 pm.
The Legacy Gallery and Café , a downtown meeting place run by the University of Victoria, is exhibiting art influenced or created by the late Anishnabe artist Norval Morrisseau , until November 30. The Gallery/Café is at 630 Yates Street, in the central cluster of art galleries in Victoria around Fort Street. www. Legacygallery.ca
The Bill Reid Reid Gallery of Northwest Art is the scene of a book launching on Thursday October 9 at 6 to 8 pm: Haida Sgaana Jaad – April White Killer Whale Woman . For more see www.sgaana.com
Public Commissions
There have been several notable public art commissions recently in North Vancouver. The Gateway to Ancient Wisdom, by Kwakiutl sculptor Wade Baker and Mary Tasi of Sky Spirit Studios is situated at the eastern end of the Mosquito Creek Marina on the North Shore Spirit Trail. The dramatic “gate” represents the concept of entering traditional territory. “Two Thunderbirds on either side of the gateway represent male and female chiefs showing balance of leadership. Bronze-cast Salish spindle whorls are planned for the trail. For more on the trail, see www.cnv.org/SpiritTrail
Squamish artist Jody Broomfield has created a contemporary Salish-style Salmon House Post at 980 Marine Drive in North Vancouver, accompanied by four steel salmon placed further along the street.
A commission by Marianne Nicolson will be installed later this month along a wall of the main Public Library in North Vancouver’s Civic Square at Lonsdale and 14 th Avenue.
In July Kingcome Inlet artist Charlie Johnson began a wood carving for the new podium at the Sid Williams Theatre in Courtenay, Vancouver Island. It is a Mask of the Sun; the artist sees the life-giving solar rays as a metaphor for the creative inspiration of artistic performance. It will be inaugurated on October 5 at a lecture by the Honourable Romeo Dallaire.
More Performances of Kwakwaka’wakw Traditions
The brilliant evening of entertainment developed around the 1913 Edward Curtis film In the Land of the Headhunters, about the traditional life of the Kwakwaka’wakw of Alert Bay, British Columbia, will be brought to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. on November 9 2008, co-presented by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, and on November 14 to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The evening of film, orchestral music and wonderful dance, song and drumming performance will also be held in the Field Museum in Chicago on November 16 and 17 2008. Dr. Aaron Glass, co-producer of the project, now in New York City, holds a dual Fellowship at the American Museum of Natural History and the Bard Graduate Center.
For more information on performances of the program, see: http://www.curtisfilm.rutgers.edu/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
Dana Claxton at the Vancouver Film Festival
Dana Claxton’s short film Hope is in Vancouver’s 2008 Film Festival. The work is “ a poignant film that considers geo-politics, earth democracy, as well as the possibilities of reconciliation.” Claxton’s film will be screened twice at the Empire Granville 7 Cinemas at 855 Granville Street in Vancouver, on October 5 at 9:45 pm and October 6 at 3 pm.
Northwest Artists at Canada’s National Gallery
Several exhibitions are in Ottawa in
October at the National Gallery of Canada which include west coast
First Nations artists. Aboriginal curator-in-residence Steve Loft
reports that
Caught in the
Act:The Viewer as Performer
opens October 17. “This group exhibition of eleven Canadian
contemporary artist and collectives presents sculptural works that
engage, and even rely on, the active spectator.”
Caught
in the Act
includes
Vancouver-based
Rebecca
Belmore
.
Back to the Beginning: Rethinking Abstraction from an Aboriginal Perspective can be seen from the end of October until February 2009. The interesting curatorial statement tells us that: “Although Aboriginal symbolism in the work of non-Aboriginal modernist artists is well documented, the history of Aboriginal artists working in abstraction is less well known. Drawing on works from the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, this exhibition explores the use of abstraction in the artistic practices of Haida Robert Davidson , among others.”
Steeling the Gaze: Portraits by Aboriginal Artists , a photo-based exhibition within the National Gallery, but created by the temporarily-closed Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, opens October 31 2008 and runs until March 22 2009. Works by Kwagiutl artist David Neel and Vancouver-based Dana Claxton are part of the exhibition. See http://cmcp.gallery.ca/
Watch for the opening at the Seattle Museum of Art of the exhibition S’abadeb – The Gifts: Pacific Coast Salish Art and Artists from October 24 2008 to January 11 2009. The exhibition will travel to Victoria’s Royal British Columbia Museum November 20 2009 to March 8 2010. It “explores the unique artistry and culture of Salish First Peoples of Washington State and British Columbia. The exhibition features more than 175 works of art from national and international collections that offer a glimpse into the daily and ceremonial lives of the 39 sovereign Salish Nations. Many of the works have never before been on view and are, for the first time, interpreted by Native voices.” See www.sam.org
Haida Gwaii
There is great pride in the success of the ceremonial Grand Opening of the Haida Heritage Centre near Skidegate in the Haida Gwaii aka Queen Charlotte Islands in northern British Columbia. The Heritage Centre is now open until April 2009 during its winter hours, Tuesday to Saturday 10 am to 5 pm. See www.haidaheritagecentre.com
A meeting took place in Skidegate in July among artists, weavers and others interested in the Bill Reid Gallery’s upcoming exhibition of contemporary First Nations art, Continuum: Vision and Creativity on the Northwest Coast .
To read more about these events, and other Haida Nation community activities, see the September edition of the Haida Laas, at
http://www.haidanation.ca/Pages/Haida_Laas/PDF/Newsletters/HLSept.08.pdf
Dorothy Grant in New York
On September 25, Haida designer Dorothy Grant was among five recipients of achievement awards in New York City at the Smithsonian
National Museum of the American Indian. The awards provided a contemporary connection with the Museum’s current exhibition, Identity by Design: Tradition, Change and Celebration in Native Women’s Dresses , which displays elaborate ceremonial clothing of the 19 th -century Plains First Nations.
First Peoples House in Victoria
The University of Victoria is building a distinctive First Peoples House on campus designed by Chipewyan architect Alfred Waugh who also created the acclaimed Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre in Whistler. His work at the university references west coast First Nations traditional buildings: the main building is a post-and-beam structure like a longhouse, and the connecting building has rammed earth walls, and roof covered with earth for eventual planting, echoing the “pit” houses of some British Columbia’s First Nations.
http://communications.uvic.ca/releases/release.php?display=release&id=921
Canada Council
Program for Aboriginal Artists: The Elder/Youth Legacy program,
offering support for Elders to pass on traditional skills to youth
within communities has a deadline for submissions of November 15. Up
to $20,000 may be granted. For full details call 1-800-263-5588 or
(613) 566-4414, ext. 4178, or visit the website
at
http://www.canadacouncil.ca/grants/aboriginal/vv127913248337770380.htm
The First Peoples Heritage, Language and Culture Council partners with the British Columbia Arts Council to manage an awards program support the creative or professional development of emerging Aboriginal artists. Deadline for proposals is December 1 2008. For details see http://www.fphlcc.ca and click on the “Arts” link.
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Comments, news and new subscribers to this free newsletter are welcomed. Please write to: editor@coastalartbeat.ca
Past issues are available at our website www.coastalartbeat.ca
Thank you to David Dumaresq, Steve Loft, Petra Watson, Rainer Hatoum, Martin Landmann and Lori Phillips, for your assistance.
The Beat is an independent, not-for-profit project written and published in Vancouver, Canada by Ann Cameron. Copyright 2008 Ann Cameron.