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 twenty-third issue of The Beat, a free, independent newsletter that brings you up-to-date on the art, artists and 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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The Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland has invited Haida artist Jim Hart, hereditary chief of Old Massett in the Haida Gwaii to create a pole for the museum there. Hart has been carving the pole during the summer of 2009 in Old Massett, and will finish it on site in Lausanne during Lausanne’s Olympic Week October 11 to 15 2009.
Haida dancers will perform on Thursday October 15. These activities at the international home of the Olympic organization are part of the lead-up to the Olympic and Paralympic games in Vancouver in February 2010. For more information on the events in Lausanne, see
http://multimedia.olympic.org/pdf/en_report_1461.pdf
The large aluminum wall sculpture The North Star which greeted visitors to the exhibition of the art of Haisla artist Lyle Wilson at the West Vancouver Museum in March 2009 has been acquired by the new building of the Kitamaat Village Council on the BC coast.
At the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, a 38-ft canoe carved by renowned Kwagu’l artist Calvin Hunt will be on display from October 5 to December 14 2009. Hunt is based in Fort Rupert on Vancouver Island and is the grandson of artist Mungo Martin (1879-1962), who played a crucial role in the history of Northwest coast art.
Tahltan
artist Peter Morin
curates a two-part exhibit: Speaking
to the Old Ones will be
shown at MOA while Speaking
in Landscape Tongues appears
at Vancouver’s Western
Front Gallery. Both
components explore the role of aboriginal languages as expressions of
indigenous thought, and the importance of speaking aboriginal
languages as a way of asserting aboriginal presence in the world. At
MOA, four video monitors will be placed in the Great Hall, positioned
so that visitors can view them in relation to specific poles and
sculptures. Artists whose videos will be shown include Kevin
Burton, Helen
Haig-Brown, Jason
Lujan, and Sandra
Semchuck with the
late
James Nicholas.
Morin’s exhibition runs from
September 3 to October 18 2009.
The publishing company Douglas & McIntyre (an imprint of D & M Publishers) and the Museum of Anthropology have formed a strategic partnership on the basis of a shared interest in First Nations communities. The program will be launched with the production of a book for release in early 2010, celebrating MOA’s extensive $55.5-million expansion and renewal project. Douglas & McIntyre will also sponsor an annual lecture series with a focus on Northwest Coast art and cultural expressions, bringing leading international scholars to Vancouver. Its inaugural speaker in spring 2010 is Marie Mauzé, Senior Researcher with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. Dr. Mauzé is an expert on the societies of the Northwest Coast, including the Kwakwaka’wakw of British Columbia.
The book Challenging Traditions:Contemporary First Nations Art of the Northwest Coast by Ian Thom will be launched at MOA on September 2. It is published by Douglas & McIntyre and accompanies an exhibition of the same title which will be at MOA in 2011. Thom was recently appointed to the Order of Canada for his “contributions as a curator of Canadian art and as an advocate for British Columbia artists.” The Museum of Anthropology’s grand re-opening after renovations is planned for January 23 2010; the museum is currently two-thirds open. See http://www.moa.ubc.ca
Knowledge Television Network of British Columbia is launching a year-long focus on First Peoples, stories of aboriginal life from around the globe. A series of weekly films on British Columbia’s First Nations begins at 7 pm on Wednesday September 16 2009 on the Knowledge TV channel, and includes three documentaries by ‘Namgis filmmaker Barb Cranmer.
For complete listings, see http://www.knowledgenetwork.ca
Artist Tania Willard of the Secwepemc Nation recently installed her remarkable piece Entwined in Stanley Park in Vancouver (see photograph on our website). Her work is one of a series in the Environmental Art Project program in the park. The artists will discuss their pieces at an event Dig In: Environmental Art, held on Saturday, Sept 26 10-2:30 at Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre. The program is free, but you must pre-register at 604 713 1800.
More information is at http://vancouver.ca/parks/arts/spea/index.htm
Ruins in Progress: Vancouver Art in the Sixties is a project of the Grunt Gallery and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia (see The Beat June 2009). It is an online archive of photographs, press clippings, audio recordings and film clips related to art in Vancouver in the 1960’s and early ‘70’s. Marcia Crosby, assisted by Roberta Kramer, developed the aspect of the project related to Vancouver’s First Nations artists. In 1996 Crosby’s interest in the formation of urban aboriginal communities after World War II led to an exhibition and catalogue Nations in Urban Landscapes at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver. An event to celebrate the new project will be held at 7 pm on Thursday September 3 2009, hosted by the OR Gallery at 555 Hamilton Street in Vancouver. For more information call 604 822 2759.
Skinner Auctioneers and Appraisers will hold a sale of American Indian and Ethnographic Art on September 26 2009 in Boston. More information at http://www.skinnerinc.com
In
Vancouver, an auction by Appleton
Galleries will be
held
on Sunday October 4th at 1pm at VanDusen Botanical Garden at 5251 Oak
Street. Viewing starts at 11am. Appleton Galleries at 1451 Hornby
Street in downtown Vancouver is open 8am to 1pm Monday to
Friday. More information is at http://www.appletongalleries.com/
Pacific Editions Limited in Victoria will hold an auction on November 6 2009, offering 250 out-of-print aboriginal art prints. More information is at http://www.pacificeditions.ca
Stonington Gallery in Seattle has an exhibition of work by Aleut artist Thomas Stream from September 4 to 27 2009.
See http://www.stoningtongallery.com
SWARM is an annual festival of artist-run culture organized by the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres. Vancouver multi-media and performance artist Dana Claxton opens a show The Barbarian in connection with the festival on Thursday September 10 at 6 pm at The On Main Gallery at 1965 Main Street in Vancouver. The show is curated by artist Paul Wong.
The Barbarian is a life-size photo-triptych inspired by a narwhal tusk loaned to the artist. She received it shortly after the whale had given its life to the community.
“This huge tusk still felt warm as I unwrapped it. It had an enormous power/energy/spirit that was still attached to it,” says the artist. For more information on Dana Claxton, see http://www.danaclaxton.com
The On Main Gallery is open 12 – 5 pm on Saturdays. For more information on the exhibition call 604 872 7713.
Two Northwest coast artists from British Columbia are included in an exhibition in London England, at the Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery in Fitzroy Square, opening on September 17 2009. Hailans to Ailans is mainly art from Papua New Guinea, but also showing are a carved relief panel by John Marston Spiritual Transference (in progress), and two painted drums by LessLie Yours and Theirs. A second part of the exhibition is at Victoria’s Alcheringa Gallery opening November 5 2009.
See http://www.r-h-g.co.uk/ and http://www.alcheringa-gallery.com
The Alcheringa Gallery’s current exhibition is More than Meets the Eye: Masks that Transform Us a “cross-cultural dialogue amongst distinguished mask-making traditions”, featuring new work by leading artists of the Northwest Coast including Calvin Hunt, Chris Paul, and Mervyn Child, as well as master carvers from Papua New Guinea’s Sepik River.
The Associates of the Vancouver Art Gallery have two First Nations related events planned for October: on October 8 at 5:30 pm, a fashion of leading Haida designer Dorothy Grant (contact Vivianne Reid at 604 261 8263, and a special tour of the Bill Reid Gallery with Dr. Martine Reid on October 21 at 11 am, at 639 Hornby Street (contact Kirsty Maxwell at 604 224 8633).
The First Peoples’ Heritage, Language and Culture Council administers a program of awards for First Nations artists, projects and arts administrators. This year there will be new, earlier October deadlines for the Arts Development Awards. For more information, guidelines and applications, see http://www.fphlcc.ca
The latest newsletter of the FPHLCC mentions the recent commissioning of First Nations art for Victoria’s Government House, including a bentwood canoe box by Kwakwaka’wakw artist Bruce Alfred, a pole by Coast Salish Luke Marston, and two ceremonial blankets by Musqueam Debra Sparrow for the Lieutenant Governor the Honourable Steven Point and his wife Her Honour Gwendolyn Point. Artist Marianne Nicolson has been commissioned to create a painting: she will use “the relationship between the resurgence of sea otters and Aboriginal populations after years of decline as a metaphor to explore themes of decline and restoration, the search for balance and sustainability, and the need for reconciliation.”
A delegation of 24 Haida artists, curators, elders and clan leaders will travel to Britain in September 2009 to “repatriate knowledge” from collections and archives related to Haida archives and art and ethnographic collections in museums there. The Skidegate and Old Massett Repatriation Committees have been working with the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and London’s British Museum to develop a reciprocal project which allows the Haida to research jointly nearly 700 objects, including large poles, at the two museums. Funding for the project has come from the Leverhulme Trust and the John Fell Fund in Oxford and from many sources in Canada. The museums hope to learn more about the uses, language and history of their objects. Participants hope that the documentation of the knowledge exchange will result in a book about the process, and a conference for UK museum professionals. A detailed archive of the project including photographs and records from both collections will be deposited at the Haida Gwaii Museum for community access. On Sunday September 13, part of the Oxford Open Doors 2009 program, the visiting Haida will dance, sing and give talks and demonstrations for the public in the gallery at the Pitt Rivers Museum. More information is at http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/haida.html
There are 197 photographs of Haida objects in Britain on Flickr, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/haida_prm
In 1969, artist Robert Davidson and his younger brother Reg raised the first totem pole in 90 years outside St. John’s Church in Old Massett in the Haida Gwaii. Robert Davidson, just 22 years old at the time, undertook the daunting project out of compassion for the elders of his village. He sensed a great feeling of emptiness among them with the suppression and loss of the ceremonies and art that had been the essence of their community, cultural and spiritual life. For two days in August 2009 the Haida community celebrated the 40th anniversary of the pole raising. The 1969 event marked a resurgence in Haida cultural life, and the commemoration this August left no doubt of its great strength. Nearly 1000 people attended the two-day feast to mark the anniversary; over 100 dancers in splendid costumes and masks participated in the opening procession.
Photographs of the event can be found at the website of guest Mark Follman at http://markfollman.com/tag/vancouver/
The Haida Heritage Centre also celebrated an anniversary in August: one year since its grand opening in 2008. Dances by community and visiting groups, traditional canoe racing and games took place. The exhibition of Robert Davidson’s collection of weaving at the Haida Gwaii Museum at the Haida Heritage Centre in Skidegate has been extended to the third week of September. For more information about the centre, see http://www.haidaheritagecentre.com
Winners of the British Columbia Creative Achievement Award for Aboriginal Art for 2009 are Haida weaver Isabel Rorick, Carrier basket weaver Noeleen McQuary, Coast Salish carver John Marston, Kwakiutl carver and painter Richard Hunt and artist Calvin Hunt.
The Four Host Nations and VANOC are looking for aboriginal artists and artisans interested in participating in the Aboriginal Artisan Village and Business Showcase during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver in 2010. Artists will be selected for participation and must apply before September 30 2009.
For more information, email rosi.fourhostfirstnations at gmail dot com.
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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 http://www.coastalartbeat.ca
Thank you to David Dumaresq, Martin Landmann, Nika Collinson, Dana Claxton, Jim Hart, Emiko Norita, Lyle Wilson, Marcia Crosby and others, for your assistance.
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The Beat is an independent, not-for-profit project written and published in Vancouver Canada by Ann Cameron.
Copyright 2009 Ann Cameron.