- May 14, 2010 to June 26, 2010
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Merritt Johnson's new work at grunt gallery investigates perceptions of division and confluence where land and sky meet. Johnson's work both constructs and dissolves the landscape, concrete and imagined, measuring the absurdity of boundaries, borders and territories. Referencing mapping, her work also surveys sky by layering, revealing and inverting ideas of earth and sky, Johnson reveals information encoded not in GPS systems but in indigenous knowledge.
By Merritt Johnson - Curated by Tania Willard
curator | 5 Programs
Curators Tania Willard- April 21, 2009 to June 6, 2009
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"Native graffiti art, Indigenized iPods@, Inuit break dancing, Indigenous language hip hop and video, Indian bling and urban wear: the roots of hip hop culture and music have been transformed by Indigenous vultures and identities into new forms of visual culture and music that echo the realities of Aboriginal people. Beat Nation is about music, it's about art, and it's about the spirit of us as Indigenous peoples and cultures." - Tania Willard
By Bracken Hanuse Corlett, Corey Bulpitt, Enpaauk Andrew Dexel, Kevin Burton, Madeskimo, Morgan, Nicholas Galanin, Shadae, Sonny Assu - Curated by Skeena Reece, Tania Willard
Beat Nation
- July 5, 2012 to August 4, 2012
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BLIZZARD: Emerging Northern Artists looks at indigenous artists working in the North who are using their traditions to forge new ideas around contemporary art. The exhibition and publication, in development for over two years, looks at the influence of Inuit and Northern traditional art forms and how these are translated by a younger generation of artists whose roots are in the North. How does the landscape and context of the North influence the visions of its young artists and how do our interpretations of that dreaming - our preconceptions about the North - influence our understanding? Curated by Artist/Curator Tania Willard, BLIZZARD looks at a younger generation of Northern Artists breaking barriers by questioning relationships that tie North and South.
By Geronimo Inutiq, Jamasie Pitseolak, Nicholas Galanin, Tanya Lukin Linklater - Curated by Tania Willard
Blizzard: Emerging Northern Artists
- October 28, 2016 to December 10, 2016
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CALL To support the work of Indigenous North American women and artists through local art commissions that incite dialogue and catalyze action between individuals, communities, territories, and institutions. To stand together across sovereign territories as accomplices in awakened solidarity with all our relations both human and non. RESPONSE To ground art in responsible action, value lived experience, and demonstrate ongoing commitment to accountability and community building. To respond to re/concilliation as a present day negotiation and reconstruction of communities in the aftermath of colonial trauma. callresponseart.ca
By Cheryl L'hirondelle, Christi Belcourt, Esther Neff, Isaac Murdoch, IV Castellanos, Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory, Marcia Crosby, Maria Hupfield, Tania Willard, Tanya Tagaq, Ursula Johnson - Curated by Maria Hupfield, Tania Willard, Tarah Hogue
#callresponse
- June 9, 2017 to July 29, 2017
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“Ungalaq” is an Inuvialuktun word for the west wind. When the west wind comes up, tides rise and as the earth softens, things that are staked to the ground pull lose. Suddenly untethered, dogs run free and smoke houses drift up the beach. It is a period of unpredictability and, ultimately, of re-formation. Drawing from five bodies of work, this solo exhibition will be the most extensive mounting of Gruben’s work to date. Currently a Victoria based artist, Gruben has developed a strong aesthetic and practice of working with materials linked to her home in the Inuvialuit hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk in the North West Territories and to the Coast Salish territories of Vancouver Island. Her aesthetic practice can be seen as rippling outward from the land itself. She delves deeply into broad issues like climate change in a way that is both eloquent and pared down, pushing viewers to extend their own process of thought and interpretation, and allowing them to feel their way through each gesture of weaving, tufting, encasing, and assembling in her material process. As an Inuvialuit artist her exploration of Indigenous materials variously includes polar bear fur, seal skin and whale intestines in combination with anodized aluminum, pvc, wool and other materials associated with industry. These substances do not function in binary structure of opposing traditional and industrial materiality. Rather, Gruben’s material sense reverberates throughout her choices, conceptually linking her experiences of home to ways in which materials are reused, re-appropriated and reimagined.
By Maureen Gruben - Curated by Kyra Kordoski, Tania Willard