Sháman’stut: Aboriginal Student Exhibition

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February 16th – 27th
Mid exhibition celebration – Wednesday, February 21st 4:30pm

Sháman’stut (Shaw-men-tsote) comes from the Squamish language and bears a dual meaning; to rise to the surface and to be able to heal or fix one’s self and others. Rise to the surface references how art comes to be actualized and subject matter explored. To be able to heal or  fix one’s self and others speaks to the function art in conveying meaning to viewers and the healing process that happens within the artist in actualizing their work. In broader terms it is the process by which something moves and
becomes visible.
Emily Carr University is situated on unceded, traditional and ancestral xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territories. As the inaugural and annual Indigenous student exhibition at the Great Northern Way campus, Sháman̓stut seeks to reify our relationship to place.

Curators: Nicole Preissl, Lacie Burning, M V Williams, Veronica R Waechter Danes

Final Poster for show AGP 2018 feb 6th

Scháyilhen Visual Arts Exhibition

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Salmon Going Up River (Scháyilhen) immediately invokes a sense of urgency, of struggle, of passion. Questions arise: is it about the journey, the destination, the mission, or is the motive of greatest significance? Is failure an option?

Twelve Indigenous artists have been gathered to address the notion of Salmon Going Up River. From Danielle Bobier’s inorganic grid-lines and circular pools evocative of the built environment in Catchment Area (2017) routed from salvaged mahogany plywood; to Shain Jackson’s twenty-foot natural and painted red cedar with abalone inlay Legacy salmon sculpture; and collections of found objects as in Jay Haven’s Bargain Hunter made from bags gathered from retail stores on reserves throughout British Columbia—themes and stories begin to unravel.
Within a climate of reconciliation, the metaphor of Salmon Going Up River speaks about remembering, of going home—it’s about the future and of survival. It is directional, of going forward by way of the past. Yet, the past at best serves as a guidepost. The journey is arduous and painful, fraught with seemingly impossible barriers demanding multiple attempts to overcome—bruises and battle scars added at each rung. Fight we must, but with each other? Is the river and its many obstacles not battle enough?
There are resting pools along the way—so easy to linger; to set up residence. Complacency threatens. And so the conversation begins.

Richard Heikkilä-Sawan exhibition curator, Talking Stick Festival 2018

Artists:

Danielle Bobier | Destanie Clayton | Brenda Crabtree | Jay Havens | Shain Jackson |  Maynard Johnny | Cheyenne Rain LeGrande ᑭᒥᐊᐧᐣ | Corey Moraes | Kajola Morewood |
Lou-ann Neel | Levi Nelson | Michelle Sound

Dates & Time:
Opening & Reception: February 14, 2018 @ 7pm
Exhibition: February 14-24, 2018, 10am – 10pm
Location:
Roundhouse Performance Centre (181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver, BC V6Z 2W3)

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Maureen Gruben QULLIQ: In Darkness, Light

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Maureen Gruben
QULLIQ: In Darkness, Light

2 February to 15 April 2018
Opening Reception Thursday, Feb 1 at 7:30 pm
Artist walk-through Friday, Feb 2 at 12:00 pm

The Libby Leshgold Gallery is pleased to present QULLIQ: In Darkness, Light, a solo exhibition of new work by Maureen Gruben. The qulliq is a traditional oil lamp that was once the heart of the home. It was used to heat, to cook and to bring continuous light during the darkness of the Arctic winter. The new work included in this exhibition explores notions of light and transparency related to the light of the oil lamp as well as the translucence of ice.

Gruben forges critical links between threatened Arctic lands and communities, and international environmental and human conditions through disassembling and re-forming polar bear fur, moose hides, seal skins, gathered kelp. In her work, abstraction of form sits in active tension with the acutely ‘real’ presence of her geographically and culturally embedded mediums.

Gruben spent much of her childhood sewing with her mother, who was a seamstress, and trapping with her father. She has a tacit knowledge of Arctic land and the rich but increasingly precarious resources it offers. Frequently addressing themes such as Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), melting ice, and the rights of indigenous hunters to maintain their way of life, Gruben’s practice is permeated with activism while at the same time allowing generous room for her materials themselves to speak. While referring explicitly inwards to localised acts of hunting, gathering, communal preparation and sharing—and even to individual animals—her work, equally, extends decisively outwards, exploring new visual languages that offer compelling and often urgent global associations.

Maureen Gruben is based in Victoria, BC and Tuktoyaktuk, NWT. She was born in Tuktoyaktuk and studied at Kelowna Okanagan College of Fine Arts (Diploma in Fine Arts, 1990), the Enʼowkin Centre in Penticton (Diploma in Fine Arts and Creative Writing, 2000 and Certificate in Indigenous Political Development & Leadership, 2001), and University of Victoria (BFA, 2012). She has been recognized by Kelownaʼs En’owkin Centre with both their Eliza Jane Maracle Award (1998/99) and their Overall Achievement Award (1999/2000). In 2011 she was awarded the Elizabeth Valentine Prangnell Scholarship Award from the University of Victoria. Gruben has most recently exhibited in the group shows Blink at University of Victoria (2012) and Custom Made at Kamloops Art Gallery (2015), 150 Acts: Art, Activism, Impact at Art Gallery of Guelph (2017-18), and as part of Landmarks/Reperes2017; her first solo show, UNGALAQ (When Stakes Come Loose) opened at Vancouver’s grunt gallery in 2017.

Lacie Burning artist talk

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Spark Artist Talks is an informal lunchtime artist talk series hosted by grunt gallery in the Native Education College longhouse on the third Thursday of each month. This event features emerging Indigenous artists with diverse practices ranging from animation to street art, spoken word to sculpture. Bring your bagged lunch or grab some home cookin’ from the NEC’s canteen and join the fireside conversation about what inspires artists.

Artist Biography:
Lacie Burning is a Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) and Onondaga (patrilineally) artist and curator raised on the Six Nations of the Grand River located in Southern Ontario. They work in photography, video, installation, and sculpture and are currently in their third year of studies in the Visual Fine Arts program at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Having come from a culturally and politically grounded upbringing, their work focuses on politics of Indigeneity and identity from a Haudenosaunee perspective.
https://burning.live/

Thursday, January 18 at 12:15 PM – 1 PM
Native Education College
285 East 5th Avenue, Vancouver, British Columbia V5T 1H2

Land/Body/Reciprocity 
Smashing the mirror to call our bodies home
by Lacie Burning and Lindsay Nixon in Canadian Art Magazine.

ECU Community Talking Circle

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Tuesday, January 23, 2018 – 11:30am – 12:30pm

Aboriginal Gathering Place | Room C2290, 2nd floor

Join us and share your experiences now that we’ve wrapped up the first semester in our new home.

The Aboriginal Gathering Place is hosting a Community Talking Circle with guests Ron Burnett and Bonne Zabolotney. This is an opportunity to learn from our shared past and move forward to a renewed future.

Squamish cultural leader Gene Harry will welcome everyone and Laura Lee Way Laq will facilitate the Talking Circle.

MOA: Fabric of Our Land: Salish Weaving

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Sunday November 19
Free admission 12 – 5 p.m.
Remarks and presentations 1:15 p.m.
Join the event on Facebook

Musqueam and the Museum of Anthropology invite you to celebrate the opening of The Fabric of Our Land, an exhibit that will take you on a journey of over 200 years of Salish weaving.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see some of the earliest Salish hand-woven blankets in existence. On loan from museums in Europe and the United States, these stunning weavings will give visitors an up-close view of rare Salish designs that we hope inspire you to learn more about the rich histories of this cultural practice.

This exhibit seeks to support contemporary weavers engaged in the ongoing revitalization of Salish weaving. Throughout the duration of the exhibit, visitors will have opportunities to experience weaving by trying it themselves. This exhibit will be on view in MOA’s Audain Gallery from November 19 2017 to April 15 2018.

$2 PARKING: Use coupon code FABRIC at the pay station from 12 p.m. onward.

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Mark Igloliorte: sightlines and surfaces

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In preparation for several major projects this fall, boundary pushing Vancouver-based painter Mark Igliolorte discusses his ongoing research into the Indigenous origins of the kayak, the beauty in shifting perspectives and collapsing the vast distance between coasts. Through the careful observation of sightlines and surfaces, Igliolorte’s art makes visible the latent Indigeneity of skateboards and kayaks in his ongoing and lived practice that reframes cultural histories and sense of place.

Read full article here : http://iaq.inuitartfoundation.org/29-3-sightlines-and-surfaces/

IMG_2198-CMYK-398x530Mark Igloliorte MyYellow Aquanaut 17’ 7” (View with artist standing on skateboard), 2016, Cut grippe on skateboard deck. Photo courtesy the artist.

Cover image: Temporary Studio, 2016, Aboriginal Gathering Place – Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Photo courtesy the artist.

Shuvinai Ashoona

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Aboriginal Gathering Place Speaker Series

We are very pleased to present artist  Shuvinai Ashoona!
Aboriginal Gathering Place Speaker Series
Join us at the AGP on Wednesday October 11, 2:30-3:30pm.

Shuvinai Ashoona was born in 1961 in Cape Dorset on Baffin Island. She is the daughter of the well-known sculptor Kiawak Ashoona and granddaughter of the late Pitseolak Ashoona, the great graphic artist. Her own career started in the mid-1990s when she began making drawings for the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative. Often startlingly different from other Cape Dorset graphic expression, her works have not always been readily accepted by collectors of Inuit art. Nevertheless, in recent years Ashoona’s reputation as a contemporary artist has steadily grown.

Ashoona’s first works were small monochromatic ink drawings depicting the land. Many of these works show receding expanses of rocky tundra with sparse vegetation; streams run over the land in some images, often turning into small waterfalls. Although a few works show a horizon, the majority look down upon the landscape from a nearly aerial, closed off perspective. Atmospheric and delicately detailed, these early drawings are often characterized by a subtle eeriness.

In the late 1990s, Ashoona’s images became less naturalistic and darker in mood. Works based more on imagination than on observation of the physical world started to appear, suggesting a strong inner vision. Many drawings from this period portray subterrnean caverns littered with boulders and spanned by twisting formations. Darkened or illuminated tunnels also appear frequently, as do step- and shelf-like forms. These psychologically charged works are densely and sometimes obsessively drawn. Recently, Ashoona has started to use a range of colour in her images, depicting people and common objects but in her own unique vision, often including textual commentary. While lighter in mood, these works remain obliquely representational in a manner distinctly hers.

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