JANE ASH POITRAS, MJ BELCOURT MOSES, LAUREN CRAZYBULL, TANYA HARNETT, GEORGE LITTLE CHILD, DWAYNE MARTINEAU, CONOR MCNALLY, LANA WHISKEYJACK
amiskwacîwâskahikan
September 30, 2020 to November 28, 2020
Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre, 10124 96 Street, Edmonton AB
Visit the show online at amiskwaciwaskahikan.ca
Image courtesy of Dwayne Martineau
Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre’s inaugural exhibition, amiskwacîwâskahikan, features works by eight artists who reside in or hold a strong connection to Edmonton, Alberta. Rooted in family, land, and narrative, the artworks exhibited span across different mediums, time, and are anchored by generations of exploration, personal experiences and collective knowledge.
amiskwacîwâskahikan known by generations of Indigenous peoples as a gathering place, becomes the foundation for the exhibition; a gathering of individual narratives that create a collective lift of layered dialogues and unique perspectives of indigeneity local to this territory.
Featuring works by: Jane Ash Poitras, MJ Belcourt Moses, Lauren Crazybull, Tanya Harnett, George Littlechild, Dwayne Martineau, Conor McNally, Lana Whiskeyjack
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Exhibition run: September 30, 2020 to November 28, 2020
Gallery Hours: Wednesday to Saturday 12:30 to 4 pm by appointment only. Click here to book, max. 6 people per group visit.
Cost: Free. Masks required.
Accessibility notes: Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre is barrier-free and is equipped with a lift to reach upper floors and lower floor gallery. ETS stops at 96 Street and Jasper (routes 2, 5, 88, 120, 308, 309), 97 Street and Jasper Avenue (3, 14, 100, 109, 161, 162). Paid city street parking and paid Impark lots available.
Ociciwan would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Edmonton Art Council.
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Jane Ash Poitras, painter, printmaker, writer (b at Fort Chipeywan, Alta 1951). She received a BSc from the University of Alberta in 1977, attended a program in printmaking and drawing at Yale University in 1982 and received her BFA in Printmaking from U of A's Department of Art and Design in 1983. She graduated with an MFA in Printmaking from Columbia University, School of Painting and Sculpture in 1985.
Following Poitras's initial concentration on etchings reflecting her scientific background, the confidence and self-insight derived from her experience at Columbia U transformed her work. Inspired by the colour theories of Hans Hofmann, Kandinsky and others, she began introducing pan-Indian references into highly expressionistic paintings. Poitras's mature works combine an awareness of contemporary trends in Western art with insight into native history and culture. Recent works often contain text and photographic images which serve to underline her strong sense of Cree heritage and her active participation in mainstream contemporary culture through her art, writing and teaching.
Melissa-Jo Belcourt (MJ) comes from a rich Métis ancestry and possesses a wealth of cultural skills, acquired from Métis and First Nation Elders and Knowledge Holders throughout northern and central Alberta. Her passion lies in her cultural heritage where she continues to research to find better understanding of her ancestral legacy she follows. As a certified instructor, she has taught decorative arts and creative skills within Indigenous cultural art programs and continues to support the community both aboriginal and non-aboriginal in facilitating workshops to teach both the history and traditional art skills. Recognized in November 2006 with the city of Edmonton Salute to Excellence Citation and Performance Award for representing Alberta at the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival by exhibiting and demonstrating her Metis roots in art. In 2009, MJ was awarded the Aboriginal Role Model of Alberta Art Award for her work as an Artisan and as a recognized cultural art instructor. On September 8th, 2018 through the initiative of Canadians for a Civil Society MJ received the Daughter of the Year award. Recently as of January 2019 MJ accepted the role as Edmonton’s Indigenous Artist in Residency.
Lauren Crazybull is an Edmonton-based Blackfoot, Dene painter. Through her work she means to explore the tension and power within portraiture by examining the subtle relationship between herself and the Indigenous folks she paints. For Lauren, visual art is a way of grappling with the complexities of a terrifying and beautiful world as an Indigenous person whose existential, emotional, physical and creative freedom depends upon the world's ability to expand its understanding of justice, humanity and decolonial love.In 2019, Lauren was appointed as Alberta’s first Artist in Residence.
Tanya Harnett is a member of the Carry-The-Kettle First Nations in Saskatchewan. She is an artist and a professor at the University of Alberta in a joint appointment in the Department of Art and Design and the Faculty of Native Studies. She has previously taught at both University of Lethbridge and Grant MacEwan University. Working in various media including, photography, drawing, printmaking and fiber, Harnett’s studio practice engages in the notions and politics of identity, history, spirituality and place. She has exhibited regionally, nationally and internationally. Some of her exhibitions include; persona grata at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (2007), Tracing Histories: Presenting the Unpresentable at the Glenbow Museum (2008), Wilderness is our wisdom… AFA TREX traveling exhibition (2011), Satoya Mani Win, RMIT Project Space, Melbourne (2011), The New World and The End of Language, MODEM Centre for Modern and Contemporary Arts, Hungary (2013) and the solo exhibition Scarred/Sacred Waters (2014) exhibited at both the University of Aberdeen, Scotland and at Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum, UK. Harnett is the recipient of various grants such as; the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and Canada Council for the Arts. She is included in collections such as; the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Glenbow Museum, the Puskin Museum of Fine Arts in Moskow, RMIT in Melbourne and the Aboriginal Art Centre at the Department of Aboriginal and Northern Development Canada in Ottawa. Harnett is an avid community supporter for Contemporary Aboriginal Artists. She participated in the creation of the University of Lethbridge BFA Native American Art (Studio) and the BFA Native American Art (Art History/Museum Studies) and she contributes writings on Aboriginal Contemporary Art to Canadian Art Magazine.
George Littlechild is Plains Cree, born in Alberta, Canada. In 1984 he received a diploma in art and design from Red Deer College and rose to commercial success after obtaining a B.F.A from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax in 1988. A survivor of the sixties scoop, he was raised in foster homes separated from his Cree community, his mixed-media paintings record his personal and family history, as well as, his reclamation and reconnection with his ancestral culture.
His work has been shown in many solo and group exhibitions across Canada and throughout the USA. His work is widely collected and has been featured in numerous publications. Most recently, George Littlechild solo show Sacred Honouring, Sacred Blessings was at Latimer Gallery in Vancouver, BC. In 2013, George Littlechild received an honourary doctorate of Letters from Fraser University.
Dwayne Martineau is a visual artist, musician and composer living in Edmonton. Two preoccupations dominate his work— the physicality of light, and experimental landscape photography. Using optics, found glass, mirrors and multiple exposures, Martineau introduces distortions, symmetries, and animism into exhaustive studies of forests and trees. His goal, as he describes it, is to use the unique power of photography to "give us a chance to see nature through a different lens, literally, and understand that it’s got its own thing going on..." Dwayne is a member of the Frog Lake First Nation, descended from a complex frontier mix of early French, Scottish and Irish settlers, Plains Cree, Métis, and Iroquois.
Conor McNally is a filmmaker based in amiskwaciy (Edmonton, Treaty 6). Bypassing formal film training, he creates works through a combination of instinct, and hands-on trial and error. Conor has made numerous short films to date, with his most recent being IIKAAKIIMAAT (2019). His films are distributed by Vtape and the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre.
Lana Whiskeyjack is a multidisciplinary artist from Saddle Lake Cree Nation, Treaty Six Territory, Alberta. She also holds a position as an assistant professor in the Faculty of Extension, University of Alberta. Her research, writing, and art explores the paradoxes of what it means to be ayisiyiniw ota asiskiy (a human being of this earth) in a Western culture and society, and, how she and other Indigenous women are reclaiming, re-gathering, and remembering their ancestral medicine (sacredness and power). Lana has been featured in a documentary (Beth Wishart MacKenzie, 2017) “Lana Gets Her Talk”