Winnipeg Art Gallery

Though it seems ages ago that I was in Winnipeg, it was just over a month and I am still thinking of that wonderful visit! As well as Inuit Sanaugangit: Art Across Time, which I posted about here, I also saw other exhibitions at The Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq. 

There was an exhibition of the 2023 Kenojuak Ashevak Memorial Award Shortlist Artists. All the shortlisted artists were female and all were Indigenous.  I particularly liked the work of Ningiukulu Teevee, though since they were behind glass it was very difficult to photograph them.

This is a detail of one, which gives a better idea of the texture in the drawing.

In a lobby area on the second floor, several large works by Ivan Eyre were displayed on the walls flanking the stairwell. Although Eyre was born and grew up in Saskatchewan, he moved to Winnipeg in the early 1950s and taught painting and drawing at the University of Manitoba for 33 years until he retired in 1992. Eyre died in 2022,

This is a detail of the previous large panoramic landscape.

In another gallery room were several installations by Faye Heavyshield. It is difficult to get a sense of her work in a small photograph but each of the floating pieces are human-size. Another wall installation, my favourite actually, was unphotographable in that each part of the whole needed to be examined and an overall picture would not give any sense of the work at all!

Other posts I made about my time in Winnipeg can be found here and here.

Indigenous Feminism

 The day after I arrived in Winnipeg, I attended a fabulous workshop/lecture Indigenous Feminisms through Visual Art at MAWA (Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art). Dr Suzanne McLeod led the group through an inspirational history of Indigenous feminism discussing both past and current work by Indigenous women artists. One of the contemporary artists discussed, KC Adams, who had a public sculpture at The Forks in Winnipeg and I took the opportunity to see it in person. 

Niimaamaa, the title of this collaborative piece, means “mother” in Cree, Ojibwe and Métis languages. It is an outline of a pregnant woman, apparently the first time this subject has been depicted in public sculpture in Canada. 

It is a mixed metal work representative of motherhood and Mother Earth. This sculpture is a collaboration between three Indigenous women: KC Adams, Jaimie Isaac and Val Vint.

Further along the pleasant walk at The Forks one comes across the sculpture Education is the New Bison by Val Vint. 

It is a mostly corten steel sculpture composed of “books”with laser-cut author names and titles that are important to Indigenous culture.

The bison is created from books written by Indigenous authors or allies.

Further along yet again, lies the inspirational corten steel piece by Jaimie Isaac The 8th and Final Fire. 

The tipi-shaped flame at the front continues as a series of echoes as one walks around the sculpture.

The plaque (in several languages, though I have only included the English words) gives a full explanation of the thinking behind the sculpture.

Inuit Sanauganit: Art Across Time

While I was in Winnipeg (Canada) recently, I went to The Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq to see the amazing exhibition Inuit Sanaugangit: Art Across Time. 

The huge exhibition included work by artists spanning from 200 BCE to now, so we decided to start in the smaller, top floor gallery and work our way down. There were a number of sculptures here and walking space around each, in order to view in three dimensions.

The mezzanine-like top floor gallery, allowed me to look down on the main gallery. This view shows only a portion, maybe a third, of what awaited!

The catalogue of work, names and years was far-ranging and included finely decorated weapons, such as this bolus

detailed drawings on horn bone

and utility items such as pipes. It also contained traditional textiles, such as clothing, and I enjoyed earwigging on a school tour to hear some stories and facts related to various works.

This is an enormous exhibition that encompasses Inuit art forms from 200 BCE to now, so it contained traditional older work as well as contemporary work by Inuit artists. 

The catalogue accompanying the exhibition was so huge that it was impossible for me to keep track of new vs old work and artist names.I was always glad of the careful spacing of sculptures, allowing the viewer to see it easily from all vantage points, especially larger ones, such as this, which changed so drastically from one side to the next.

The exhibition included sculpture, drawing, painting, textiles (tapestry and clothing) as well as printmaking. Having recently taken a Japanese woodblock printmaking course. which I blogged about here, I was delighted to see the woodblock displayed with the print allowing me to examine the registration marks and carving techniques. The woodblock carving itself being seen as an artform always makes me think of Canadian artist Paterson Ewen, whose paintings I greatly admire.