Artist
Biography
...
With a vision that is at once highly personal and
often politically subversive, Cape Dorset’s
Jutai Toonoo is a dynamic voice in contemporary Inuit
art and in Canadian art more generally. Born in 1959,
Toonoo belongs to the first generation of Inuit to
grow up in permanent year-round settlements as opposed
to small seasonal camps. He learned to carve by watching
his father, Toonoo Toonoo, a respected leader and
first-generation carver. Nevertheless, Jutai’s
work bears little resemblance to other Cape Dorset
sculpture, eschewing such standard subjects as wildlife
and mythological figures. He is perhaps best known
for his boldly formed sculptures of human heads,
which he renders as though lost in a kind of agitated
sleep. Many of Toonoo’s sculptures bear
witty or satirical inscriptions of text carved in
English directly onto the stone’s surface.
In recent years, he has become an active participant
in Cape Dorset Co-op’s drawing and printmaking
program, producing a series of drawings of human
heads and portraits in a semi-abstract style that
combines a haunted expressionism with cartoon-like
renderings.
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Selected
Press
...
VANCOUVER SUN
GEORGIA
STRAIGHT
Gallery Exhibitions
Public Collections
...
Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, ON)
National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON)
Selected References
...
Robin
Laurence, "Inuit Prints: Japanese Inspiration and Sweet
Innovation," Border Crossings, vol. 30 no.
4, pp. 96 - 97.
...
Michelle Lewin, “Breaking Ground:
Oil Stick Drawing from Cape Dorset,” Inuit
Art Quarterly, Vol.24, No. 1,
Spring 2009
...
Brian Lynch, “A carve above the
rest,” The Globe and Mail,
August 19, 2005
Gallery Information
...
MARION
SCOTT GALLERY
2423 GRANVILLE STREET
VANCOUVER, BC CANADA V6H 3G5
TEL: 604.685.1934
FAX: 604.685.1890
ART@MARIONSCOTTGALLERY.COM |
