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PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, June 1, 2004
Arctic Visions
Inuit Drawings from Northern Canada
JULY 24-AUGUST 30, 2004
Vancouver, BC - Contemporary
Inuit artists have been making drawings in the Canadian
Arctic since at least the early 1960s. But while these
works have not gone unnoticed, they have usually received
less attention than sculptures and prints produced during
the same period.
This summer the Marion Scott
Gallery plays host to Arctic Visions: Inuit Drawings
from Northern Canada, the first exhibition in nearly
two decades to provide a broad examination of this important
yet often overlooked form. Consisting of bodies of work
by six artists from three different regions, and containing
over 100 images dating from the 1970s to the present,
the exhibition captures the rich diversity of Inuit
drawing while bringing focused attention to the featured
artists, arguably the foremost in this field.
Created mostly with coloured
pencils on paper, the works cover a wide range of styles
and thematic concerns. Nick Sikkuark of Kugaaruk employs
a mainly realistic style to create fantastical landscapes
containing supernatural figures. By contrast, Baker
Lake’s Francoise Oklaga has a less refined, gestural
technique suited to her transformational imagery, while
Janet Kigusiuq from the same community combines otherworldly
elements with everyday reality in highly controlled
compositions. Among the works from Cape Dorset, the
wildlife images of Kananginak Pootoogook are the most
naturalistic in terms of both technique and subject
matter, while the enigmatic designs of Sheojuk Etidlooie
resemble modernist abstractions. The brightly coloured
bird-filled images of Lucy Qinnuayuak, the third artist
from Cape Dorset, are instead genuinely whimsical.
At a time of renewed interest
in the art of drawing generally, Arctic Visions brings
to light an important dimension of northern artistic
expression, through images that are both aesthetically
stimulating and rich in cultural content.
For more information, please
call Robert Kardosh at 604-685-1934
481 Howe Street,Vancouver, BC, Canada V6C 2X6 •
Tel: 604.685.1934 • Fax: 604.685.1890
art@marionscottgallery.com
• www.marionscottgallery.com |
