The Art of Nick Sikkuark
Sculpture and Drawings
Over the course of a career spanning more than three decades,
Netsilik artist Nick Sikkuark has produced some of the most original
and inventive sculptures ever to come out of the Canadian North.
Now in his early sixties, Sikkuark stands as the pre-eminent artist
in the central Arctic region known as the Kitikmeot, an area renowned
for its expressive and highly imaginative art.
This small but valuable, beautifully illustrated publication is
the first to focus solely on Sikkuark’s art. Published to
accompany an exhibition at the Marion Scott Gallery in May 2003,
The Art of Nick Sikkuark features sculpture produced within the
last two to three years, many representing fantastical shamans.
Constructed from organic materials such as whalebone, sinew, caribou
antler and musk-ox hair, the resulting images are nonetheless rather
literal in their style when compared to the artist’s more
bizarre mixed media assemblages of the 1980s and early 90s.
In a further departure from the recent past, the catalogue also
contains a selection of new drawings, the first Sikkuark has made
in nearly thirty years. Richly coloured and accompanied by short,
sometimes humorous captions, these latest works on paper provide
a fascinating new view of the artist and his culture.
In an introductory essay, curator Robert Kardosh offers an interpretation
of both Sikkuark’s remarkable life and his equally remarkable
art, and of the relation between them. Kardosh’s sensitive
discussion of the works helps put them in their art-historical and
cultural contexts, while serving as a useful guide to the exhibition.
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