Eyes of Society
A Regionalist Perspective
Maritime Museum of British Columbia, Victoria BC
september 5 - november 30, 2019
Participating artists: April SGaana Jaad White, Sophie Lavoie, Anja Karisik, Gary Landon, W. David Ward, and Andrew Cheddie Sookrah
This exhibition presents a series of new 'perspectives' in an on-going, cross-cultural collaboration, exploring the relationship between art and traditional knowledge, and the belief 'that nature and culture are intrinsically connected', to quote the Coastal Guardian Watchmen. These ideas of interconnectedness and co-dependence, on all levels, are reoccurring themes in the works of this collective of realist painters from across Canada. Perhaps no one (in this world) can claim to have a closer relationship to what is real than those who live closest to the earth and ocean.
A WORLD WITHIN
PAINTINGS & DRAWINGS BY CIBA & ANJA KARISIK
Wychwood barns, JUNE 2019
“A WORLD WITHIN is an exhibition celebrating the tenets of tradition, continuity, apprenticeship, and the transmission of knowledge and craft from one generation to the next. It also honours individual points of inspiration, reflecting the sacred world within each artist. We invite you to join us on Father’s Day weekend at The Peter MacKendrick Community Gallery for this special showing of paintings and drawings, and catch a glimpse of the world within our shared studio.”
Eyes of Society: Art, Traditional Knowledge, and the Watchmen of Haida Gwaii
the robert BATEMAN CENTRE, VICTORIA BC
Eyes of Society: Art, Traditional Knowledge, and the Watchmen of Haida Gwaii, is a collection of over thirty works of art by ten Haida and non-indigenous artists. Coming from different regional and cultural backgrounds in Canada, all the artists explore the meaning of ‘sense of place’ on the islands of Haida Gwaii through their own artistic traditions. Through their art, language and beliefs, they investigate the notion that artists, traditionally, have been the “eyes of society.”
Eyes of Society features the artwork of April White, Anja Karisik, Sophie Lavoie, Jim Hart, Gwaai Edenshaw, Jaalen Edenshaw, Gary Landon, Andrew Sookrah, W. David Ward, and Robert Bateman. The exhibit will also feature the documentary Eyes of Society by Joe Crawford and Allison Smith of Braid Films.
“In Haida Gwaii, I learned that the greatest hope lies in rethinking how we perceive our relationship with the land and the myriad creatures, including ourselves, dependent on it for survival. We must care for it so that it can nourish us in reciprocity. After all, as the adage goes, we don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. My innate respect for tradition, as expressed in my painting, reflects this same idea: culture is a means for transmitting the accumulated knowledge of society to future generations. ”
HELICONIAN CLUB VISUAL
ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE 2017
“Beauty and proportion, a sense of stillness and lasting presence can be found in the most ordinary things. Whether painting vegetables, florals, or seashells, I look for the innate character of nature’s roots, structures, and relics. I breathe intimacy with the past without being overtly symbolic. My paintings are studies of balance, rhythm, and light. They are honest and quiet; a far cry from the passions and uncertainties of daily life. Still they are a part of life, or they point to how life could be: simple and undistracted.”
EXHIBITION DATES: June 3 -June 31, 2017
HELICONIAN CLUB TORONTO
