[BCMA] CMA Clip Serv: Aboriginal curators - art from new perspective

[Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv.]

Good news - I look forward to seeing what they produce. 

 

No mention of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, which has had a contemporary Aboriginal art collection (and curators) for quite a while...

 

Nicholette Prince

Executive Director (interim)

Hli Goothl Wilp-Adokshl Nisga'a / Nisga'a Museum
250-633-3050

nisgaamuseum.ca

 

From: bcma-bounces at lists.vvv.com [mailto:bcma-bounces at lists.vvv.com] On Behalf Of Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv.
Sent: January 11, 2012 9:56 AM
To: bcma at lists.vvv.com
Subject: [BCMA] CMA Clip Serv: Aboriginal curators - art from new perspective

 

Aboriginal curators look at art from a new 

perspective 

Amy Smart, Victoria Times Colonist, Wednesday, January 11, 2012 

 

As the first recipients of the only aboriginal curatorial fellowship in Canada, France Trépanier and Chris Creighton-Kelly have high ambitions. 

 

The challenge: Reframe local art history without defining it solely through European culture. 

 

So how is it done? "The answer is, with difficulty," said Creighton- Kelly. "It's not an easy thing to change 500 years of ways of looking at things." 

 

The Audain Aboriginal Curatorial Fellowship, endowed to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria on what will be an annual basis, is intended to support B.C. First Nations curatorial work. For Here Now: Here Before, the duo plan to probe the connections between aboriginal artists and artists of colour on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands - beginning by interviewing everyone from elders to artists to historians. Of course, they can't erase the real historical influences of Europeans, either. 

 

"We're not working in a vacuum," said Trépanier. "History is history." 

 

While this is the first aboriginal curatorial fellowship in Canada, aboriginal curation itself is a burgeoning field. 

 

It may have come late in the game, but the National Gallery of Canada appointed its first curator of indigenous art, Steven Loft, in 2007. Other galleries across the country that have hosted aboriginal curator residencies include Winnipeg's Urban Shaman Gallery, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon and the Art Gallery of Hamilton. 

 

In Victoria, the Canada Council Aboriginal Curatorial Residency program saw Rose Spahan join the AGGV in 2010, and Peter Morin return to Open Space this year. His series, A Travelling Exhibition, cycles through 11 aboriginal artists over 11 months. 

 

"It is a new trend in the sense that aboriginal artists, in the past few decades, have started to say, 'You know what? It's great that mainstream institutions are including our work, but the story's always told from their perspective,'" said Trépanier, who is also a board member of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective at the Banff Centre. "So you have a bunch of very well-meaning and educated curators that didn't have, sometimes, the context or the cultural or historical perspective to understand the work." 

 

In an email interview from the United States, Morin said he based A Travelling Exhibition on knowledge passed down to him of earlier Tahltan generations travelling the land between Telegraph Creek and Iskut, B.C., from one reserve and another. Artists' work gradually "travels" to the gallery to join the show. 

 

"As a viewer you have to travel to the gallery over the entire period of 11 months in order to experience the entire exhibition," he wrote. 

 

The Tahltan curator is also blogging his indigenous curatorial practice. 

 

Aboriginal art, so long relegated to museums as "artifact" rather than "art," is now prevalent in many mainstream art institutions in the country. Trépanier said the mandate of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective, established in 2006, was to bring aboriginal voices into those institutions. 

 

"So that when we are telling the story and we are framing the discourse, we can do it in a way that is informed of those traditions," said Trépanier, who is of Kanien'kehaka (Mohawk) and French ancestry. 

 

AGGV director Jon Tupper played a key role in selecting Trépanier and Creighton-Kelly as recipients of the research fellowship. He saw it as an opportunity for the duo to expand on their recently published work, Understanding Aboriginal Art in Canada Today, commissioned by the Canada Council for the Arts. 

 

But even before that, when the Audain Foundation announced the endowment, Tupper consulted with aboriginal curators around the country to see what need the AGGV could fill. 

 

The feedback was clear: There is enough curatorial training and residencies available - given the shrinking market, and there are many qualified aboriginal curators who can't find permanent work. 

 

There are also many collectors and galleries promoting aboriginal artwork - including Victoria private collectors George and Christiane Smyth, who have donated and lent many of their Coast Salish contemporary pieces to universities across the country. But an area still in development is research and historical reconstruction that could clarify public understanding of contemporary aboriginal art. 

 

"There's a lot of curators now and there's kind of a change that's happening in terms of art history," he said. 

 

"Art historians are rewriting art history from an aboriginal perspective. And that was the feedback that I got - that was the area that needed support." 

 

Though the outcome may not be an exhibit or anything tangible in the gallery space - it will depend on where Creighton-Kelly and Trepanier's research takes them - Tupper said it falls into the gallery's mandate to support research and culture relating to visual arts. 

 

"This is a modest way that a small gallery off the West Coast of Canada can provide some sort of contribution to scholarship, and this is one way we can do it," he said. 

 

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