MKG127 is pleased to present Indigenous History in Colour, an exhibition of works by Luke Parnell.
The exhibition Indigenous History in Colour features two new works and a series of seven paintings. The print Bear Mother (2019) was created to commemorate National Indigenous Peoples Day and draws on Parnell’s own familiar colour palettes as well as ones taken from movie stills and comic books. “Re-Contextualizing the De-Consecrated” (2014) is a series of seven paintings that analyze the exhibition history of Northwest Coast art through an artistic rather than an academic perspective by studying curatorial statements from past exhibitions. All of the works in this series are either inspired by these statements or by objects featured in the exhibitions. Each painting is paired with a surrealist poem created by Parnell that appropriates the original exhibitions texts and critical writing about the exhibitions. This series explores how the historiography and exhibition history of Northwest Coast art has changed since the Vancouver Art Gallery’s exhibition Arts of the Raven in 1967, where it was first acknowledged as “art” within the Western tradition, and Beat Nation, an exhibition curated by and for Indigenous peoples in 2012 organized and circulated across Canada by the Vancouver Art Gallery.
The largest work in the exhibition is Neon Reconciliation Explosion (2020), a collaborative installation work. It was started in 2018 as a participatory work where Parnell designed a wooden panel shaped like the front of a house and drew on it a butterfly design. This piece is made of 44 different panels which were shared amongst 55 community members. This participatory artwork asked for volunteers to reflect on their personal understanding of reconciliation and paint the panel. The bottom centre panel was created by Parnell and reflects his own disappointment with calls for reconciliation and the stories of Colten Boushie and Tina Fontaine. A circle in Parnell’s panel is left hollow, revealing the material underneath the surface of the work, marked by carvings of the initials CB and TF in memory of Boushie and Fontaine. This work demands a critical engagement with ideas of reconciliation, asking for us to look beyond the surface and into the lived realities of Indigenous people in this place we now call Canada.
Luke Parnell is Wilp Laxgiik Nisga’a from Gingolx on his mother’s side and Haida from Massett on his Father’s side. His training has involved a traditional apprenticeship with a Master Northwest Coast Indigenous carver, a BFA from OCAD, and an MAA from ECUAD. His artistic practice explores the relationship between Northwest Coast Indigenous oral histories and Northwest Coast Indigenous art, with a focus on transformation narratives. With an understanding of visual language as a material expression related to experience, Parnell’s artworks contain traditional and contemporary symbols, where meaning is related to the materials, methods, forms, and context of the works. Parnell’s work has been exhibited at the MacLaren Art Centre (2011), the National Gallery of Canada (2014), the Biennial of Contemporary Native Art in Montreal (2016), the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (2018), and more. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre and the International Cervantino Festival.
The exhibition continues until August 22, 2020
Due to the pandemic, we ask that visitors wear masks and adhere to social distancing while in the gallery. We will be limiting the number of people in the gallery at the same time. The gallery’s restroom is not open to the public. If you are feeling unwell, or are exhibiting any symptoms of Covid-19, please refrain from visiting the gallery. Thank you for your cooperation.
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