YK arts organization wants Toronto show to create national connections

An NWT exhibit at Art Toronto from October 29 to November 1 puts eight northern artists and the vibrancy of northern living in the spotlight.

Laura Hodgins, the Yellowknife Artist-Run Community Centre’s president and one of the artists involved, described Art Toronto as one of the largest commercial art fairs in Canada.

The exhibit, titled Spruce Tips, is about “budding northern artists and the new bright green freshness that the spring brings,” Hodgins said.

Hodgins said this is the first time the Yellowknife organization has brought artists to the Toronto fair, with the goal of introducing NWT art to a wider audience.

YKARCC is one of 15 arts and cultural institutions attending alongside the likes of the National Gallery of Canada, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and Art Canada Institute.

Hodgins said Art Toronto is often where major galleries acquire artwork for the year.

“Hopefully we’ll make some really good connections and there’ll be some curators who are interested in the work,” said Hodgins.

Melaw Nakehk’o, a multidisciplinary Dene and Dënesųłiné artist featured in Spruce Tips, said “it’s a big deal” for northern artists to be at large art events.

“I think it’s really important to be able to show our art in these contemporary art spaces,” said Nakehk’o.

She said the North is still building its contemporary art community, but Art Toronto offers the opportunity to network and build professional relationships with galleries and art spaces across Canada.

Nakehk’o’s work, Shapeshift, features sculptures in human and caribou forms made with tanned caribou hide and beadwork.

She said the piece represents the human relationship with caribou, a spiritual or liminal space, and an imbalance of the human relationship with the environment.

Hana Steinwand is a Tłı̨chǫ Dene artist whose main discipline is painting and drawing and who taught herself to bead at university. In Toronto, she is displaying her first art piece to include beading.

Called I Dream of Medicine, it was completed in her last year of university and incorporates ideas of beading being healing because it focuses on movement and work rather than being in your head.

Steinwand said her art is abstract, rebellious, and inspired by the NWT landscape and animals.

“I found when I was away in university, I actually felt quite displaced,” she said.

“If you’ve ever been to British Columbia, the trees are huge. We don’t have trees like that here. They have the ocean, they have deserts and things that were just very unfamiliar to me.

“I find in my practice a lot of the things I am drawn to is just familiarity to the landscape that I grew up in.”

Steinwand said she’s hoping the art fair will give her a push to make more art pieces and participate in new projects.

Cheryl Fennell, doomkitsch, Lauren Pelc-McArthur, Maura Meng and Mike Mitchell are the other artists featured in the Spruce Tips exhibit. YKARCC vice-president Mary Buckland curated it.

The pieces “present detailed and esoteric reflections of the world and the North’s place in it,” a YKARCC news release stated, “wielding humour as well as deeply thoughtful understandings of social, political, economic and environmental contexts.”