We were on the same side, cheering for the same team
National Aboriginal Day today, in Canada, for one last time. This morning Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that from here on in, the name will change to National Indigenous Peoples Day. Either way (on any day), Jim Logan’s work deserves your attention. If you’re in Ottawa or Gatineau any time this summer, his powerful 1991 suite of seven “National Pastimes” paintings are on display as part of the Canadian Museum of History’s “Hockey” exhibition. The largest of the canvasses (above) depicts an ostensibly serene and all-Canadian winter scene in an interior British Columbia reserve town while the six smaller works that accompany it frame a series of close-ups. Attention to detail is worth paying: off the ice in the main canvas, away from the heedless joy of the afternoon’s shinny, it’s a panorama of pain and danger. A couple brawls in the snow. A suicide hangs from a swing-set. In “Father Image 1,” a stern-faced white priest makes his claim on a trio of grim, stoical boys. It’s also personal: in the window at the bottom of the (main) frame, a father and son watch TV together.
Story Link
Resilience
I named this exhibition “Resilience” because that word defines what I have witnessed after forty years of painting. A lot has changed over that 40 years - a lot has improved for many communities but the social realisms such outdated infrastructure and poverty are still prevalent in many Indigenous communities. This collection of work touches on the definition of that word - the importance of holding on to traditional knowledge, the challenges we must endure regarding climate change, inherited poverty, surviving colonial and intergenerational trauma and thoughts of leaving it all behind to find something better. Resilience is about surviving and perseverance, about standing strong and proud despite what history has thrown at you.
At the Bearclaw Gallery in Edmonton from October 19-November 2 2024
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Breaclaw Gallery
Kamamsk Iskwesis / The Butterfly Girl
The Survivors
HIs Useless Old Car