Unlimited Editions and Cultural Imprints

Unlimited Editions and Cultural Imprints Curated by Faith Brower and India Young, Cultural Printmaking also helps keep the culture imPRINT (April 22–August 20, 2017), a recent alive. Most houses in Indian communities exhibition of prints by Indigenous artists at the today have screen-prints by tribal artists on Tacoma Art Museum, was a visually stimulating yet their walls. Children grow up familiar with challenging experience. Artists from territories north images nearly forgotten by their parents. of the 49th parallel were well represented, and seeing —Bill Ellis, 1978 them outside of Canada was an opportunity to encounter them anew. There was a particular thrill in INDIGENOUS ARTISTS have worked in the discovering and immediately recognizing Musqueam medium of printmaking for over six decades artist Susan Point’s print Memory (2005), depicting in Canada, yet very little is written about their the metamorphosis of a frog, which Vancouver contributions from an art historical perspective. residents casually tread underfoot daily—the design Their absence from historical accounts of adorns several storm sewer covers in the city. printmaking in Canada became impossible for The most intriguing discovery was Underlying me to ignore during my curatorial residency at States (2014), one of a series of prints by the New the Kamloops Art Gallery in 2013–14, when I BC Indian Art and Welfare Society Collective. became further attuned to the work of artists Using the exquisite corpse technique of the Surrealist such as Chief Henry Speck (Udzi’stalis) movement, artists in the collective contributed to the (1908–1971). The desire to validate these artists’ print without knowing what the other had drawn. influence as contemporary artists and upon The aim of the exercise was to draw attention to broader perceptions of Indigenous arts sparked the art practices of each individual member. The what would become unlimited edition and, later, goal is very much at the heart of what the New the formation of the New BC Indian Arts and BC Indian Art and Welfare Society Collective Welfare Society Collective (more about this intends to do. Spearheaded by Tania Willard in shortly). This essay will explore how Indigenous partnership with other founding members Peter artists in Canada negotiated the integration of Morin and Gabrielle Hill, the collective emerged their prints in the tourist trade, gallery world in 2014 from Willard’s research on the history of and art market from the late 1940s to the early Northwest Coast prints. The collective focuses 2000s, avenues which came to shape public on land-based activations and contemporary art perceptions of Indigenous arts in North America. conversations within Indigenous territories. Amphora contacted Tania Willard to find out THE FORMATION OF “NATIVE ART” more. She generously provided the following essay, Prior to the 1940s, there was little formal adapted from her text for the catalogue of unlimited recognition of or effort to organize Indigenous edition, an exhibition she curated at the Kamloops artists. This was a time when federal legislation Art Gallery from January 17 to March 22, 2014, imposed severe constraints on Indigenous rights during her time as the gallery’s Aboriginal curator to free association, trade and other aspects of in residence. The original, fully annotated catalogue daily life that non-Indigenous artists took for is available online at http://bit.ly/2yIFWIq. granted. The limits began to lift with revision to the federal Indian Act in 1951, allowing for the —Peter Mitham, editor formal establishment of the British Columbia Indian Arts and Welfare Society that year by Alice Ravenhill.1 Prior to this, Ravenhill and Anthony Walsh, who taught at the Inkameep 3 Day School in the southern Okanagan from THE ADVENT OF SILKSCREEN IN 1932 to 1942, had established the Society for the NORTHWEST COAST FIRST NATIONS ART Furtherance of Indian Arts and Crafts in British Columbia in 1940.2 It was formally constituted In those early years, the printing was not good, the in 1942, the year Walsh left his teaching post, but paper cheap, the editions unlimited and unsigned. through the 1940s began to informally call itself —Hilary Stewart, 1979 the B.C. Indian Arts and Welfare Society (from 1973 until its dissolution in 1983, it operated as Edwin Hall, Margaret Blackman and Vincent the British Columbia Indian Arts Society). Rickard claimed in Northwest Coast Indian Among the society’s early projects drawing Graphics (University of Washington Press, attention to the work of Indigenous printmakers 1981) that Indigenous artists began producing was the publication of Walsh’s Native Designs silkscreen prints in response to appropriations of British Columbia (1948), credited as having of Northwest Coast First Nations motifs by the first known serigraph prints of historic non-Indigenous artists such as Charles Greul. Indigenous designs. These prints included a While commercially successful, these prints series of original colour silkscreens by non–First were undertaken without considering the Nations sign maker Ray Garside. The prints demand on First Nations artists to produce were based on various First Nations art forms, work representative of “true Northwest Coast including Kutanaxa basketry and Northwest Indian design.” And if the commercial success Coast ethnographic-sourced art that Walsh refer- of Greul’s mass-produced pieces was a model, ences in his book. While he was committed to First Nations artists also came under tutelage promoting First Nations art and its educational from critics such as Hilary Stewart, who focused and commercial potential, a paternalistic streak on “quality” and distinctions between “high” colours Walsh’s writing. Walsh valorizes what and “low” art, rather than assessing the work of he considers the “purity” of First Nations art Indigenous artists within their own contexts. as it existed pre-contact, and laments the pol- To understand the development of silkscreen luting influence of the tourist trade for which design in Northwest Coast First Nations art, Indigenous artists had begun to produce work. the early works on paper by artists such as At one point in his introduction he proclaims, Mungo Martin are helpful. Many of Martin’s “Unfortunately, during the last twenty-five years, works depict formal and conceptual elements the high standard of craftsmanship of [the past] specific to the Northwest Coast that would has fallen to a low level.” Walsh’s negative view influence other First Nations artists across the of the tourist trade coloured his ability to see province who wanted to re-examine examples contemporary First Nations art as an innovative from their families and communities that had response to the cultural, political and economic been suppressed by the residential school forces impacting First Nations artists. It’s system and other forms of colonial control. notable that Native Designs of British Columbia Soogwilis (1951) included some of the was published at a time when non-Indigenous earliest examples of Northwest Coast First artists such as Emily Carr and Walter J. Phillips Nations silkscreen prints in published form.3 were celebrated for their representations of The prints were based on drawings by a young First Nations village sites often devoid of their Kwakwaka’wakw boy from Fort Rupert, Charlie inhabitants—works that contributed to the George, who had been a patient at the hospital in notion of a “vanishing race” prior to the potlatch Bella Bella. George had given 33 colour drawings ban (introduced in 1884) and other restrictions to Richard Whitefield Large, a medical mis- being eased with Indian Act changes of 1951. sionary, and Large’s son, Richard Geddes Large, used these as the basis for the prints illustrating Soogwilis. Richard Geddes Large, a doctor like his father, was chair of the Prince Rupert school board when the book was published. 4 his foreword acknowledges the anthropologist Marius Barbeau (among others) for his insight and editing, he makes no mention of the “boy” who made the drawings or the community to which he belonged. Large instead describes the illustrations as “undoubtedly crude” but holding “value as ethnological data.” Three years beforeSoogwilis was published, Ellen Neel started to print silkscreened images of Kwakwaka’wakw designs onto silk scarves. Her grandfather was the important Kwakwaka’wakw carver Charlie James and her great-uncle was the aforementioned Martin. Her grandfather’s illustrative watercolours of Northwest Coast First Nations designs from the late 1920s almost certainly played a key role in Neel’s development as an artist. She would go on to create silkscreen designs for ties, placemats, tea sets as well as trade-size and full totem poles throughout the 1950s. Her designs were the first to be created by a First Nations artist solely for the medium of silkscreen. This is in contrast to the previous examples discussed, where First Nations designs were translated into print form by non–First Nations technicians. There was a great deal of debate taking place about the state of First Nations culture in Canada when Neel made her first silkscreen scarf. People such as Walsh and Richard Geddes Large claimed that the most valuable forms of Ellen Neel (Kwakwaka’wakw), Raven Scarf First Nations culture were from the past and Design, c. 1950s. Serigraph on silk, 74 x 73 cm. that contemporary First Nations culture was in Collection of University of Victoria decline. But artists such as Neel argued against Legacy Art Galleries. such a static view of their culture. She asserted, This idea is one of the greatest fallacies The prints inSoogwilis represent animals from where the art of my people is concerned. the natural and spiritual worlds such as eagles, For if our art is dead, then it is fit only to be whales, bears, thunderbirds and the sisiutl or mummified, packed into mortuary boxes two-headed serpent. Images of transformation and tucked away into museums.

Load more