Next Year's Country
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NEXT YEAR’S COUNTRY Curated by Sandra Fraser, Curator (Collections) ARTISTS Kim Adams Grant Arnold Lorne Beug Raymond Boisjoly Eleanor Bond Randy Burton Victor Cicansky Dana Claxton Marlene Creates Wally Dion Joseph Fafard David Garneau Gregory Hardy Richard Holden Geoffrey James Brian Jungen William Kurelek Jean Paul Lemieux Mary Longman Tanya Lukin Linklater Ken Lum Lynne Marsh WC McCargar Fred Moulding Ann Newdigate Louise Noguchi Graeme Patterson Edward Poitras Richard E. Prince Allen Sapp Danny Singer David Thauberger Alex Wyse 102 Spadina Crescent East Saskatoon, SK, Canada, S7K 0L3 This text accompanies, Next Year’s Country, curated by Sandra Fraser, and presented at Remai Modern from February 1–October 12, 2020. © Remai Modern 2020 ISBN: 978-1-896359-93-9 Remai Modern is situated on Treaty 6 Territory and the Traditional Homeland of the Métis. We pay our respects to First Nations and Métis ancestors and reaffirm our relationship with one another. I want to express my thanks for the gracious teachings I have received from those who call Saskatchewan home. I am grateful for the opportunity to work with the collection at Remai Modern, my colleagues and the artists in the exhibition. I am indebted to the insights of many, especially artist Barbara Meneley, whose work deals critically with the settlement of the west, documented in Unsettling the Last Best West: Restorying Settler Imaginaries (2015), and of Tim Ingold’s book The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (2011). – Sandra Fraser NEXT YEAR’S COUNTRY introduction The title of this exhibition is a reference to Saskatchewan’s settler history. The expression originates from their experiences of learning to live and farm on what they considered to be a land of promise, even though neither success nor survival could be assured. The common refrain “next year things will be better” conveys both a tireless optimism and a struggle to belong. Such an attitude has shaped the province’s political, social, economic and cultural activities. However, it fails to address the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities and the displacement and assimilation associated with settlement. For settler and Indigenous people facing isolation, theft of territory, lack of resources, harsh weather, food shortages due to crop failure and the eradication of the bison, hope and persistence made the present more bearable and fuelled ambitions for a better tomorrow. Geography can create, and sometimes impose, the conditions for inter- relationships. Knowledge is acquired, bonds are established and communities are formed through the accumulated experiences of inhabiting a place. Next Year’s Country begins with Wally Dion’s Steel Star, which refers to the eight- pointed star blanket of Ojibwa culture. Traditionally gifted to acknowledge a significant event, star blankets are cherished objects. By creating a shiny surface of stainless steel, Dion’s NEXT YEAR’S COUNTRY work seems futuristic. The work is a critique of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people who attempt to keep traditions locked in the past as a sign of so-called authenticity, instead of embracing how culture evolves. Relationships and interactions constantly move, change, and shape one’s understanding of self in relation to the world. Next Year’s Country seeks to re-examine ideas of place, belonging and history through a wide range of Canadian artists in Remai Modern’s outstanding permanent collection. Some of the artists have deep roots in the Prairies, while others have been selected to convey similar experiences and offer a view of this region from a distance. The exhibition uses the historical Prairie perspective “next year things will be better” to frame an impulse to resist the present moment and the anxieties that accompany it. How might this impulse generate a desire to return to the past or to dream of the future? The exhibition considers ideas about collectivity and progress with an eye to current environmental, economic and political issues. Gallery A / MLT Aikins LLP Gallery grounding The feeling in the gallery is one of quiet melancholy, allowing the viewer to imagine the landscape as a site of reflection. Yet this space is not truly quiet; the works here offer a tangle of perceptions, connections, knowledge, loss and misunderstandings. The landscape’s surface is not inscribed through use, nor by its representations—instead, the landscape is already an accumulation of activity, a constant reimagining. As a viewer, we must always take a position or a point of view to encounter it. Some of the themes raised through the exhibition reflect lived experience on the land or critique the settlement of Canada by interogating institutional knowledge and how history is recorded. This section of the exhibition is anchored by three large landscape paintings, each offering a different perspective. Gregory Hardy’s immense drawing is a spare and sensitive, yet realistic depiction of the expansive grasslands in southern Saskatchewan, created by carefully looking at and being in that place. At the same time, it reinforces the Euro-Canadian mythos of Canada as an untouched wilderness and the Prairies as a terra nullius. In contrast, Edward Poitras tackles treaty rights and displacement that occurred around Last Mountain Lake, depicted almost like a map. The title, Optional Modification in Six Parts, refers to Bill C-79, which sought to change the Indian Act without the support of many Indigenous leaders. The bill failed due to the dissolution of Parliament in April 1997, and was not revisited. Poitras’ use of encaustic wax, screws and fragments of text point to the many layers of history and the complexity of moving forward. The monochromatic greys seem to suggest that this landscape cannot be understood in black- and-white. Eleanor Bond’s bird’s-eye view of the landscape conveys a sense of movement and the uncertainty of lacking a fixed or authoritative position. The unstretched canvas is painted in acidic oranges, greens and blues, dotted with buildings. What at first appears to be a graveyard is actually an airport or hangar with a runway. An accompanying audio track layers the invisible and anxious voices of three women sharing personal narratives with this site of arrivals and departures. Ann Newdigate challenges the use of women as currency in the transactions of colonization and settlement. One passage in her work reads: “Nor were the army officers who remained in the colony forgotten. They belonged to the gentleman class, and therefore a number of young ladies were sent out to suit their taste.” Newdigate draws these passages from the book, The Romance of Canada (1945), once used to teach elementary school students the history of Canada’s settlement. Text and image are woven together, referencing the Bayeux Tapestry, a famous textile that depicts the Norman conquest of England. Richard E. Prince’s work consists of four elements that the viewer must piece together. Wings etched on a sheet of glass and a piece of broken, sky-blue glass frame a barkless lilac branch and a stack of books. The titles of the books have been obscured and include The Works of Plato and Thomas Moore’s Utopia. Prince asks what can be salvaged from the past in literary and philosophical traditions that might still be relevant in the present, especially in the context of colonization and repression. Tanya Lukin-Linklater examines the lack of opportunities for Indigenous people to inform museum collections—from how objects are acquired to how, and by whom, they are interpreted. Reproductions of Inuit art sit alongside horsehair and seives used in archeological digs. This material juxtaposition resists any notion of Indigeneity as being buried in the past, while alluding to the careful work of piecing history back together. Lorne Beug created an object that is both a ceramic sculpture and display case. His grid of clay tiles is comprised of earth from different areas in Saskatchewan, referencing the system used to domesticate, survey and map the land. Its fragile legs acknowledge the foundation of bison bones in the development of the province. William Kurelek’s painting is quaint, sorrowful and uplifting. A young man pauses with his horse, looking up at the stars as his warm breath hits the cold, night air—utterly alone. The title, How Often at Night, is a line from folk anthem and love song to the west, Home on the Range. Both the song and the image idealize rural life, emphasizing the moral purity of hard work. A profound sense of loneliness and isolation is captured in Quebec artist Jean Paul Lemieux’s painting of the forest. The three shades of green in the foreground suggest the presence of the sun in an otherwise haunting and stark image. For Lemieux, the landscape provides a visual language with which to depict his inner world and express an emotional sensibility. Gallery B / Dr. Ivan Jen and Dr. Suzanne Yip Family Gallery a path here Representations of Canada from pro-settlement advertisements are interwoven with lived experience, forming part of our country’s cultural memory. On the Prairies, this has been informed by the “Last Best West” campaign, initiated by federal minister of the interior and superintendent general of Indian Affairs Clifford Sifton in 1896. It promised abundant fertile land and “homes for millions” of Europeans, while cutting allocations to Indigenous education. For some, the reality of immigration failed to live up to the promises made. Its impacts on Indigenous people were often violent. Policies, practices, and access to resources and economies benefitted some while discriminating against others. Some communities found strength, others were torn apart. The idea of Indigenous and settler interests being in opposition to one another is a symptom of colonialism that strategically emphasized difference over collaboration.