the enforced migration enacted on her Adjacent, the large-scale Lower Lode (2019) Yet it was Walker’s mother who introduced ancestors. New is a ‘canvas collage’ – a technique Walker him to art, sourcing materials and books developed in the 1970s – reminding the and taking him to local galleries. In front Lake Ontario is the location of the work Second Floor Galleries viewer of the material surface of the of John Constable’s The Glebe Farm (c. 1830) There Are No Footprints Where I Go (2019), . A limited colour palette – of at Museum and , which is the shipping route McMaster’s Ikon presents a major exhibition of new greens, blues, yellows, blacks and whites – she told her son of the painter’s intense Dutch ancestors would have taken when paintings by Birmingham-born artist John serves to bind the series of paintings, simply concentration in accurately depicting the transported from the Netherlands to Canada Walker (b. 1939). Having studied at Moseley comprising oil and canvas. landscape, to the point that he found a field via the US. The blindfolded figure cannot School of Art, and later Birmingham College mouse nestled in his pocket. Aged eleven, see where they are headed, or what their of Art, Walker was the first artist to show Walker operated between the UK and US Walker joined Moseley School of Art where future holds, and relies on a raven as a guide. at Ikon Gallery when it moved in 1972 to in the 1960s-70s, laying the groundwork he was taught draughtsmanship, however McMaster often uses birds, as companions, new premises in the Birmingham Shopping for over forty solo exhibitions in New excelled at free expression on Wednesday messengers and omens, which feature in Centre above New Street Station. Here he York, with work acquired for collections at afternoons. His teachers shared his portfolio First Nation and Euro-Canadian folkloric presented large chalk drawings on black- the Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan with Meredith Hawes, Head of Birmingham traditions. Birds have an ideal perspective, boards made in situ. Museum and MoMA. In 1979 he undertook College of Art, who invited Walker to join from above, transcending territories and a research fellowship in Victoria, Australia, the school. Walker himself has continued intersecting cultures. McMaster states: Walker now lives in Maine, New , the later becoming Dean of Victoria College of to teach, which he considers equal to his setting for his series of ‘anti-scenic’ paintings the Arts in Melbourne. Here he met a group artistic practice. While both sides of my family lived on the depicting the coastal landscape at Seal Point. of Aboriginal artists who, having sourced a Canadian prairies, their histories and cultures Following the tradition of many painters, quantity of white pigment, demonstrated The exhibition is supported by the John were often in tension – even conflict. Walking the Walker’s landscapes evoke the feeling of a the bark painting technique, which inspired Feeney Charitable Trust, The Grimmitt Trust paths of my Indigenous and European ancestors place rather than its appearance, and further, his own painting. For Walker, his early and the Owen Family Trust. [has been] an act of absorbing time and space, they resist a conventional sense of beauty research into Indigenous art equipped him sites of peace and struggle, into a new vision of associated with paintings of natural scenes. with “a common language” that equally personal reconciliation. applies to this new series of works, albeit It’s been an aspiration of mine to get the smell of subconsciously. Each photograph is accompanied by a poem, Maine, the wetness, the dampness, the mud […] written by McMaster, in the languages of In the studio you have to make up pictures for Memory is at play in Fishing with Tom and Plains Cree and English. In writing, we see yourself; in the landscape the pictures are made Les (2017), a sizeable canvas measuring the artist trying to connect with the history for you. It took me three or four years to find my almost four metres in length. This painting and culture of each place, seeking those spot, a shitty place avoiding the picturesque. references the fishing trips taken by the who came before, her forefathers, who were artist with his older brothers, growing up sometimes at peace, other times at war. The paintings include a natural repetition of on the outskirts of industrial Birmingham. forms – zig-zags, trapezoids, squares, circles Stripes, zig zags and collaged fish are The exhibition is supported by Conseil and dots – which reference the landform, seen throughout the work, vividly realised des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ), seascape, weather, pollution and man-made through the application of contrasting Canada Council for the Arts, Entente de objects seen by the artist. Whilst everything colours. The painting has a rhythm recalling développement culturel intervenue entre on the pictorial plane is directly observed by the movement of tides, water and mud on le gouvernement du Québec et la Ville de Walker, it does not necessarily occur at the the Maine coastline. Québec and Manif d’art. same moment or from one point of view. Rather he presents multiple perspectives in Mud, and its association with earthliness and time and space. This is particularly important indeed pigments, is another common feature to the artist’s understanding of painting: in Walker’s paintings. This has a personal association, given that his father fought I never believed that art should be merely frontal. in the First World War at the Somme and Why can’t it have all the attributes that Titian Passchendaele. Badly injured in the War, his has, or Rembrandt has? Why can’t it have father would often sit for studies: volume; why can’t it have air? I have certainly always thought of paint as In Passage (2015), the first work in the series coloured mud. While I was involved in the first hung in the first gallery, the layering of paint group of landscape paintings, I was painting is particularly evident, creating relief on the my father’s recollections of the First World canvas that brings it into our viewing space. War, where mud was the theme – not only his recollection, but almost everyone’s from that war. Associated Event Stay in touch historically used for making top hats). A red ribbon is symbolic of the brutality of Talk – Meryl McMaster and John Walker Subscribe to our e-bulletin at the hunt, as well as referencing ancestral Thursday 5 December 2019, 6-7pm - £3 ikon-gallery.org and find us on bloodlines. These tethers are an important Booking essential ikongallery Exhibition Guide device for the artist: Artists Meryl McMaster and John Walker Ikon Gallery The thread is this reminder for me not to forget discuss their Ikon exhibitions, placing , Birmingham b1 2hs Meryl McMaster / John Walker where I came from. When I go out into the world, emphasis on the artistic representation 0121 248 0708 4 December 2019 — 23 February 2020 there’s always going to be part of me connected of homelands and adopted landscapes, ikon-gallery.org to my family and my past experiences. The ecology and the possibility of capturing the thread serves as a reminder to always have this essential nature of a place. Open Tuesday – Sunday Meryl McMaster continued exploration of myself and continued and Bank Holiday Mondays, 11am–5pm As Immense as the Sky learning and understanding of my cultures. Please book online or call Ikon Shop on 0121 Free entry, donations welcome 248 0711. Online booking closes at 5pm on First Floor Galleries In continuing to explore her cultural Thursday 5 December 2019. Ikon is supported using public funding by identity, McMaster has visited several and Birmingham Ikon presents the first UK solo exhibition of historic locations within Canada in the City Council. work by Canadian artist Meryl McMaster past two years. In each site, she assumes (b. 1988). Comprised of new and recent a dreamlike character drawn partly from work, the exhibition draws from the artist’s Indigenous creation stories, often involving dual heritage to examine broader questions the transformation of human, animal and of being, placing emphasis on the social, celestial bodies. For example, when she cultural and environmental contact zones visited her father’s reserve, Red Pheasant, of both her Indigenous and European Saskatchewan, McMaster wore the mask ancestors. of the swift fox, emulating a wesakecak trickster in Plains mythology. The fox, McMaster is of the nêhiyawak community once a common inhabitant of the grass (Plains Cree) and a member of the Siksika prairies of the region, started to disappear First Nation (Alberta, Canada) on her in the late nineteenth century as a result father’s side, and Euro-Canadian (British of industrialised farming. Hence, McMaster and Dutch) on her mother’s. Fashioning is highlighting at risk communities, both elaborate, sculptural garments and props, human and animal, as she explains: her performative self-portraits – recently photographed in a variety of dramatic, I want to bring specific awareness to the broad outdoor settings using natural light – consequences of colonisation and how the present journeys into the realms of her mentality of greed and/or lack of foresight is still ancestors which are both actual and impacting us today. Each of us has a complicated imaginative. relationship with the past with gaps and biases, and it is important to me to expose and explore In the first gallery, we see Bring Me to This these gaps so that we may encounter our next Place (2017), a digital photograph produced moments better prepared. in Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump (a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site McMaster’s theatre extends to deserts and in Alberta) with cultural significance to glaciers as “landscapes of deep meaning”. the Plains People. McMaster describes The impermanence of her tracks, within the this as a breakthrough work, wherein she mud, sand, water and snow, is significant travelled to a landscape, guided by her in relation to her countering the erasure reading and consultation with community of Indigenous histories and ecologies. In knowledge keepers. She is pictured as a Cartography of the Unseen (2019), McMaster solitary wanderer, wearing a costume that is dressed as a whooping crane, another references the animals negatively affected endangered species, normally associated by colonisation, including the prairie chicken with marshlands. She displaces the bird

Printed on recycled paper. (through the repetitive motif of footprints within a different landscape, demonstrating Ikon Gallery Limited trading as Ikon. Registered charity no. 528892. on the coat) and beaver (whose fur was