Donald Ellis Gallery is pleased to present a selection of drawings by various Indigenous artists from across the North American continent. Highlights include a group of gouache drawings by Chief Henry Speck (U’dzistalis, 1908-1971), a hereditary chief known for his role in the revitalisation of Kwakwaka’wakw art and culture. Predominantly picturing mythological subject matter and dance masks, Chief Henry Speck’s work is characterised by a distinctly modern sensibility of colour, space, and minimalist abstraction that directly speaks to the crucial role he played within his own community. Another group of ink drawings by Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, a contemporary artist of Cowichan and Okanagan descent, employs Northwest Coast formal design elements and critically reflects on the Western tradition of landscape painting, environmentalism, and Indigenous histories. The gallery will also exhibit a group of early pencil drawings by Parr (1893-1969), one of the most celebrated Inuit artists of the 20th century. Born on the southern coast of Baffin Island, Canada, in 1893, he and his wife Eleeshushe Parr led a nomadic existence for most of their lives. Rendering the hunt, animals, and the human figure as hunter, Parr’s drawings speak eloquently of the itinerant lives of Inuit families before the 20th century.
The works in this exhibition are at once deeply rooted in the visual traditions of their respective Nations and constitute highly innovative forms of painterly expression. Trained in established Indigenous systems of representation, these artists mostly operated outside of dominant art academies and institutions and their work remains largely absent from the mainstream canon of art historical discourse. We believe that each of the artists in this exhibition represents a formative aspect of North American art history and including their work is both timely and appropriate to their artistic importance.
