Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:04 Chapter one about the audio description tour. This chapter introduces the audio description tour. It's a minute long. Hello, welcome to the audio description tour for drawing on our history. My name is Fiona Wright and I'm the educator at Carleton University Art Gallery or qac. This audio description tour will provide you with an overall description of the exhibition as well as specific artworks and installations. You'll hear from a few artists as well. There were so many artworks to choose from. The exhibition has over a hundred works in it. I hope that we've chosen ones that can give you a real sense of the diversity of artists and their expansive use of drawing.
Speaker 1 00:00:46 The audio description tour will lead you on a path to 10 artworks from the QI collection as well as three installations by contemporary Canadian artists. There will often be multiple chapters at each stop, which will include a description of an artwork and then more information from the curators or artists. The total length of the tour will be an hour. You can skip or repeat the chapters on this tour at any time. At the end of each chapter, you'll be notified when you can move to the next stop. You can find information about wayfinding in chapter four. Please stay here to listen to the next three chapters.
Speaker 1 00:01:25 Chapter two about the exhibition. This chapter introduces the exhibition and it's three minutes long. It was written by Q Ag curators, Heather Anderson, Sandra Dick, and Danielle. Print up Q Ag turn 30 in the fall of 2022, we're celebrating our birthday with drawing on our history. Drawing on our history is an experiment. We organized it using a polyvocal curatorial model that embodies and furthers our long history of collaborative exhibition making Each person on the curatorial team, five guest curators with whom QA has worked in the past. And three QA staff members invited a Canadian artist with a timely and compelling drawing practice. The drawings and drawing based works made by these eight artists. Open conversations with drawings selected from Carleton University's art collection. Drawing on our history illuminates over 70 years of art collecting activity at Carleton. It presents the first drawing acquired by the university, which commissioned Elizabeth Harrison to render its crest and motto in 1951.
Speaker 1 00:02:39 It pays tribute to Jack and Francis Barwick whose transformative 1984 bequest led to the founding of Qag in 1992. It reflects on an exponential period of collection growth under the gallery's first director Michael Bell. Today it includes 13,720 drawings, many of which were generously donated by artists and collectors. Drawing on our history also features our most recent acquisition, the Remarkable 2022 Gift of Ed Pean's Medusa, a monumental shimmering composition drawn with a sharp knife. Pen's arresting work points to some of the ways that artists use drawing today to anchor personal and cultural identities, to investigate ideas, techniques, genres and traditions to recuperate, erased histories, to tell stories to mitigate loss, to declare positions. Drawing on our history is installed by Patrick Lakas and Andrew Johnson, amplified by public programs created by Fiona Wright and tours by Jessica Andress and supported by administrator Vicki Linsey and research assistant Mackenzie Holbrook taken together the work of the invited and collection based artists.
Speaker 1 00:03:59 The guest curators and the Qag team constitutes a multifaceted look at drawing past and present at the development of the university's collection and at our evolution as an organization over three decades. Thank you for your vital trust, generosity, participation, engagement, and support. Qag would not be here without you. You are an essential part of the gallery's history as well as its present and future. Chapter three, description of the gallery. This chapter provides you with a physical description of the art gallery. It's a minute and a half long. The Carleton University Art Gallery has two floors in is shaped like an L. The mezzanine or upper level where you arrived and probably are right now is a long balcony that spans the long stem of the L. There are two stairs, one in the crook of the L close to where the gallery monitor sits at the front desk and one at the top of the L.
Speaker 1 00:04:57 There is a railing that extends along the tall stem of the L and there is a curved railing beside the front desk. The looks down into the high gallery or the small part of the L below. The audio description tour will bring you on a route for artworks on the main level below. On this level, the long stem of the L is 23 meters long by nine and a half meters wide. It has 2.4 meter high ceilings except along one wall where it extends up to the mezzanine level above. This is the same height as the high gallery or the small part of the L, about 5.8 meters. There are wood floors on the main level and the walls are white except for three floating walls that are placed going down the middle of the long stem of the L. Those have been painted a dramatic black only one chapter left to go before you can start on your way.
Speaker 1 00:05:51 Chapter four, explanation of wayfinding in the gallery. This chapter provides you with a description of the wayfinding tools that are part of the audio description tour. It's a minute long. There will be audio cues within the audio description tour that will direct you through the gallery and to the various stops on the tour. Once you go down the stairs, there are also tactile floor markings that will help lead you on a one-way path clockwise around the gallery to the stops in front of the artworks, there are 12 stops on the tour. Stops will be marked with a circle composed of smaller felt circles. There are also tactile representations of several artworks held in a tote bag provided at the front desk that you can take with you on the tour. They are numbered and the audio description tour will notify you when there is one available. At that stop, please go down the stairs to the main floor. The stairs have railings. Turn twice to the right. You'll find the tactile path at the bottom. Turn left to go to the first artwork six meters away. Stop at the felt circle and turn left. Chapter five, Medusa. This chapter describes Medusa by Ed Pian created in 2012 and measuring 269 by 366 centimeters. It is two minutes long.
Speaker 2 00:07:19 Tilt your head up and imagine you're standing underneath the canopy of a huge nooby tree, maybe a willow. The artist has created the tangled upper branches by cutting up the negative space from two different materials, crinkled, flattened and layered on top of each other. Translucent Japanese paper called Shoji paper and reflective film Similar to the material used on nighttime running outfits or highway signs, though it appears to be almost black as you move closer, the spotlights above hit it and reveal a beautiful purple gray shimmer. The paper cutting has been intricately done with some branches almost as thin as a spider's web or strands of hair tangled together. Larger silhouette forms appear caught in the branches. This along with the title Medusa evokes the long tresses of that fearsome and perhaps misunderstood mythological character. The artist has also cut small and medium circles in yellow, green, blue, orange, red, and purple from the same material and affixed them to the tree silhouette so that they appear to be floating across the branches. These adornments, as P has said, celebrate resilience and offer glimmer of hope. In troubled times trying to increase that glimmer, you could pull out your cell phone flashlight and the light bounces back even more strongly. The reveal stops you in your tracks just like Medusa's provocative gaze.
Speaker 1 00:08:46 To hear more about this work, play the next track or move to the next stop. A straight line to the right for seven meters. Chapter six, curatorial label for Medusa. This chapter is the text written by curator Heather Anderson. For Medusa. It is one and a half minutes long.
Speaker 2 00:09:06 Ed p drew with a knife to create the shimmering tentacular tree with human figures amongst its branches. In 2000 4:00 PM who immigrated from Taiwan to Canada as a child, made a research trip to China where he encountered a spectacular cut paper while visiting a temple, he began experimenting with the ancient Chinese art of paper cutting, which dates back to northern and southern dynasties. 3 85 to 5 81 A. The monumental tree figures and ropes. In Medusa reference Le Deon 1633, A renowned etching by French artist Jack. Hello and American artist, Nancy Spiros, maple Take no prisoners. 2008, A sculpture comprising of central pole hung with colorful ribbons and cut aluminum heads. One, Medusa shares these artwork's indictment of violence. Medusa is also inspired by PM's experience of fireflies amongst ancient trees in Italy, a captivating homage to trees as more than human beings.
Speaker 1 00:10:08 Please move to the next stop. It is a straight line to your right for seven meters at the stop. Turn left. Chapter seven, Melanie Myers. Melanie Myers is a francophone artist based in Gao and was invited to be part of the exhibition by Heather Anderson q a's curator. You can hear her reflection on Melanie's artwork in chapter 11. This chapter will give you an overall description of Melanie's installation and the next two chapters will go into more detail. Then you'll hear from Melanie herself. This chapter is a minute long.
Speaker 3 00:10:45 Min's installation is in the main gallery along the wall that has very high ceilings. There are two pillars on either side of this section and stairs to the right. Her installation consists of four parts, two on the wall and two freestanding in front of you. Each is made from pep on which she has intricately drawn a lake and a forest scene similar to a stage set.
Speaker 1 00:11:09 Go to the next chapter for information on Meyers work. Chapter eight, Sal's Teeth, Henry Moore, reclining figure and vertebrae part one. This chapter describes part one of song's teeth by Melanie Myers, made in 20 22 23. It is two minutes long.
Speaker 3 00:11:29 In front of you is a set of two free-standing French doors, one and a half meters apart. The artist has constructed them using pep and they are roughly the size of real doors, a little more than half a meter by two meters on the backside. Myers has used pencil crayon to draw wood grain, but on the front there's nothing so ordinary. It holds a beautifully drawn surface of a lake with lily pads floating on it. Behind the doors through this portal are two drawings on top of one another. The lower is a continuation of the shallow water with tree branches sticking out of the water and ducks floating on the surface partially hidden by the branches. Above is a triptic of the opposite shore of the lake complete with a dense wooded area and thick red and orange undergrowth. Myers has drawn the details of the leaves, the texture of the rocks and the branches and the reflection of the trees on the water.
Speaker 3 00:12:24 The tops of the trees are jagged as they meet the sky, as if they had been ripped like a piece of paper. This landscape is repeated three times, almost identical though the colors alter slightly and the trees point to the other edges of the paper like a fan. It is late summer and the sun must be setting because the water is getting darker. The colors of the sky reflect the rippling water, oscillating between oranges, purples and hints of blue. The bases even ripple. The doors have been caught mid sway and the bottom edge of the triptic jets out a little right where the water meets the shore. This technique plays with our perception what we think should be flat like a drawing reaches out into our three-dimensional world. Running your hand down each one, you would feel the edges of the strips of paper that were dipped in a watery glue and layered on top of each other to create the base.
Speaker 1 00:13:19 To hear more about the artist's play withdrawing a sculpture, go on to the next chapter, chapter nine, Sal's Henry Moore reclining Figure a Vertebrae part two. This chapter describes part two of Sal's teeth by Melanie Myers. It is two minutes long.
Speaker 3 00:13:37 A confession. There was something left out of the description of Sait Henry Moore reclining figure and vertebrae in the previous chapter, and that's because there is also something missing for Meyers drying in the triptic. There are three white irregular shapes simply the pep base. Each one is different with a point sticking upwards or a curved bottom. It is a stark contrast to the forested area. The shapes are in fact the three components of renowned sculptor Henry Moore's large bronze work titled Three Pieces, sculpture, vertebrae, and indeed they do look like the curved components of the spine there but not there in the forest below. In the shallows, there is another white shape much larger. It is Henry Moore's reclining figure. Myers has built the abstracted female form using Pep so that it pops out of the drawing. She appears draped over the arched branches that emerged from the water. The artist has also given her a skin much different from the original bronze or even empty non-color. Green shimmering fish scales cover her entire body, even her head. It has not been drawn exactly on the form, however, but slightly, slightly shifted down into the left so that the unmarked pep is still there marking a slight movement or dissonance just like this shift, Myers has intentionally shifted the environment, the materials and labor, even dimension of the original sculptures, positioning them anew in this imagined landscape. How do you think this shifts their meaning?
Speaker 1 00:15:13 Go to the next chapter to hear Myers talk about her artwork. Chapter 10, interview with Melanie Myers. This chapter features an interview with artist Melanie Myers. It is three and a half minutes long. Hi, Melanie. How would you describe your drawing style?
Speaker 4 00:15:32 Oh, um, I use colored pencil often drawing on prepared sheets or prepared structures of pa. The drawings are textured with tight, repetitive marks, dense, quite colorful and figurative. I think I impose strict little rules on myself without fully realizing I feel like I draw what I see like anyone else would, but it's funny like when I work with my assistant in the studio and I have to try to verbally explain to her how to draw the same as I did, that's when I notice the rules and constraints. I'm self imposing, for example, strokes that generally go in the same direction to form patches of colors. Colors that do not overlap but touch each other unless it's pale, but 80% of the time it's press hard on the pencil. There is negotiation between reproducing reality and letting go or just following my arm, my wrist, allowing those gestures so that it creates a relationship between me and the landscape I'm looking at. For me, this is where it becomes drawing when it's a silent conversation between the land and my body mediated by the act of looking.
Speaker 1 00:16:50 What is the inspiration or story behind your installation? In drawing on our history,
Speaker 4 00:16:56 I explore our built environment a lot. Not so much architecture or buildings, but rather the other systems that orient our body and space and frame our relationship to the outside. For example, the installation of art in public spaces. We often perceive them as something beneficial for everyone, but I'm not so sure that it's always relevant or useful to plant a monumental work in our shared landscape. This installation is part of my research on monumental artworks that have taken up a lot of financial, environmental, and human resources. I reproduce them with the most modest means, paper, pencil, my own time, and by doing this I can insert them into another environment, mitigate them and have them relate to other elements that change the discourse or the properties of the original work.
Speaker 1 00:17:56 Why are you drawn towards being an artist?
Speaker 4 00:17:59 Um, visual arts, dance, literature, music are all forms of expression that move me perhaps more than real life and I like to think outside of verbal language. There are tools and codes and visual communication that I understand well almost intuitively and I like to operate in this realm because we don't expect clear or structured results like we do for sentences. I also like the flexibility in how daily life is organized. When you're an artist, you're essentially self-employed. Of course I do all the necessary things for the wellbeing of my family, like food, shelter, hygiene, but it is soothing to go and navigate my art life in a parallel place where everything is flexible. On the other hand, this brings a kind of torture because while everything is nuanced and nothing is true, it also means that nothing is clear, nothing is finished, there are no clear check marks. Also, it doesn't pay well. <laugh> part of all this <unk> I wanna do this forever. It occupies my body and my thoughts with infinite challenges.
Speaker 1 00:19:11 Go to the next chapter to hear the curatorial label for Meyers work. Chapter 11, curatorial label for Melanie Meyers. This chapter is the text written by curator Heather Anderson. It's two minutes long.
Speaker 3 00:19:25 Heather writes. Melanie Meyers explores the Jacques of landscape and land art as mediated by photographs drawing from the seemingly unlimited image bank available on the internet. Myers leverages drawing and pepi as a practical and economical way of engaging with monumental sculptures cited in the landscape, extending an earlier theme of her work in which she examined Touchstone works of land art by Richard, Sarah and Michael Heiser among others in this new installation. The Getto know based artist depicts a rugged Canadian forest landscape as though seen from the water in the upper triptic white negative space forms inhabit the shoreline, amids stumps, branches, and a dense screen of coniferous trees. These ghost-like shapes reference British artist Henry Moore's three piece sculpture vertebrae 19 68, 69 in the drawing below another enigmatic form. This one inspired by Moore's large reclining figure 1984 and patterned with delicate green scales rests entwined with sprawling branches building up the underlying surface with pepi and sculpting freestanding elements. Myers pushes the forms and possibilities of drawing two French style doors structurally distorted like images reflected on rippling water serve as the foreground, like the detailed wall drawings, the doors, pencil crayon surfaces, evidence the labor of their creation. Their alluring camouflage effect invites us to come closer while their windows become frames through which to view the multidimensional landscape beyond.
Speaker 1 00:21:02 Please move to the next stop, continue to your right for three meters and then turn right and continue for two and a half meters. The artwork will be on your left. You are standing in the middle of the gallery towards the back or top of the L. This artwork is on one of the black floating walls, chapter 12 XO lung. This chapter describes XO lung by Shayla Keeley, created in 1990 and measuring 145 by 95 centimeters. It is one and a half minutes long
Speaker 2 00:21:39 You can reach out to feel the edges of this frame. This drawing is much larger than the majority of those in the exhibition and there is one word to describe this set of lungs. Messiness though the outline is drawn in graphite or pencil, the edges of the oblong biological vessel are smudged and there are dense layers of thick black charcoal that create the shadows or roundness of the lungs. A section of orange and pig pigment mixed together in the center of the left lung creates the impression of a glowing pulsating shape underneath a sense heightened by the cloudy and translucent quality of the paper. The artist has also smeared a transparent wax over the drawing and it creates a tactility to it. As we imagine the artist using your hands to pull the wax down and across the surface, the lungs almost reach all four sides of the paper, but in the empty space behind it, Keeley has smeared pinkish pigments, reminiscent of skin or flesh in its size and textures. Her representation of one of life's primal forces is glowing, soft and visceral.
Speaker 1 00:22:53 To hear more about this work, play the next track or move to the next stop on the other side of this floating wall, chapter 13, curatorial label for XO lung. This chapter is the text written by Mackenzie Holbrook for XO lung. It is a minute long
Speaker 2 00:23:13 After graduating from York University in Toronto in 1977, Shaylee Keeley spent the next two decades between New York and Paris creating a large scale drawing and installation works for which she's acclaimed currently working out of Toronto. Keeley describes her practice as a visceral and cerebral activity. Keely's process is intuitive, often beginning the work with no set end in mind, but rather exploring how her improvisational drawing takes shape. This encaustic drawing of a pair of lungs brings together much of keely's philosophy of creation. She proposes that drawing offers an index of the artist's body and expression evidenced here by evocative linework, which carries the traces of her hand.
Speaker 1 00:24:02 Please move to the next stop on the other side of this floating wall. Turn right and move for two meters. Turn left for another two meters and then another left for two meters. Turn to the left at the felt circle stop. Chapter 14, untitled. This chapter describes untitled by Kim Moody, created in 1997 and measuring 125 by 117 centimeters. There is a tactile version of one part of this drawing. It is labeled one. This chapter is two minutes long.
Speaker 2 00:24:39 This large drawing is composed of 28 and a half by 11 sheets of white paper pulled roughly from a spiral notebook and arranged neg grid four down and five across using only a thick black felt tip pen. The artist has created something similar to a page from a comic book with 20 cells or scenes. Crudely drawn characters appear across these scenes pulled from pop culture and history. Witches spiders, Godzilla Frankenstein's monster In the top left corner, a mummy wrapped in bandages, lifts a giant bird by their outstretched wings or maybe tries to keep it from flying away. Fights unfold across the pages. A soldier wields a gun in one scene and throws a grenade in another walls. Towers and oiss populate the background, as does a set of empty chairs which keeps reappearing. The chaos is emphasized by the density of how the artist has drawn everything. There is no empty spot left on the page. A NASA shuttle flies above a falling Godzilla In a starry night about to crash land on a witch, a spider hunts, a fly in his web woven above a two-faced horse riding cowboy who points a gun both ahead and behind him who wins, who loses. Despite the serial quality of the drawing, there is no satisfactory ending when we reach the bottom left cell of the artwork.
Speaker 1 00:26:12 To hear more about this work, play the next track or move to the next stop. Make 180 degree turn and move down the path two meters and then turn right. The next stop is another two meters ahead. The drawing is slightly to your left. Chapter 15, curatorial label for untitled. This chapter is the text written by curator Heather Anderson for untitled. It is a minute long.
Speaker 2 00:26:40 Kim Moody is known for his highly detailed ink drawings, mining and mixing historical traditions and cultural genres from illuminated manuscripts to comic books, graphic novels and children's books. Moody has developed a striking lexicon of imagery that densely populates the drawing space and offers infinite narrative possibilities. Moody created this fantastical work with 25 pages torn from a sketchbook and arranged in a grid. Each page is fully activated with the artist's energetic, bold black lines depicting a host of beings and objects. We can observe that the drawings do not continue from one page to the next. Yet the artist's use of line, pattern and balance of negative and positive space creates the effect of a continuous interconnected realm with manifold scenes of action.
Speaker 1 00:27:32 Please move to the next stop. Make a 180 degree turn and move down the path two meters and then turn right. The next stop is another two meters ahead. The drawing is slightly to your left. Chapter 16, plans for tepi at the first native business summit. This chapter describes plans for tepi at the first Native Business summit by Bob Boyer, created in 1986 measuring 38 by 50 centimeters. It is two and a half minutes long.
Speaker 2 00:28:03 We are now at the back of the gallery, the top of the L. This ink and watercolor drawing is a diaphragm of the outside and inside of a tepe flattened across a horizontal white piece of paper. A tepe is a clinical tent structure typically made with canvas or animal heights and stretched across a framework of wooden poles. It is primarily used by indigenous people of the prairies. Here Boyer has drawn the front and side view of the tepe. In the top half of the composition, three triangles touch at the bottom corners. At either end, a rectangular tap has been added and labeled cut and fold and question mark. Question mark. Similar to a paper model, the design includes a red zigzag lying across the bottom with green. Underneath there are two eagles wings outstretched on either side of the circular entrance. The peak is yellow contained by another zigzag.
Speaker 2 00:29:04 This time blue at the top of the teepee is a piece of fabric, also yellow. It would usually be held up by a large pole though here directions are given place toothpicks. Here at the top is written collaboration by Bob Boyer and Elder Jim Rider. Below is the design for the interior drawings of four separate blankets tied together. End to end, colorful geometric patterns of red, orange, and yellow along with polka dots are featured. There are words written around the exterior and interior designs, culture, success, unity, war, society, life, universe, sun, eagle, art, extinction, earth love, spirit, defeat and peace. The drawing is labeled on the edge and underlined. The materials are also stated. Tepe is acrylic on canvas liner is mixed media. Drawing on blankets.
Speaker 1 00:30:11 To hear more about this work, play the next track or stay at this stop and skip ahead to chapter 18. This artwork is right next to Boyers on the right. Chapter 17, curatorial label for plans for Tepe at the first native business summit. This chapter is the text written by curator Danielle print up for plans for Tepe at the first native business summit. It's a minute long.
Speaker 2 00:30:38 Bob Boyer was renowned Metis artist, art historian, curator and educator who exhibited his work across Canada and internationally working across sectors in education, art, and community organizations. Boyer was a passionate individual who significantly contributed to indigenous visual arts in Canada. In 1986, Robert Ho invited Boyer to participate as a special guest artist at the first native business summit in Toronto. This colorful drawing of a tepe in diagrammatic form is the design for the interior lining of the full size Tepe that Boyer later constructed for new beginnings, an exhibition he co-curated with Hul for the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina.
Speaker 1 00:31:26 The next artwork is to the right of Boyers, so stay here for the next stop. Chapter 18, ma'am with snowmobile. This chapter describes mam with snowmobile by Canac Puku created in 2006 and measuring 51 by 67 centimeters. There is a tactile version of this drawing. It is labeled two. This chapter is one and a half minutes long.
Speaker 2 00:31:53 This work depicts an Enoch man standing just behind his bright red snowmobile. The fur-lined hood of his white ATI or parka is pulled up around his face. There are bands of orange, blue and dark green trim on the bottom of his sleeves and hem his matching pants and blue tinted sunglasses complete. The outfit Puu has included many details of the snowmobile from the various components of the green outboard motor on the back to the gears of the track, the details stand out even more because the artist hasn't included a background, just the white paper. We can focus on the cold and shiny red chrome, the smell of gasoline, how the fur trim would feel against our faces. Perhaps the background evokes the white tundra
Speaker 1 00:32:43 To hear more about this work, play the next track or move to the next stop, turn right and follow the path for four and a half meters. Chapter 19, curatorial label for man with snowmobile. This chapter is the text written by curator Sandra Dick. For a man with snowmobile, it is a minute long.
Speaker 2 00:33:04 The Inuk Tut lab read in English. When the snow first came up north, everyone thought there were mighty machines compared to a dog team. In this case, it isn't. The dog team is more reliable than the snowmobile. This humorous drawing which depicts a four alert Enoch man standing by his broken down snowmobile is one of 10 by Kang Puu, selected by curator Christine Misel to present at the Venice. In 2017, Miel wrote of her exhibition Viva Rte Viva, that it seeks to convey a positive and prospective energy, which while focusing on young artists rediscovered those passed away too soon or those who are still largely unknown despite the importance of their work.
Speaker 1 00:33:51 Please move to the next stop, turn right and follow the path for four and a half meters. The drawing is on your left. You are now moving back down the other side of the long stem of the L Chapter 20 summer landscape. This chapter describes summer landscape by Caou Namo, created in 1954 and measuring 39 by 57 centimeters. It's a minute long.
Speaker 2 00:34:17 This drawing is hung above another landscape, watercolor drawing by John Esner in Neca Mo's drawing, the artist used to Cato brushstrokes of watercolor pigments to create a minimal, almost abstract landscape scene of two trees standing on the left in a grassy field, bright greens, vivid teal tinge, blues and hints of ochre are used to depict the leaves, grasses and small trees. In the background water makes the colorful brushstrokes feather out as it soaked into the thick paper. It mimics the haze of summer heat that can sometimes blur. Your perception was the artist standing in this field while he painted the short and messy brushstrokes reflecting his rush to capture the colors and light of this view. Much of the page is left unfilled and there are no details about the specific location.
Speaker 1 00:35:12 To hear more about this work, play the next track or move to the next stop. Continue along this wall for eight and a half meters. The drawing is on your left. Chapter 21, curatorial label for summer landscape. This chapter is the text written by Mackenzie Holbrook for summer landscape. It's a minute long.
Speaker 2 00:35:36 A founding member of the 1950s Toronto Collective painters 11 kakamora created artworks inspired by the New York abstract expressionist movement as well as more figurative works. Nakamura viewed abstraction as a means to investigate and explore different modes of perceiving the natural world, the gestural, minimal brushstrokes and muted colors of summer landscape bleed into the white expanse of the paper as an artist interested in scientific ways of knowing Nakamura portrayed the natural world as he saw it unveiling the many ways beauty can be perceived here Nakamura leaves viewers to fill in details. His loose gestural approach lends a moody, cool atmosphere to summer landscape.
Speaker 1 00:36:22 Please move to the next stop. Continue along this wall for eight and a half meters. The drawing is on your left. Chapter 22, birds carry the sun to Birdland. This chapter describes Birds carry the sun to Birdland by Lucy Kak created in 1977 and measuring 38 by 47 centimeters. There is a tactile version of this drawing. It is labeled three. This chapter is one and a half minutes long.
Speaker 2 00:36:54 In this work, the sun is depicted as a charmingly, irregular shaped orange circle, held a loft in a yellow green sky by nine birds. The colors are done with crayon, but the sun's face is drawn in black ink, feminine eyes encircled by eyelashes gaze out at us and her mouth tilts to the right and a half smile. Her face has dotted lines across the cheeks, nose and forehead In familiar designs of Inuit women's tattoos. These black dotted lines also appear on the red, blue, green and black burns. Can you feel the dotted patterns on the tactile version? Tattoos were opposed by Christian missionaries in the north for hundreds of years. Something that UE who lived between 1915 and 1982 would've experienced. They have had a revival recently, however, with many young Inuit women learning the techniques and designs of their ancestors, the directions of the birds pointing east, west and north create a symmetry to the drawings and the black dots create kinship between the foul and their precious cargo.
Speaker 1 00:38:04 Please move to the next stop along the wall for three and a half meters and turn to the left. Chapter 23, Gail Cab. Gail Cab is an inuk artist based in Ottawa and was invited to be part of the exhibition by Sandra Dick, director of Carleton University Art Gallery. You can hear her written reflection on cab's artwork in chapter 27. This chapter will give an overall description of the installation and the next two chapters will describe two specific works. Then you'll hear from Kauna herself. This chapter is 30 seconds long.
Speaker 3 00:38:45 Along the wall there are six framed black and white drawings of objects from cab's home. There is also three advisees in a display case. This section of the gallery is close to the stairs where you first came in between two of the black floating walls.
Speaker 1 00:39:01 Go to the next chapter for information on cab's individual works. Chapter 24, you should be a part of us. This chapter describes a series of six drawings entitled You Should Be a Part of Us Ba Cab Made in 2023. Each drawing is on a horizontal piece of paper measuring 25 by 35 centimeters. There is a tactile version of part of this drawing. It is labeled four. This chapter is two minutes long.
Speaker 3 00:39:34 There are six black ink drawings in Kauna series. You should be a part of us hung in a row on the gallery wall. In each bubble, letters of text in both Tu and English appear above and below a line drawing of an object from the artist's home. As you progress along the drawings, it reads, when I was growing up, people asked, what are you that said, you don't belong. You're not part of us. In Nunavut. In Asked that said, do you belong with us? You should be a part of us. The drawings are of objects used in everyday Inuit life. In the first drawing, there's a collection of oos or curved women's knives used for cooking and sewing. Kauna has shown the texture of the antler handles using wavy vertical lines. <unk> A gift from her sister is a stone lamp shaped like a semicircle. The smoothness of the stone is contrasted with the nooby texture of taku, a stick made of willow root for adjusting the flames at the base of it. The wick for a kuk is typically arctic cotton dried moss and willow fluff In one drawing, her hands pick apart this wick material reading it for the kuk. In another she threads a needle. Her fingers and wrists have tattoos of fine black lines. This final drawing in the series has the tactile version feel the patterns of her tattoos and the weight she gives the lettering. How do the tu feel in comparison to the English letters?
Speaker 1 00:41:14 Go to the next chapter to hear about another work by Kabuna chapter 25 <unk>. This chapter describes <unk> cab made in 2023 and measuring 35 centimeters high and 20 centimeters wide at the base and 12 centimeters high at the top. It's a minute and a half long
Speaker 3 00:41:39 Behind you and to your left one meter away. There is a display case with three vessels of varying sizes. <unk> is the largest. If you were to run your hands up the sides from the bottom to top, your hands would go out and in, out and in four times with the curves growing progressively small as you reached the top, they are slightly irregular and the exterior has not been glazed, so the reddish brown clay feels dry and slightly rough. Instead of an overall glaze, kabuna dipped her fingertips and white liquid clay and pressed it on the vessel while still wet, making dots all the way around top to bottom there must be hundreds. Each dot has then been turned into a face using tiny black breaststrokes. Two eyebrows, two eyes, two dots for nose and mouth. The variations of the breaststrokes changed the identical faces into an array of expressions. Smiling, frowning, stern. To top it off, each face is encircled with small red dots. Creating the bright ruff of a parka hood cab's use of her own biometrics is a way of literally imprinting herself and all who came before her on this object. This is echoed in the title's translation, my Extended Family.
Speaker 1 00:42:56 Go to the next chapter to hear Kauna talk about her artwork. Chapter 26, interview with Gail Uya Gki Kana. This chapter features an interview with artist Gail Uya. Gki Kauna. It is a minute long. Hi Gail. What is the inspiration or story behind your work? In drawing on our history,
Speaker 5 00:43:19 I chose to share a personal reflection of my identity and my works for drawing on our history. Figuring out my place in the world has taken a lot of work. I wanted to show that even though I'm half Enoch and half white, the people I identify with and who have also claimed me back are Inuit. I live in the duality of being an Inuit person and also being half.
Speaker 1 00:43:42 Why do you choose to use Inuktitut in some of the titles of your work?
Speaker 5 00:43:47 I choose Inuktitut words for the titles of some of my works and English for others to represent my background. In the middle of two cultures and my language learning journey, friends and family help me name the Inuktitut pieces teaching me and bringing me closer to those people.
Speaker 1 00:44:04 Why are you drawn towards being an artist?
Speaker 5 00:44:08 I like the idea of sharing my experiences and finding connections with other people. I think art gives my life deeper meaning and fulfillment and also my brain is constantly busy with creative projects and I'm the type of person who needs to keep their hands busy.
Speaker 1 00:44:24 Go to the next chapter to hear the curatorial label for cab's work. Chapter 27, curatorial label for Gail Uya Kauna. This chapter is the text written by curator Sandra Dick. It is two minutes long.
Speaker 3 00:44:39 The groundbreaking American writer, Audrey Lord famously described herself as black lesbian mother warrior poet Lord, rejected external definitions of her identity that singled out or marginalized any one of these categories. Her poetry she said, comes from the intersection of me and my worlds. These questions of the part and the whole of identity and belonging are central to the work that Gail Una made for drawing on our history. Born in <unk>, OC or baker as she calls it, to an <unk> father and a white mother. Kauna has long lived away from the community all her life. As she writes on these drawings, she has been asked, what are you, where do you belong? Kauna belongs to making, to drawing, sewing, printmaking, knitting and building clay pots by hand. She belongs to the objects depicted in these drawings, sharp oos with handles of wood or antler, a stone, a beaded seal skin, Martin Gutti that holds wicks spherical ornaments made from Tarin Gullets called pk, and to the creative acts that give rise to them. She belongs to her family tree whose branches reach west to California and north to Inuit. Nu Una also belongs to the places she's made home. Baker, EIT Ottawa. She belongs to the old stories she heard from her dad when she was a child. She belongs to the extraordinary legacy, a visual culture inherited from KA artists including Victoria Mauk, her grandmother Jesse Unna, her great-grandmother and Luke an hadlock Una's work comes from her intersection with all these worlds and many more.
Speaker 1 00:46:30 Please move to the next stop, which is in the high gallery or small arm of the L. Follow the path straight for 13 and a half meters. Then turn left and continue for three and a half meters, you are in the high gallery now with a 5.8 meter high ceiling. The drawing is on your left. Chapter 28, study for Cradle. This chapter describes study for cradle by Faye heavy shield created in 1992 and measuring 61 by 47 centimeters. There's a tactile version of this drawing. It is labeled five. This chapter is one minute long.
Speaker 2 00:47:09 In this graphite drawing, the artist has sketched out a baby's garment similar to a blanket with a peaked hood. Though the hood is up and the garment is filled out as if there's a little body inside the face. Opening is dark. Heavy shield has layered dark pencil markings so that creates the effect of a deep cavernous void. Inside surrounding the form is a long triangular shape. In soft pencil marks almost like a shadow. The fabric is un patterned. A simple white. The title cradle perhaps refers to a cradle board made and used by indigenous peoples to protect and hold babies on their mother's Back.
Speaker 1 00:47:48 To hear more about this work, play the next track or move to the next stop. Continue on the path directly behind you for five meters crossing the gallery. The drawing is in front of you. Chapter 29, curatorial label for Study for Cradle. This chapter is the text written by Danielle Print up for Study for Cradle. It is a minute long,
Speaker 2 00:48:14 A prominent multidisciplinary artist based in southern Alberta. Faye Heavy Shield is a member of the KA Blood nation, which is part of the Blackfoot Confederacy. She has worked across media for over 30 years, often using a minimalist aesthetic approach to engage with embodied understandings of land, place and community. This drawing titled Study for Cradle was made to draft the design for a three-dimensional sculptural work she later made using cotton, acrylic paint and grass. It exemplifies heavy shield's ability to use minimal forms effectively evoking a child's presence with subtlety and power.
Speaker 1 00:48:56 Move to the next stop. Continue on the path directly behind you for five meters crossing the gallery. The drawing is in front of you. Chapter 30, glad in house. This chapter describes Glad in house by Emily Carr, created before 1945 and measuring 89 by 61 centimeters. It is a minute long.
Speaker 2 00:49:19 In this scene, tall trees dwarf a simple box cabin built on the edge of a cleared section of the forest. The clearing or glad has been painted in muddy yellows and is dotted with short black tree trunks. At this time, Carr, the renowned West coast painter used a thin oil paint that is the consistency of cream. The brown paper underneath peeks out between the softly arch brushstrokes of varied greens she has used to depict the branches of the trees or the blue of the sky. These expressive gestures attempt to capture the aliveness of this scene. Though it seems a stark commentary on human impact on the land, though the cabin and its invisible, owner inside seems embold by the trees, who knows how long it will be before they become stumps. What future is the owner of the cabin pondering as they stand looking out of those two tiny windows taking in the smells of the air and trees all around them.
Speaker 1 00:50:22 To hear more about this work, play the next track or move to the next stop. Turn to the right and continue along this wall for five and a half meters. Chapter 31, curatorial label for GLAD and House. This chapter is the text written by Mackenzie Holbrook for Glad and House. It is a minute long
Speaker 2 00:50:41 With its rhythmic, brushstrokes and monumental trees. Glad and house demonstrates Emily Carr's loose, expressive approach to painting on paper in keeping with a large scale of the environment on British Columbia's west coast, the warm ochre tones suggests late summer or early autumn painted with oil paints thinned with gasoline, which car valued for its economy and portability when working outside cars sweeping brushstrokes. Emphasize the majestic trees. Well, the stumps in the foreground that line the path to the house at the center of the composition remind us of the giants that have been felled.
Speaker 1 00:51:20 Please move to the next stop. Turn to the right and continue along this wall for five and a half meters. Chapter 32, mayor Gold Santos. Mayor Gold Santos is a Filipino Canadian artist based in Calgary. I was invited to be part of the exhibition by Alice Ming, y Jim, a curator and art historian at Concordia University in Montreal. You can hear her written reflection on Mayor Gold's work in chapter 36. This chapter will give an overall description of marigold's installation and the next two chapters will describe specific works within the installation. Then you'll hear from Marigold herself. This chapter is a minute long.
Speaker 3 00:52:01 Marigold's installation is in a corner of the high gallery, close to one of the galleries exits. The ceilings here are six meters high and you might hear visitors on the floor above as the balcony stretches out into the space above you. The largest part of this installation is a black floral design made of vinyl and applied directly to the gallery wall four meters high. It is four and a half meters in front of you. There are also nine other works hung on the wall, some quite dark that were drawn in charcoal and pastel on paper and others done with ink on paper. There is also one painting on canvas as well as four tall square display cases with seven small ceramic pieces.
Speaker 1 00:52:43 Go to the next chapter for information on Santo's individual works, chapter 33, flower abstraction elongated 1, 2 3. This chapter describes flower abstraction elongated 1, 2 3 by miracle Santos made in 2022 and measuring four meters high. There is a tactile version of this drawing. It is labeled six. This chapter is a minute and a half long.
Speaker 3 00:53:12 In this artwork, marigold created an enlarged vinyl version of a black drawing of three imagined flowers. They snake up the wall of the gallery vertically reaching the level of the balcony above. In the tactile version of this drawing, you can feel the stems, pedals and leaves. Each flower has at least three distinct parts, bottom, middle and top, and the stems zigzag in different sections before separating off into small blooms of various shapes and sizes. The designs have very bold line work and are very stylized. The flowers appear to be surreal or otherworldly. Santos is also a tattoo artist and these black graphics recall a flash sheet which tattoo artists use to display pre-designed creations. There are four flash sheets in this installation by Santos and they are ink drawings on paper. They have multiple designs composed on one sheet. Which flowers do you think inspired this design though they are rendered in black? Can you imagine them with colors? Can you imagine these designs tattooed on skin? What is the relationship between the large flower designs and the smaller flash drawings?
Speaker 1 00:54:26 Go to the next chapter to hear about another work by Santos hung on the wall to your left. Chapter 34 shroud buntu NA one. This chapter describes the ink drawing shroud buntu na erotica one made in 2021 and measuring 33 by 25 centimeters. It is a minute and a half long.
Speaker 3 00:54:49 Two female figures dance together each draped in a delicate, transparent cloth or shroud. Their bodies mirror each other. The back of one hand is posed on one hip and the other hand is raised in the air bringing the shroud up along with it. They each step one foot toward each other, bringing them closer almost intimately. Together though the different elements of their bodies, breasts, swollen bellies and arms are visible. Their faces remain completely obscured by the shroud and by the splotches of ink that dot their whole bodies. The use of the veil teases us by hiding and revealing the dancer's bodies perhaps apt. As the title of the artwork, erotica means pregnant erotica in Tagalog. With no background, the attention is focused wholly on these women's gestures and powerful bodies.
Speaker 1 00:55:42 Go to the next chapter to hear Santos talk about her artwork. Chapter 35, interview with me Gold Santos. This chapter features an interview with artist Merrick Gold Santos. It is two and a half minutes long. Hi me gold. What is the inspiration or story behind your work in drawing on our history?
Speaker 6 00:56:02 The works in this exhibition come from various moments in my practice from the last five years or so. They range in material and application from works on paper to ceramics paintings and includes my tattoo practice, which is another form of mark making and drawing for me. This particular collection of works reflect on speak of the body, embodiment of experience, selfhood empowerment and diaspora. The imagery consist of figures reconfigured from folklore, objects pulled from sensorial memories like touch, taste, and smell, and textures in patterns that come from my heritage and the landscape of my childhood.
Speaker 1 00:56:42 Why do you choose to use Tagalog in some of the titles of your work?
Speaker 6 00:56:47 My family immigrated to Canada in the late eighties and I was just a child. Um, I spoke Tagalog and did not understand English, so we learned how to speak English very quickly, but my siblings and I stopped speaking our mother tongue in and outside of the home. From that point on, even though I can understand it quite fluently, I have difficulty in speaking it. Titling my work in Tagalog is a way for me to return to and honor my mother tongue and fragments. It is also a way for my work to reach folks who do understand Tagalog and to create entry points into the work for them.
Speaker 1 00:57:20 Why are you drawn towards being an artist?
Speaker 6 00:57:23 Making art for me has always been about communicating something, whether it is communicating something I'm curious about, asking questions of researching or experimenting with. Communicating is the undercurrent for me, so I communicate through my work and I think through my work I also transform and evolve as a person through my work. My art practice is a way for me to continue to critically ask questions and make joy.
Speaker 1 00:57:50 Go to the next chapter to hear the curatorial label for Santo's work. Chapter 36, curatorial label for Merick Gold Santos. This chapter is the text written by curator Alice Mingy. Jim, it is two minutes long.
Speaker 3 00:58:05 Alice writes, Mary Gold's thrive in the arid climates of Mary gold Santo's desert landscape paintings, one of which appears in the background of her studio, depicted in the ink drawing shroud arid interior one. The scene also affords us a glimpse of the artist's take on the aswan, a traditionally terrifying shapeshifting creature of Filipino folklore, multiple configurations of this powerful amorphous being, popul Santo's, drawings and ceramics. Hurry reimagined. Aswan figures appear in numerous poses and positions their shrouds at time made of thick, dark masses, mystical woven textiles or braided voluminous hair, or exchanged for large brim veiled hats of different styles. The as song mythology arose from the Babylon pillars of society as shamans and healers in pre-colonial Philippines, whose meaning and purpose were inverted by the Spanish colonizers. Reconfigured. Again, Santo's as figure is hybrid and state and status, negotiating strata and longing becoming land.
Speaker 3 00:59:10 These are not uncommon preoccupations today during eras of migration and diaspora. The blemishes or ink spots or perhaps stray or scars all over their bodies are more than skin deep. They tell stories, the narratives that make a life legible to oneself and to others. A form of permanent body adornment. Tattooing was a prevalent culture. Practice passed down in all ethnic groups of the Philippine Islands before they were colonized in the 16th century. Super enlarged tattoo motifs of the artist's design monumentalize this living art form as a cutaneous archive of ancestral knowledge that Filipinos are reviving today as a vibrant decolonial practice.
Speaker 1 00:59:53 Please move to the next stop, turn right and follow the path for four meters. Then turn right and continue. For seven and a half meters. The drawing is on your left. This will be the last stop on the tour. Chapter 37 <unk>. This chapter describes a pastel on paper drawing titled <unk> by Rita Laton, created in 1942 and measuring 47 by 67 centimeters. It is one and a half minutes long.
Speaker 2 01:00:28 Can you feel a storm after it passes, maybe in the smell of the air or the temperature change in <unk> Dej Re or today the echo of the storm resounds Rita Laton focuses on sounds and reverberations. She has used pastel, a chalky pigmented material to create an abstract composition of horizontal bands of vivid color blurring or almost vibrating as they transition upwards from rich blue to yellow to pale green, to orange to red, to black to blue, and then back to red. Is her inspiration the sky after a storm or is it the artist reflecting on the after effects of a more personal emotional storm? As she is written, my paintings are completely emotional, full of hair trigger intensity through them. I challenge space and time. I paint freedom, escape from the here and now from the mundane. The world isn't only what we see or what we experience. What are the textures or colors you attribute to emotions both in tens and tranquil?
Speaker 1 01:01:39 You're done the tour. Now turn right and follow the path to the bottom of the stairs where you began. Thank you for joining us, chapter 38 Credits. This audio description tour was written by Fiona Wright and recorded and edited by Nicole Bedford. Thank you to Rich Hillborn and Lud Mia Dubal for being the voices of the descriptions and to artist Melanie Myers, Gail Cab, and Mayor Gold Santos for their input. Thank you to the members of Ottawa's Blind and Low vision community who consulted on this tour in the early stages as well as Carla Aikawa. Thank you to Walter Zanetti for making the floor tracks and to Patrick Laka and Sandra Dick who installed them. Thank you to the curatorial team, Heather ilo, Leonte Alice Ming, Jim Anna Kaia. Alexandra Caio. Now Gabo Cozy Su Nek. Danielle, print up Heather Anderson and Sandra Dick Artworks were generously loaned by the artists private collectors, TD Bank, corporate art collection, Patel Brown, Cooper Cole, Norberg Hall, and the next Contemporary. The exhibition is supported by the Joe Friday and Grant Jameson Contemporary Art Fund, the Rea Greenberg Digital Initiatives Fund and the main Jackson Experiential Learning Fund.
