007 SHOW AT CENTRAL ART GARAGE FEATURED IN OTTAWA MAGAZINE
Joi T Arcand, ᑭᔮᒼ, 2017
SPECIAL AGENTS JOIN 007 FOR 150 EXHIBIT IT’S COMPLICATED (CENTRAL ART GARAGE)
HULL INDUSTRIAL SPACE DISPLAYS ENDLESS LANDSCAPES
BY PAUL GESSELL.
Image: KITCHI ZIBI OMAMIWININI ANISHINABE BY BARRY ACE. PHOTO: SHELBY LISK
POSTED JULY 6, 2017 1:25 PM
The black, old-fashioned crank telephone sits on a ledge in the small gallery called Central Art Garage. The temptation to lift the receiver is irresistible. So, pick it up and listen. The sounds of screams and wails continue endlessly like the soundtrack of a B-horror film.
This telephone installation is the creation of Ottawa artist Frank Shebageget. His artwork is called “Get Out” AKA Canada Horror Stories. The sounds are a joint creation of Shebageget and artist-musician Bear Witness. It’s part of an exhibition, It’s Complicated, by 10 local Aboriginal artists responding to celebrations marking Canada’s 150th birthday. The exhibition is part of the National Arts Centre’s Canada Scene, the multidisciplinary arts festival being held across the capital area this summer.
For many Indigenous people, the last 150 years are all about colonialism and repression; there is nothing to celebrate. Like Shebageget’s phone, some of the works are combinations of humour and horror. Others are just contemplative. All have a certain sadness.
Seven of the artists in the exhibition are members of the 007 Collective. Three others, including Meryl McMaster, were invited to join the group for this show as “special agents.”
McMaster has a habit of stealing the show when ever she is in a group exhibition. She does not disappoint this time. Her contribution is a large photograph titled Truth to Power. On one side is a mournful looking portrait of herself. On the other is a poem called Onondaga Madonna by Duncan Campbell Scott, the so-called Confederation poet who is also the father of the tragic Indigenous residential school system. The poem begins:
She stands full-throated and with careless pose
This woman of a weird and waning race
Poems like this from Scott were once studied in Canadian schools. Now, they are deemed racist and untouchable.
Ron Noganosh has turned a lamp into a political statement. The shade offers bucolic scenes of nature. But black, tar-like swirls blight the landscape. The work is called Paradise Pipeline Co. In this, Canada’s sesquicentennial, Aboriginal opposition to oil pipelines has become a rallying cry.
Leo Yerxa has created a zen-like drawing of a skeletal teepee in the mist. The title: Standing in the Twilight of The Canadian Dream.
Barry Ace gets cheeky with a photograph of the Indigenous scout that used to kneel at the feet of Samuel de Champlain at Nepean Point. The scout in recent years was moved to Major’s Hill Park so he would look less subservient. Ace has placed a gaudy beaded necklace – “bling,” he calls it – around the statue’s neck. The photograph is titled Kitchi Zibi Omamiwinini Anishinabe.
It’s Complicated continues until July 31 at Central Art Garage, at 66B Lebreton St.