Projects
Website:
Beat Nation: Hip Hop as Indigenous Culture
This site focuses on the development of hip hop culture within Aboriginal youth communities and its influence on cultural production.
There has been some criticism over the years by older community members who see this influence as a break from tradition and the movement of the culture towards a pop-based mainstream assimilation. But in Beat Nation we see just the opposite happening. These artists are not turning away from the traditions as much as searching for new ways into them. Hip hop is giving youth new tools to rediscover First Nations culture. What is most striking about this work is how much of it embraces the traditional within its development.
Website:
Vancouver Art In The Sixties: Al Neil
Al Neil’s work transgresses borders. Whether working with music, visual art, performance art or writing, he has always included collage and cut-up methods within his work and combined different media in its development.
grunt is pleased to contribute to Ruins in Process: Vancouver Art in the Sixties with a comprehensive website on Al Neil.
Performance/Website
Cheryl L'Hirondelle
Nikamon Ohci Askiy (songs because of the land)
Photo credit: Nadya Kwandibens
During the month of December, the artist will make daily journeys throughout Vancouver and "sing" the landscape she encounters. These encounters will be captured by mobile phone by the artist and whatever other technologies are made available by participating viewers/audience (video, photo, audio).
During the live performances, Cheryl will sing, record and upload audio clips to an online database. Each audio clip will be tagged to one or more of the 16 cree values. The clips will automatically be available to online audiences interactively through a rich online media experience available at VancouverSonglines.ca
Website:
The Medicine Project
Our new project, Medicine, is a curated website featuring First Nations artists. It includes installations, performances and art works exploring issues of the physical, mental and spiritual trauma that often represents the current realities of many Aboriginal peoples in Canada. It further explores how contemporary artists reference ancient techniques and symbolism around the theme of Medicine to talk about the historical and contemporary realities in their communities. These are individual stories that have wider social implications: the project curator highlights ways artists have made these realities known as they speak up not only for themselves but also on behalf of communities and cultures. Curator Dana Claxton's text examines concepts of Medicine through Aboriginal contemporary art by artists who employ prescriptive and healing notions within their work.
Website:
Dana Claxton
Dana Claxton's media productions have developed over the past 20 years into a singular body of work. Earlier focused on anger at the situation of the First Nations in North America, Claxton later turned to aboriginal ideas of spirituality and the sacred, and translated them into performance, film, video, installation, and photography. The site contains downloadable essays by Monika Kin Gagnon, Lynne Bell, and Bea Medicine reprinted from source texts. It also includes also a curatorial essay and an extensive interview. This site makes Claxton's work available to a wide audience in an easily navigated and information-rich format. Curated by Tania Willard.
Website:
Rebecca Belmore
Before now there has been no one reference to give viewers an overall sense of Rebecca Belmore's achievement. In Canada, her distinctive and insightful performances, videos, and exhibitions have brought contemporary aboriginal art to the forefront of the arts community. Internationally, she has participated in Biennales in Venice, Havana, Sydney, and Tirana as well as at InSite in Santa Fe. This stark, sleek retrospective site features video clips, extended biographical information, and critical writing by Jolene Rickard and Lee-Ann Martin from source texts. Curated by Daina Warren.
Website:
Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun
Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun's site is a visually rich display of the paintings and other works by this essential British Columbian aboriginal artist. The retrospective section features a strong selection of Yuxweluptun's two-dimensional work from the past 20 years - both his surrealist political works and abstracts. The interdisciplinary section gives a cross-section of his works in digital media, sculpture, installation, and performance. The site also contains critical texts by curator Scott Watson and art historian Charlotte Townsend-Gault. The interviews and essays trace Yuxweluptun's concerns ranging from the mistreatment of aboriginal communities to the destruction of our environment. Curated by Elaine Moyah.
Website:
First Vision
First Vision is an online documentation of three curatorial projects featuring work of First Nations artists from the grunt archives and beyond. Curated by three young, dynamic artists from the aboriginal community, the site is a valuable addition to our growing presentation of contemporary Native art. First Vision is funded through the Gateway Project Canada Culture Online of the Department of Canadian Heritage, a program dedicated to making First Nations cultural material available to all Canadians.
Website:
brunt magazine
editions 1, 2 & 3
More than just an archive, brunt online is a web space that brings artists' work straight into your living room, or wherever your internet window to the world is. Not just a reprint of brunt magazine, it contains video streams of challenging performances, artists' reflections on their work, and critical writing on past exhibitions. Built to please, brunt online offers you art with no holds barred.
Website:
First Nations Performance Archive
Produced by Daina Warren and Jay Thompson, First Nations Performance features performance work by aboriginal artists produced at grunt since 1989. The site is comprehensive, containing almost 5 hours of video, numerous photos, essays, and other texts.
CDROM:
An Indian Act: Shooting the Indian Act
This CDROM is a documentation of Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun's performance "An Indian Act Shooting the Indian Act". The performance expresses Yuxweluptun's frustrations with the outmoded and patriarchal Indian Act, which continues to entrench Native communities within the limitations of colonialism. Yuxweluptun's work speaks to the problems, realities, and lives of Native people today. An Indian Act: Shooting the Indian Act won the 2007 ImagineNATIVE Festival "Best New Media" award.
Available from the gallery shop
CDROM:
Chiasma
An online performance exchange between three international arts organizations, featuring:
Léa Donnan
Imperial Slacks - Sydney, Australia
Rebecca Belmore
grunt gallery - Vancouver, Canada
Hester Reeve
Folly - Lancaster, UK
Available from the gallery shop
Conference
Live in Public - The Art of Engagement
This three-day conference was an artist-initiated exploration of community-developed public art and the artist's place within it. Rejecting notions of social work or community development, the conference looked at the realities of publicly engaged art practices and brought together a variety of artists who examined roles, expectations, risks, and breakthroughs through a series of panels and an open space discussion.
Access All Areas: Conversations on Engaged Arts
Edited by Tania Willard
Explores the nature of community arts covering topics as wide-ranging as community arts practice itself, this publication takes a critical look at individual practice, multi-culturalism and approaches to working with marginalized communities as well as building knowledge of the roots of community art.
Contibutors: Devora Neumark, Irwin Oostindie, Maria Hupfield, Peter Morin, Chris Bose, Caffyn Kellley, Melanie Fernandez, Glenn Alteen, Oliver Kelhammer, Darren O'Donnell, Jules Rochielle, Lori Weidenhammer and Paula Jardine.
$18 Can plus S+H, available at the gallery shop.
Conference:
INDIANacts
INDIANacts - Aboriginal Performance Art is a three day gathering of artists and scholars to examine performance art practices arising from the Aboriginal culture. In the past twenty years or so a significant growth in contemporary native performance art has been generated by a unique combination of culture, tradition, time, and place. This art form has been approached from places as diverse as visual art, video and film, and the fringes of dance, music, and theatre. Whatever the background, a certain unique genre of work has been and is being created. The time for discussion regarding its history and processes is overdue.
Publication:
Live at the End of the Century
Live at the End of the Century highlights some of the many aspects of performance art that have been manifest in Vancouver. Touching on history, motivation, viewpoints, aesthetics, politics, theory etc, the writers in this anthology reflect the diversity of approach artists and writers have taken towards performance. This rich sampling of over 35 years of performance activity in Vancouver includes essays by Glenn Alteen, Warren Arcan, Ivan Coyote, Todd Davis, Margaret Dragu, Karen Henry, Kiss & Tell, Glenn Lewis, Aiyyana Maracle, Tanya Mars, Archer Pechawis, Judy Radul and Paul Wong.
Available from the gallery shop