Stan Douglas Top: Klatsassin Portraits (Thief), 2006 Bottom: Klatsassin Portraits (Prisoner), 2006 laserchrome prints Collection of the artist Courtesy Stan Douglas and David Zwirner, NY
Internationally renowned Vancouver-based artist Stan Douglas has shown his work at and had it collected by prestigious institutions around the world. His photographs and projections are celebrated not only for their conceptual acuity and formal precision but also for how they continually extend the possibilities of film and video, and art itself.
Klatsassin defies the official version of events leading to the Chilcotin War of 1864 by focussing on the story of a Tsilhqot’in chief who was accused of murder, tried and executed. Set in B.C.’s Cariboo-Chilcotin region, it depicts events related to gold rush efforts to build a road through Tsilhqot’in territory to the gold fields and the First Nations insurgency in response. Current events in the region echo those of the earlier conflict between aboriginal and colonialist interests. Klatsassin is composed of three elements: a filmic projection, a series of photographic portraits of characters from the film, and a series of landscape or location photographs.
Klatsassin’s form and content recall Akira Kurosawa’s classic film Rashomon (1950), and its similar multiple and contradictory portrayals of a murder. In Douglas’ work, too, various versions of a murder scene are depicted. Within both Rashomon and Klatsassin changes in perspective and narrative revisions turn a single incident into a complex and multi-layered story that raises probing questions. Is there such a thing as a singular absolute truth? Who determines which version of a story becomes the official version and who decides what ‘history’ tells us? While posing such questions, Klatsassin draws our attention to the constructed and fragmentary nature of history, identity and place.
The exhibition opening is preceded by a lecture by Stan Douglas.
Supported by The Audain Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Hamber Foundation and The Leon and Thea Koerner Foundation
Sponsored by CBC Radio One and London Drugs
Click here for Canadian Art on-line article
(left) Kate Garrett-Petts door detail from what night is made from, 2010 mixed media
(right) Melanie Perreault the vaporous thoughts of library fog forgotten on a thursday stroll through ginger leaves, 2009 mixed media Photos by Ray Perreault
This summer marks the sixth annual exhibition of work by graduating students from Thompson Rivers University. Selected by Kamloops Art Gallery Assistant Curator Craig Willms, the works in Curator’s Choice highlight emerging talent from TRU’s Bachelor of Fine Arts 2010 graduating class. Students at TRU graduate with a wide variety of specialties, including ceramics, printmaking, sculpture, painting, photography and installation. This year’s exhibition features installations by Kate Garrett-Petts and Melanie Perreault. Like previous Curator’s Choice exhibitions, this is not so much a ‘best of’ show, but rather one united by thematic and aesthetic threads running through the work of these two emerging artists.
Claire Nevin
My Cabin, 2010
watercolour on paper
Kamloops Art Gallery presents a display of work made by students ages four to twelve year during the 2010 Summer Art Camp. Summer art instructors Robyn Reierson-Bisong and Katrina Beharrel, and assisted by Laura Cain a YMCA Summer Exchange Student from Quebec, introduced the students to KAG’s summer exhibition, Stan Douglas: Klatsassin. Working with a different theme each week, children experimented with a variety of art materials and discovered new art techniques in works that respond to the themes of Klatsassin.
Kim Clarke Photography Copyright © 2010, Kamloops Art Gallery. All Rights Reserved Powered by SiteCMTM— web content management made easy by ideaLEVER Solutions.
View Cart Site Map[ + ]
