With the cheeky title Group Of Seven Inches, Cree filmmaker and artist Kent Monkman responds to Canadian landscape painting with a residency at the McMichael gallery.
Monkman is currently working on an ambitious series of paintings, some monumental, all landscapes in which figures of native Indians invert and pervert the narratives commonly featured in 18th- and 19th-century paintings of the Canadian wilderness.
“Monkman reverses the ethnological gaze,” states a release, “turning white men into objects of curiosity and scrutiny. Power, representation and identity inform his playful and naughty responses to the Eurocentric art histories of Edward Curtis and the Group Of Seven, whose work is on display at the McMichael.”
Three of Monkman’s recent paintings were part of a group show this summer at the Musée Art Contemporain Montréal and Monkman has been awarded a three-week residency at the Smithsonian and its affiliated museums to study firsthand their collections of historical paintings.
While Monkman won’t be showing any of the later paintings from the series at the McMichael – too realistic, too dirty – he will be exhibiting transitional pieces that incorporate his earlier use of Cree syllabics. His alter ego Miss Chief Share Eagle Testickle will host an artist and model salon at 3pm on Sat, Aug 28.
Monkman is ensconced in the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario from 10am to 5pm on Fri, Aug 27 to 29. Admission to the gallery is $15; call (905) 893-1121 or 1-888-213-1121.
Groups Of Seven Inches is part of the wide-ranging Planet IndegenUs festival running at various venues in Toronto and environs this month. As part of the festival, Monkman is also moderating a panel on Tribal Tattoo And Body Art at 4:30pm on Sat, Aug 21 and is part of a panel on Indigenous Identity at 2pm on Aug 22; both at Harbourfront’s Lakeside Terrace (235 Queens Quay W). There’s also a performance by Kinnie Starr in the Brigantine Room at 11pm on Aug 21, as well as a screening of the short documentary The Other Day In Paradise about the art and history of Pacific Island erotica – homo, trans and straight. The film is shown in the Studio Theatre at 8pm, Aug 21. For more info, go to Harbourfrontcentre.com.
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