Font size options
Increase or decrease the font size for this website by clicking on the 'A's.
Contrast options
Choose a color combination to give the most comfortable
contrast.
Guided art tour will be in person at Dunlop Art Gallery, Central Library.
Join us for a special in-gallery guided art tour from 6:00 -6:30 pm with Catherine Blackburn to hear about her exhibition called "New Age Warriors". This exhibition has been on a Canadian-wide tour for four years, with its final stop at Dunlop Art Gallery. Opening reception will follow along with Open Mic Night: Peace & Power.
Catherine Blackburn’s work explores loss, language, and survival through the medium of beadwork. While these themes continue to flow through this exhibition, Blackburn’s New Age Warriors expands conversations around love and perseverance. Combining regalia designed from plastic beads with photographs of Indigenous women wearing her creations, Blackburn considers Indigenous futures, storytelling and kinship, drawing from traditions of the past and the culture of the present to celebrate the strength of Indigenous women.
Catherine Blackburn was born in Patuanak, SK. She is of Dene and European ancestry and is a member of the English River First Nation. She is a multidisciplinary artist and jeweller, whose common themes address Canada's colonial past that are often prompted by personal narratives. Her work has been shown internationally, from galleries to fashion runways. She has received numerous grants and awards for her work, including a Governor General History Award, the Saskatchewan RBC Emerging Artist Award, and the Melissa Levin Emerging Artist Award. In 2019, she was longlisted for the prestigious Sobey Art Award. She is affiliated with the Alcheringa Gallery in Victoria, BC; the Mann Art Gallery in Prince Albert, SK; the Remai Modern in Saskatoon SK; Slate Gallery in Regina SK, and the BYellowtail Collective in Los Angeles, CA.
AGE GROUP: | Adults |
EVENT TYPE: | Dunlop Art Gallery Exhibitions | Art and Creation |
TAGS: | Indigenous | Dunlop Art Gallery | Artist and Author Talks | Art |
Christina Battle, William “Billy” Beal, Anna Binta Diallo, Cheryl Foggo, Judah Iyunade, Richard Allan Thomas, Chukwudubem Ukaigwe, NASRA, Frank B. Jamerson fonds
BLACK PRAIRIES honours more than one hundred years of Black/African-Canadian cultural production in the Prairies, spanning the 1920s to the present, with a focus on lens-based media. The exhibition includes newly commissioned contemporary artwork, original glass plate negatives by early 1900s Black Manitoban photographer William “Billy” Beal, and archival photographs from the City of Edmonton’s Frank B. Jamerson fonds.
Beal’s glass plate negatives, taken between 1915 and 1925, document homesteading life in western Manitoba from the perspective of a lone Black man living in an all-white rural township during the early 1900s. Meanwhile, the photographs in the Frank B. Jamerson fonds, created by unnamed photographers, depict everyday Black life in and around Amber Valley, Alberta—a historic community formed during the Great Black Migration of 1910. This migration saw African-Americans fleeing racial violence in the United States to seek refuge in the Canadian Prairies. The selected photographs in this exhibition capture the first thirty years after the migration, reflecting the experiences of the first generation of Black migrants in the region. The contemporary artists in this exhibition foster important dialogues about personal histories, a changing climate, and collective experiences in the region.
Additionally, the exhibition includes the newly created short film For Caesar by filmmaker Cheryl Foggo. The film features Leander Lane, the great-grandson of Julius Caesar Lane, a founding member of the Shiloh People, the historic African-Canadian community in Saskatchewan.
BLACK PRAIRIES provides space for communal grounding and reflection on the ongoing and ever-expanding continuum of Black life and Black cultural production in the Prairies.
Image: Rosa and Mary, Amber Valley, Alberta c. 1940, black and white photograph, 5 x 6 cm. Frank B. Jamerson fonds, courtesy City of Edmonton Archives.
