Jamesie Pudloo Pitseolak

Canadian

(b. 1968)

Horse Shoe 2007

Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Acquired with funds from the Estate of Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Naylor; funds administered by The Winnipeg Foundation

Younger Inuit artists’ search for subject matter relevant to them is leading them away from the land, animals, and spiritual entities of previous generations. Jamesie Pitseolak enjoys recreating articles in use in contemporary settlement life, such as guitars, sewing machines, automobiles, shoes, tennis rackets, and skateboards. His inspiration comes from television, movies, magazines, current events, and from his childhood. His sculptures are usually small in scale, and different components are intricately carved from varying colours of the hard green serpentinite stone from south Baffin Island. Horse Shoe is one of a series of humorous carvings he has created in the last two years, inspired by word-play and visual puns. Another sculpture by Jamesie, a motorcycle titled Chopper, was purchased for the WAG’s Inuit art collection in 2007.

KC Adams

Canadian

(b. 1971)

“Indian Princess” Cyborg Hybrid KC (visual artist) from the Banff series, 2005

Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Gift of the artist

Due to her own dependence on technology for communicating, research, and art production, KC Adams considers herself to be a complex hybrid of sort—of mixed Euro-Aboriginal ancestry and a combination of human life and advanced intelligent media. This reality is expressed in her ongoing series of photographs of Cyborg Hybrids where Adams employs, as her muses, young contemporary Aboriginal professionals who are also interdependent on technology. Mimicking fashion glamour magazine head shots, her models sport white t-shirts that feature hand-beaded lettering across their chests in the form of stereotypical associations or derogative slurs. Within this rubric the artist plays with notions of identity and stereotype, intersecting and combining perceptions and barriers. Of note is that this particular work is a self-portrait.

Chelsea Porcelain

British; English

Sauce boat and stand c. 1755

Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; The Ruby Ashdown Collection of Decorative Art

In September 2009, the WAG enthusiastically welcomed The Ruby Ashdown Collection of Decorative Art to its permanent holdings. This extensive collection of some 208 works, largely English 18th century porcelain, is the most significant gift to the Decorative Arts collection of the last 15 years. Highlighted here is an exquisite Chelsea sauce boat and stand. Although only in existence for a relatively short period (c.1745-1769), the London-based Chelsea Porcelain Factory has been called the most famous of the English porcelain producers, recognized for its quality wares marketed to the upper classes. This whimsical sauce boat and stand is decorated on the top as well as underside with puce molded veins and green leaves; the stand supports a sauceboat with stalk handle, applied and molded with strawberry blooms and buds. An object of pure fancy and Chelsea at its best.

Elizabeth Wyn Wood

Canadian

(1903-1966)

Neck and Head 1926-1927

Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Gift of Mrs. Janet Adaskin in memory of Gordon Adaskin

Elizabeth Wyn Wood is best known for her monumental sculpture and small-scale three-dimensional interpretations of the rugged landscape of the Canadian Shield. Neck and Head is obviously quite different. It was produced during a brief but enriching period in the artist’s early career. After graduating from the Ontario College of Art, Wood pursued further study in New York City, where she was introduced to wood and stone carving. Neck and Head is the only known piece dating from her American period. It reveals the access she had in New York to art by an international roster of modern sculptors like Constantin Brancusi and Raymond Duchamp-Villon.

Germaine Arnaktauyok

Canadian

(b. 1946)

Mother Earth 2007

Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Acquired with funds from the Estate of Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Naylor; funds administered by The Winnipeg Foundation

The Winnipeg Art Gallery organized a solo exhibition of Germaine Arnaktauyok’s drawings and prints in 1998, at which time several of her works were acquired for the WAG collection. Mother Earth is a more recent reflection of the artist’s continuing interest in female entities and the traditional stories of her Iglumiut culture. She has explained the subject of this drawing: “According to Inuit legend, women who were unable to have children were able to get a baby from under the ground. All they had to do was walk away from their camp a short distance and then begin looking on their hands and knees.... I have portrayed the young mother-to-¬be at the moment of discovery and the child fully formed in the ‘womb’ of the earth.”

Morris & Co.

England

Draught Screen 1890-1900

Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Gift of an anonymous donor

This three-fold draught screen features the embroidery of May Morris, daughter of William Morris (1836-1896), famed designer and founder of the Arts & Crafts movement in Britain. May shared her father’s love of art-making and championed hand-crafted objects and the empowerment of the craftsperson in the machine age. Like her father, she was an ardent socialist. After training at the South Kensington School of Design (now London’s Royal College of Art), she managed the embroidery department of her father’s company, Morris & Co. The unique panels in this screen—here worked on a silk damask support of Morris & Co. “Oak”—suggest May’s design work, particularly the straight-stemmed lilies. The entwined tendrils of floral elements linking the three panels are more typical of Morris & Co.’s commercial production. The actual needlework may be hers, but if not, it was likely produced under her close supervision. George Jack, who is credited as the maker of the wooden supports for the screen, was Morris & Co.’s chief furniture designer in the 1890s.
 

Leah Decter

Canadian

(b. 1960)

raze 2006

Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Acquired with funds from the Mr. and Mrs. G.B. Wiswell Fund, with funds from the Winnipeg Rh Foundation Inc., and with funds from the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance program/Oeuvre achetée avec l

Leah Decter’s installation raze is composed of 30 felted house forms. Suspended in a tight grid, some houses are taller, some in various states of decay, yet there is a type of uniformity throughout the piece. The work itself reflects any neighbourhood that is defined by a mixture of cultures, classes, income levels, and generations. North American neighbourhoods such as this were built during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, ringing a downtown city core. As the core dies due to the drain of suburbia, this unsettling consequence radiates out. With the title of the work Decter plays with the meaning and phonetic nature of the word raze – to demolish or to rise up– further heightening these associations.