Andrew Qappik was only 14 when his first prints were published in the 1978 Pangnirtung annual collection. Born in 1964 in Nunataq, a camp about 40 miles from the east Baffin Island settlement of Pangnirtung, he moved with his parents into the community when he was a young child. When a print¬making workshop was established in the hamlet in 1973, young Andrew watched the experienced artists, especially his uncles Solomon and Imoona Karpik, who encouraged him to create his own drawings.

Qappik’s works have been included in every Pangnirtung print collection, and he is well-known throughout the North for his design of the Nunavut flag and the territory’s coat-of-arms and official logo.

This exhibiton marks the donation to the Gallery of a complete collection of 140 of Qappik’s catalogued and uncatalogued (“personal”) prints by Dr. H.G. Jones of North Carolina. It’s an important first solo exhibition for this respected artist, and features a selection of limited-edition prints spanning his graphic career. It is another in a series of WAG exhibitions of second- and third-generation Inuit artists who are expressing personal and contemporary concerns.

Exhibition sponsored by The Dorothy Strelsin Foundation and FirstAir.