{"id":13853,"date":"2017-03-29T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-29T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=13853"},"modified":"2017-03-27T14:07:16","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T21:07:16","slug":"new-exhibit-puts-spotlight-on-non-commercial-aboriginal-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2017\/03\/29\/new-exhibit-puts-spotlight-on-non-commercial-aboriginal-art\/","title":{"rendered":"New exhibit puts spotlight on non-commercial aboriginal art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Art and storytelling play a big role in indigenous communities. Many art pieces tell stories; those that don\u2019t tend to radiate an imaginative aura that makes the viewer think and wonder about the piece and what it could be representing. Here in town, Open Space is currently hosting Awakening Memory<\/i>, a new art exhibit that looks at the role art plays in indigenous communities. Both traditional and contemporary stories will be explored by the three artists whose works are in the exhibit.<\/p>\n

Leslie Robert Sam\u2014better known by his decolonized artist\u2019s name, lessLIE\u2014is one of the artists with works in the show. He says that the artists involved in the exhibit are relatively young and have work that isn\u2019t aimed toward the commercial market.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re using contemporary Northwest art to reflect on something intellectually relating to Northwest coastal cultures beyond mere exploitation of cultural heritage,\u201d says Sam. \u201cThat\u2019s only the starting point.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Local artist Leslie Robert Sam, better known as lessLIE, looks at spindle whorls at the Royal BC Museum (photo by Kirk Schwartz).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To prepare for the exhibit, the artists visited the Royal BC Museum for inspiration. Sam says his part of the work was inspired by the experience of visiting the museum and seeing some of the ancestral artefacts on display there.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor my work in the exhibit, I looked at a couple of spindle whorls there,\u201d he says. \u201cI replicated two of them: one on acrylic on canvas, and the other is a sandblasted installation piece. My last canvas piece was inspired by and in the spirit of the other two that I replicated in some form.\u201d<\/p>\n

The artists have been sharing some ideas during two previous meetings, something that further inspired Sam.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve bounced ideas off one another in the meetings that we\u2019ve had, and that inspired some courage to look in different directions as far as works go on my part,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re artists that I always really admired and I feel honoured to be working with them. There haven\u2019t been any points of formal collaboration, but there are points where the work overlaps in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam is the only Coast Salish artist in the exhibit, a fact that brings some cultural diversity to the art on display.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a bit different for me, since I couldn\u2019t engage with what they were speaking about directly,\u201d says Sam about the culture gap, \u201cbut I did in a more indirect way. The areas where we overlap in our work would be one of the more challenging things in the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Awakening Memory
\n<\/i>Until Saturday, April 29
\nBy donation, Open Space
\nopenspace.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Art and storytelling play a big role in indigenous communities. Many art pieces tell stories; those that don\u2019t tend to radiate an imaginative aura that makes the viewer think and wonder about the piece and what it could be representing. Here in town, Open Space is currently hosting Awakening Memory, a new art exhibit that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,186],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-march-29-2017"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13853"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13856,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13853\/revisions\/13856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}