INFO/FLOE: Curated by Michael McCormack
Exhibiting: March 2 - 31, 2019
Opening Reception: 6pm Friday, March 8th
Lindsay Dobbin and Matthew Morgan, Receive Transmit (Bay of Fundy and Yukon River), Bay of Fundy photo by Lindsay Dobbin, Yukon River photo by Matthew Morgan, 2018.
Josh Winkler, Klondike Tailings, colour woodcut, 2018
Josh Winkler (Mahkato/Mankato, Minnesota); and Lindsay Dobbin (Kanien’kehá:ka /Acadian/Irish based in K’jipuktuk/Halifax) in collaboration with Elder Angie Joseph-Rear, Michelle Olson and Matthew Morgan (Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in citizens) and Sharon Maureen Vittrekwa (Tetlit Gwich’in citizen).
Curated by Michael McCormack.
INFO/FLOE is a project that brings together work from two methodologies of communicating with the land as archive; through listening and performance, and through synthetic reproduction of found objects. It considers the impermanence and malleability of information, language, experience and storytelling, through time-based, and print-based media. Josh Winkler, and Lindsay Dobbin have developed practices that deeply consider our relationships as stewards, protectors and active communicators with the natural environment.
This is the second iteration of this exhibition, involving a selection of works completed during the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture’s six-week Natural & Manufactured residency program in July/August of 2018. Winkler’s work emerged from a two-week hike through the Chilkoot Trail and further shorter hikes in and around Dawson City. Dobbin collaborated remotely from their home on the Bay of Fundy in Mi’kma’ki (the ancestral and unceded territory of Lnu’k or Mi’kmaq), with three Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in citizens – Elder Angie Joseph-Rear, Michelle Olson and Matthew Morgan – and one Tetlit Gwich’in citizen – Sharon Maureen Vittrekwa.
Involving participatory performance, sound, and installation, Dobbin’s work is ecocentric, using listening as wayfinding. Their work intends to deepen our relationship with the natural world, and bridge our relationships with the natural environment that have been fragmented and scattered through colonization and industrialization. Josh Winkler’s work involves in-depth research and consideration of materials that are found in the area of the Klondike, recorded and reproduced as manufactured objects. Winkler’s woodcut prints include detailed representations of the results of human interaction with the environment, and how it affects our physical relationship with the land.
Click here to see the exhibition essay by Michael McCormack.
Hermes Gallery is located in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of Lnu’k (the Mi’kmaq People). This territory is covered by the “Treaties of Peace and Friendship” which Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) Peoples first signed with the British Crown in 1725. The treaties did not deal with surrender of lands and resources but in fact recognized Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) title and established the rules for what was to be an ongoing relationship between nations.
We would like to extend our gratitude to the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation for their continuous stewardship of this land, and for welcoming this project through it’s developing stages on their traditional territory, and to the staff and volunteers of the Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre, The Klondike Institute of Art & Culture, Parks Canada, and CFYT 106.9 FM for their support.
Josh K. Winkler is a Minnesota artist working primarily with traditional and contemporary print media. Since receiving his MFA from the University of Minnesota in 2010, Josh has been creating works on paper, running a small gallery, building a stone cabin, and exhibiting work nationally and internationally. He is currently an Associate Professor of Printmaking at Minnesota State University in Mankato, Minnesota. Winkler’s work stems from an interest in how humans manipulate and label the land. How time, politics, and social change alter the context of both natural and inhabited locations. By combining personal experience with historical investigation, Winkler builds layered landscape narratives to reflect on an uncomfortable disconnect between contemporary Americans and the history of the land. He utilizes a range of drawing, printmaking, and sculptural processes to facilitate these ideas.
Lindsay Dobbin is a Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) – Acadian – Irish artist, musician, curator and educator who lives and works on the Bay of Fundy in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of Lnu’k (Mi’kmaq). Born in and belonging to the Kennebecasis River Valley in New Brunswick, Dobbin has lived throughout the Maritimes as well as the Yukon Territory. Dobbin’s place-responsive practice includes music, media art, performance, sculpture, installation, social practices and writing, and is invested in and influenced by Indigenous epistemologies and cultural practices, such as drumming. Through placing listening, collaboration and improvisation at the centre of the creative process, Dobbin’s practice explores the connection between the environment and the body, and engages in a sensorial intimacy with the living land.
