Summer Shows at The Park!

The shows are curated by our newest curator, the recipient of the TD Curatorial Fellowship, Nawang Kinkar. We sat down with Nawang to tell you about her first two WAG-Qaumajuq curated exhibitions, Shifting Horizons and Living Pictures From the Land. Learn more in this interview where Nawang talks about her process and her time at WAG-Qaumajuq so far.

WAG-Qaumajuq (WQ): Congratulations on your first WAG-Qaumajuq exhibitions! How does it feel?

NK: Thank you. It feels great to lead a project from start to finish and see all aspects of the exhibition process. I’ve really appreciated learning from my colleagues across different departments as well and their generosity with sharing knowledge, especially regarding local and regional artists that have shaped the history of art on the Prairies.

WQ: What were your impressions of the collections (WAG-Qaumajuq and the Assiniboine Park Conservancy) and working with our teams?

NK: It’s always interesting to hear from the people who’ve spent so much time with the collection and have seen it grow in many ways during different periods of the Gallery’s history. The collection is vast and contains many significant works by artists across the country, but as with any museum collection, there are gaps that require our attention, and it remains our responsibility to continue the work of addressing and filling these gaps.  

Working with the Assiniboine Park’s collection was a unique experience! WAG@The Park is a wonderful initiative and allows us to invite audiences to experience art in a different environment. Their collection of works by Ivan Eyre and Walter J. Phillips is impressive, and I was excited for the opportunity to put their works in conversation with works from our collection.  

Our registrar, Nicole Fletcher, and vault technician, Dan Donaldson, were two people who were instrumental in getting me acquainted with the Gallery’s collection. I recall Dan and I looking through rows and rows of artworks inside the vault very early on in the process of making Shifting Horizons and Living Pictures from the Land. I had a great time working with our designer, Bramwell Enan, and the entire prep team who helped me bring the exhibition to life. All these exchanges, and more, have been a wonderful way to get to know my new colleagues too. 

WQ: Shifting Horizons is on view now, you mentioned that you were intrigued by Eyre’s horizon lines being quite high. Can you share what that does to a painting and how it impacts the viewer?

NK: Yes, that was one my first observations of Eyre’s works when I started researching the Park’s collection. The horizon line indicates eye level, and this line draws your attention to a specific area of the work, allowing us to organize visual space and understand the narrative (if any) in the work. Whether we are aware of it or not, the horizon line shapes our visual perspective, and I argue, that it also plays a part in shaping our worldviews, taking into consideration what the artist themselves are trying to convey. 

I think I felt more immediately drawn to Eyre’s horizon lines because I was experiencing the flatness of Southern Manitoba for the first time as well. I saw the vastness of the Prairie skies, the long roads, and the yellow fields, all reflected in Eyre’s landscape paintings. Looking at works in our vault, I noticed the attention to the Prairie landscape through colour and form by artists such as Ron Gorsline, Kenneth Lochhead and Tony Tascona. At the same time, there’s a level of uncertainty and uneasiness that is felt when looking at the horizon too, and I think that’s important to consider. Works by lens-based artists such as Diana Thorneycroft, David Firman, and Billy Akavak explore this aspect of the theme and complicate the role of the horizon line in the exhibition.  

Ivan Eyre. Tanglewood, 1973. Acrylic on canvas, 157.8 x 363.7 cm. Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Gift of the Women’s Committee in honour of Winnipeg’s Centennial, G-74-38.

WQ: Sylvie Readman’s Les Vertues Cardinales is a triptych showing three different perspectives, how do these images all relate to each other and what do you want the viewer to take away from this piece?

NK: Les Vertues Cardinales is one of my favourite works in this exhibition because of the way the artist Sylvie Readman plays with perspective. The work is made up of three photographs of varying sizes. The smallest image depicts the view seen through a birdhouse, and the circular shape in this perspective reminds me of looking through a camera. The mid-size image shows us the birdhouse itself. Finally, in the third and largest photograph, a typical landscape view alludes to the direction the birdhouse is facing, and the perspective of this landscape is slightly slanted.  

There is a fourth perspective here too—the perspective of the gallery visitor. When one approaches this work, it’s likely that they would be drawn to an individual image first. I’m interested here in the visitor’s perspective as they move back in the gallery space to observe the whole work or move toward a specific photograph for closer examination. Their physical participation in acts of looking is what I’m interested in and what I hope the viewer grows more conscious of.

Sylvie Readman. Les Vertues Cardinales, 1991. Colour photograph. Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Gift of Dr. Marisa Zavalloni, G-94-283 abc

WQ: Changing to the Living Pictures From the Land exhibition, can you explain what a living picture/tableau vivant is? Was this a common theme in art history at any point?

NK: From my research, tableau vivants have a very long history but were popularized in the 18th and 19th centuries in European aristocratic societies. Tableau vivants literally translate to “living pictures” and involves live actors frozen in performances that mimic art historical scenes, often Christian narratives. However, it’s not necessarily the content of those staged scenes that the exhibition is relying on. Rather, the show draws from the motivations behind these performances. Actors holding their pose—frozen in time—to imitate a work of art underscores the practice’s propensity for authenticity. This dance between fact and fiction or the real and the imagined is what the show is interested in.

WQ: Walter J. Phillips is known for his picturesque Canadian landscapes, what made you want to include works by artists who challenge this narrative?

Edward Burtynsky. Mines #19, Westar Open Pit Coal Mine, Sparwood, British Columbia, from the series Mines, 1985. Dye coupler print on paper, 5/10. 68.6 x 86.4 cm. Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Gift of the artist, 2005-117. Photo by Burtynsky Studio

NK: The contemporary artists certainly challenge Walter J. Phillips’ works but I also think there are instances where they employ similar desires in their own ways, and this is the throughline in the exhibition and why I draw from the practice of tableau vivants. The ode to tableau vivant is more explicitly referenced by artists Holly King and Sarah Ann Johnson whose works include fabricating physical dioramas in their studios to create fictious environments. King and Johnson served as contemporary entry points into how I began making connections between tableau vivants and the landscapes in Phillips’ works in the first place. The consistent appearance of Canadian wilderness tropes the artist employed throughout his works—through the placement of a canoe on a picturesque lake scene, the view of mountain ranges through a lush forest, or the use of a totem pole to allude to a “vanishing race” —is what the show focuses on. The tactics that Phillips uses to perpetuate white settler–colonial aspirations is embedded in an underlying desire to paint a “true” picture and this inclination is what I want to draw our attention to. The manipulation of truth as well as the tension between the real and the imagined are the relationships the exhibition engages with, and each artist participates in this in their unique way.  

WQ: Which works are your favourite that conflict with Phillips’ idealized pieces?

NK: Shelly Niro’s Final Moments – Thinking of You (1998) is a work that I’m very excited to include in this exhibition. The work consists of twelve photographs. There are three zoomed-in photographs of each element (fire, air, water, earth) which is very different from Phillips’ landscapes as well as other depictions of land by contemporary artists in the exhibition. Like Phillips, repetition is a technique that Niro plays with, but the abstract quality of her images is what I find most compelling.  The work also rejects the notion that a single image conveys a complete narrative. I think this is a work that generates many different meanings and ideas, and I am pleased that it will be in dialogue with the artworks in the exhibition.

Thank you to TD Bank for making this curatorial fellowship possible.  

Check out this video!