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CANADIAN INDUSTRY ONLINE - OCTOBER 2014
T
HERE ’ S A NEW
thunderbird in
Barrie, Ontario – made possible
through the
The 2014
recipient of the award, the MacLaren-
Arts Centre, is using prize funds to
acquire one of
s pow-
erful neon thunderbirds, from his Tau-
tology series.
The York Wilson Endowment
Award is an annual prize (up to
$30,000) for Canadian art museums
and public art galleries to purchase
original works by living, contempo-
rary Canadian painters and sculptors.
It was presented to the MacLarenArt-
Centre on September 25, on the occa-
sion of two major cultural events in
Barrie – Culture Days and Carnegie
Days.
Renée van der Avoird, the Ma-
cLaren’s curator of contemporary art,
took a few minutes to answer our
questions about the gallery and the
work it purchased.
********************
Can you tell us a bit about the
work you’re purchasing with the
award?
Tautology is a suite of five neon
wall sculptures, each depicting a
thunderbird. The work was first pre-
sented in 2011 as a singular red neon
at the White Water Gallery in North
Bay, Ontario, Duane’s home town.
Subsequently, it toured Canada as
part of Beat Nation, a group show
organized by the Vancouver Art Gal-
lery. For the Sobey Art Award Exhi-
bition last year at the Art Gallery of
Nova Scotia, Duane expanded Tau-
tology into a series of five neon wall
works, each a radiating a different co-
lour: gold, blue, green, white and red.
Exhibited together as a suite, the five
thunderbirds illuminated the darkened
gallery space with an eerie and strik-
ing glow. The MacLaren is purchasing
one of five neons in the suite: the gold
one.
In terms of the concept be-
hind the piece, Duane appropriated
the thunderbird image from Norval
Morrisseau’s seminal painting, An-
drogyny (1983), which, until recently,
hung in Ottawa’s Rideau Hall. Given
Canada’s history of repressing Ab-
original culture and language, the use
of Morrisseau’s painting as a back-
drop for exclusive political ceremonies
was fraught with a complicated irony.
In response, Tautology speaks to the
hypocritical nature of institutions that
simultaneously use and marginal-
ize Native imagery. In a more general
sense, the work addresses notions of
translation, repetition and symbolism
to critically examine ideas of author-
ship and cultural appropriation.
How did you come to know
about this work?
I first saw the red version of Tau-
tology last year at the Power Plant in
the Beat Nation show. The piece had
an intense glow in the darkened space
that really affected me. Later, I went to
Duane’s artist talk at the Power Plant
and was intrigued by the conceptual
basis and all the research he’d done
leading up to it. It was one of those
works that stayed with me for a long
time after I’d seen it.
Why did you choose to purchase
it? How does it fit in with the MacLar-
en Art Centre’s collection/mandate?
Last fall, the MacLaren presented
a solo exhibition by Duane called De-
commission. I thought Tautolgy would
be a good fit for us because it shows
our commitment to acquiring recent
work by artists in our exhibition pro-
gramme. Additionally, the MacLaren
has a strong commitment to collect
Aboriginal art. Artists Carl Beam, Rob-
ert Houle, Rita Letendre and Norval
Morrisseau are all represented in our
collection, and many have influenced
Duane’s practice.
M
ACLAREN ARTS
CENTRE
CANADIAN ARTS COUNCIL
