If you run out of places to drink your pumpkin spice latte, look no further than the Carleton University Art Gallery’s (CUAG) new fall exhibitions. CUAG opened its doors on Sept. 29 to unveil a diverse and rich collection of historical and contemporary art to students.
The re-opening of the gallery featured four new exhibitions: Inuit Prints Japanese Inspiration, Raymond Boisjoly’s Interlocutions, Samuel Roy-Bois’s Not a New World, Just an Old Trick, and Formline Modern, which was curated by graduate students at Carleton.
“Each of these exhibitions in its own way proposes a framing, or re-framing of the world,” said Sandra Dyck, the director of CUAG.
Inuit Prints, Japanese Inspiration features works from early Inuit printmaking artists in Cape Dorset, Nunavut during the 1950s and 1960s. Their art is heavily influenced by Japanese printmaking and style, and the exhibition aims to showcase how the people of Cape Dorset creatively adapted these Japanese influences.
The Inuit art exhibition was displayed around the world, Dyck said, and made its debut in Ottawa at CUAG.
Samuel Roy-Bois’ sculpture Not a New World, Just an Old Trick, was a prominent display at CUAG, where it stood tall and housed its own collection inside the structure, “serving as a gallery within a gallery.”
“I like to think about it as a sculpture which is a loaded term. Usually we don’t climb on sculptures, but I want to give people the opportunity to do that. To climb on it, to touch it, to get inside of it,” Roy-Bois said.
The sculpture, made out of plywood, is a traveling piece that was previously on display in a Vancouver art museum, where the collection housed inside of it differed from the one currently shown in CUAG.
“The show is going to keep traveling, every time the structure will be the same but the interior and the story is being told inside is going to be quite different,” Roy-Bois said.
The piece took six weeks to complete the first time, and five days to reassemble at CUAG, but Roy-Bois isn’t concerned about the damage travelling and shipping has on his sculpture.
“I like that the piece gets older and gets damaged, it has this extra narrative added to it,” he said.
Raymond Boisjoly’s Interlocutions and the Formline Modern exhibition worked together to address Northwest Coast graphic art and history.
Boisjoly’s piece referenced indigenous literary traditions, while Formline Modern showcased art from well-known indigenous artists with a modern take on traditional patterns and colours of aboriginal art.
Hannah Keating, a master’s student of art history, said she enjoyed Boisjoly’s piece and the gallery opening as a whole.
“I find that CUAG puts on such strong shows always, and this one compares favourably,” Keating said.
