Beau Dick (November 23, 1955 – March 27, 2017) was acclaimed as one of the Northwest Coast’s most versatile and talented carvers. Reaching out beyond the confines of his own Kwakwaka’wakw culture, Dick explored new formats and techniques in his work, including painting and drawing. His work can be found in private collections as well as museums, including the Canadian Museum of Civilization (Gatineau, QC), the Heard Museum (Phoenix, AZ), the Burke Museum (Seattle, WA), the UBC Museum of Anthropology and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Dick’s work has been exhibited most recently in Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools (2013) at the Belkin Art Gallery, Sakahan: International Indigenous Art (2013) at the National Gallery of Canada, 75 Years of Collecting: First Nations: Myths and Realities (2006) at the Vancouver Art Gallery and Supernatural with Neil Campbell (2004) at the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver). In 2012, Dick received the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation’s VIVA Award for Visual Arts.
Lorna Brown is a Vancouver-based visual artist, curator, writer and editor. Brown is a founding member of Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, and is an ongoing member of the Other Sights Producer team. She was the Director/Curator of Artspeak Gallery from 1999 to 2004, an artist-run centre focusing on the relationship between visual art and writing. Between 2015 and 2022, she was Acting Director/Curator at the Belkin, curating exhibition series such as Beginning With the Seventies that explored the relationship between art, archives and activism. Brown has exhibited her work internationally since 1984, and has taught at Simon Fraser University and Emily Carr University of Art and Design where she received an honorary doctorate of letters in 2015. Awards include the Vancouver Institute for the Visual Arts Award (1996) and the Canada Council Paris Studio Award (2000). Her work is in the collections of the Belkin, SFU Galleries, the National Gallery of Canada, the BC Arts Council, the Surrey Art Gallery and the Canada Council Art Bank.
Scott Watson (Canadian, b. 1950) is Director Emeritus and Research Fellow at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia. A curator whose career has spanned more than thirty-five years, Watson is internationally recognized for his research and work in curatorial and exhibition studies, contemporary art and issues, and art theory and criticism. His distinctions include the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art (2010); the Alvin Balkind Award for Creative Curatorship in BC Arts (2008) and the UBC Dorothy Somerset Award for Performance Development in the Visual and Performing Arts (2005). Watson has published extensively in the areas of contemporary Canadian and international art. His 1990 monograph on Jack Shadbolt earned the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize in 1991. Recent publications include Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry (2015); Thrown: British Columbia’s Apprentices of Bernard Leach and their Contemporaries (2011), a finalist for the 2012 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize; “Race, Wilderness, Territory and the Origins of the Modern Canadian Landscape” and “Disfigured Nature” (in Beyond Wilderness, McGill University Press, 2007); and “Transmission Difficulties: Vancouver Painting in the 1960s” (in Paint, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2006).
On July 2, 2014, renowned Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw artist Chief Beau Dick along with 21 companions set out from the University of British Columbia on a journey to Ottawa which they called Awalaskenis II: Journey of Truth and Unity. Intending to raise awareness about the plight of the environment and to challenge elected officials to attend to the relationship between the federal government and First Nations people, the group brought with them many objects including a copper shield known as Taaw made by Giindajin Haawasti Guujaaw, the Haida carver and former president of the Haida Nation. Guujaaw had encouraged Dick to make this journey, having been inspired by the 2013 Awalaskenis I journey from Quatsino on the northern tip of Vancouver Island to Victoria.
Along the way, the travellers visited First Nations communities across the country to gather support and to increase the value of the copper through ceremony. Through social media, they drew attention to the journey. Many artists and communities contributed sacred objects collected from up and down the continent – some of them considered to be sentient beings – to be carried to the copper-breaking event. Lalakenis/All Directions: A Journey of Truth and Unity brings together these objects in a reconstruction of the site of the ceremony on Parliament Hills, and documents the journey through videos, photographs and narrative.
On July 27, the Taaw copper was broken on Parliament Hill in a traditional copper-breaking ceremony, marking a ruptured relationship in need of repair, and passing the burden of wrongs done to First Nations people from them to the Government of Canada. Once practised throughout the Pacific Northwest when copper shields were a symbol of justice and central to a complex economic system, this shaming rite had all but disappeared until Dick revived it in a similar ceremony in 2013 on the front steps of the British Columbia Legislature in Victoria. This earlier journey was instigated by Beau Dick’s daughters, Geraldine and Linnea Dick, as a way to bring the message of the Idle No More movement to the attention of the British Columbia government.
Lalakenis/All Directions demonstrates how deeply traditional practices can be deployed to address and engage urgent and contemporary politics. The copper-breaking ceremony practiced in Haida and Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw communities for generations is not relegated to a sealed-off past, but has been activated through a political act.
This exhibition is made possible with the generous support of the Audain Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council and The Leon and Thea Koerner Foundation. We gratefully acknowledge the support of our Belkin Curator’s Forum members: Audain Foundation, Christopher Foundation, Nicola Flossbach, Henning and Brigitte Freybe, Michael O’Brian Family Foundation, Phil Lind Foundation, and Scott Watson and Hassan El Sherbiny.
Cutting Copper: Indigenous Resurgent Practice, a collaborative project with grunt gallery, Vancouver, is generously supported by the British Columbia Arts Council.
Photo: Bernadette Phan
Photo: Franziska Heinze
Photo: Geoffrey McNamara, SMACK Photography
Beau Dick (November 23, 1955 – March 27, 2017) was acclaimed as one of the Northwest Coast’s most versatile and talented carvers. Reaching out beyond the confines of his own Kwakwaka’wakw culture, Dick explored new formats and techniques in his work, including painting and drawing. His work can be found in private collections as well as museums, including the Canadian Museum of Civilization (Gatineau, QC), the Heard Museum (Phoenix, AZ), the Burke Museum (Seattle, WA), the UBC Museum of Anthropology and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Dick’s work has been exhibited most recently in Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools (2013) at the Belkin Art Gallery, Sakahan: International Indigenous Art (2013) at the National Gallery of Canada, 75 Years of Collecting: First Nations: Myths and Realities (2006) at the Vancouver Art Gallery and Supernatural with Neil Campbell (2004) at the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver). In 2012, Dick received the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation’s VIVA Award for Visual Arts.
Lorna Brown is a Vancouver-based visual artist, curator, writer and editor. Brown is a founding member of Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, and is an ongoing member of the Other Sights Producer team. She was the Director/Curator of Artspeak Gallery from 1999 to 2004, an artist-run centre focusing on the relationship between visual art and writing. Between 2015 and 2022, she was Acting Director/Curator at the Belkin, curating exhibition series such as Beginning With the Seventies that explored the relationship between art, archives and activism. Brown has exhibited her work internationally since 1984, and has taught at Simon Fraser University and Emily Carr University of Art and Design where she received an honorary doctorate of letters in 2015. Awards include the Vancouver Institute for the Visual Arts Award (1996) and the Canada Council Paris Studio Award (2000). Her work is in the collections of the Belkin, SFU Galleries, the National Gallery of Canada, the BC Arts Council, the Surrey Art Gallery and the Canada Council Art Bank.
Scott Watson (Canadian, b. 1950) is Director Emeritus and Research Fellow at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia. A curator whose career has spanned more than thirty-five years, Watson is internationally recognized for his research and work in curatorial and exhibition studies, contemporary art and issues, and art theory and criticism. His distinctions include the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art (2010); the Alvin Balkind Award for Creative Curatorship in BC Arts (2008) and the UBC Dorothy Somerset Award for Performance Development in the Visual and Performing Arts (2005). Watson has published extensively in the areas of contemporary Canadian and international art. His 1990 monograph on Jack Shadbolt earned the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize in 1991. Recent publications include Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry (2015); Thrown: British Columbia’s Apprentices of Bernard Leach and their Contemporaries (2011), a finalist for the 2012 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize; “Race, Wilderness, Territory and the Origins of the Modern Canadian Landscape” and “Disfigured Nature” (in Beyond Wilderness, McGill University Press, 2007); and “Transmission Difficulties: Vancouver Painting in the 1960s” (in Paint, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2006).
Audain Foundation
Canada Council for the Arts
British Columbia Arts Council
Leon and Thea Koerner Foundation
Belkin Curator’s Forum members: Audain Foundation, Christopher Foundation, Nicola Flossbach, Henning and Brigitte Freybe, Michael O’Brian Family Foundation, Phil Lind Foundation, and Scott Watson and Hassan El Sherbiny.
Join us at Macaulay & Co. Fine Art to celebrate the publication of Lalakenis/All Directions: A Journey of Truth and Unity. Edited by Scott Watson and Lorna Brown, this richly illustrated hardcover book includes essays by Beau Dick, Chief Robert Joseph, Guujaaw, Gyauustees, Linnea Dick, Wanda Nanibush, Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Tarah Hogue and Shelly Rosenblum. The catalogue offers visual documentation of the belongings that were gathered together and displayed in the Gallery during the Lalakenis exhibition, along with images from the two journeys that culminated in copper-breaking ceremonies: Awalaskenis I (February 2013) beginning in Quatsino and ending in Victoria, BC and Awalaskenis II (July 2014) which saw Beau Dick and 21 companions setting out from UBC for Ottawa. The copper-breaking ceremonies marked ruptured relationships in need of repair, and passed the burden of wrongs done to First Nations people from them to the Governments of BC and Canada, reviving a shaming rite that once was central to a complex economic system and symbol of justice, a traditional practice that had all but disappeared. This publication reprints content from the exhibition guide in which Beau comments on the significance and role of coppers and the motivating factors for the journeys; Guujaaw speaks of the Taaw copper he made to be broken in Ottawa; Linnea Dick reflects on instigating, along with her sister Geraldine, the earlier journey from Quatsino to Victoria; and Gyauustees speaks about the ceremonies he conducts as a pipe carrier. Added to these texts are new essays by Wanda Nanibush, Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Tarah Hogue and Shelly Rosenblum. Beau Dick and exhibition co-curators and editors Scott Watson and Lorna Brown will be in attendance. Special launch pricing will be in effect.
[more]Once again, we are pleased to welcome the UBC Contemporary Players to the Belkin Art Gallery for a concert inspired by the exhibition Lalakenis/All Directions: A Journey of Truth and Unity. Led by Directors Corey Hamm and Paolo Bortolussi with support from Aaron Graham, this graduate and undergraduate student ensemble from the UBC School of Music will animate the Gallery for an afternoon program celebrating themes from the exhibition. And on TUESDAY, APRIL 12 at 2:30 pm, please join us for a once-in-a-lifetime performance of Alexander Scriabin’s Complete Piano Sonatas, Nos. 1-10 performed by piano students of Corey Hamm.
[more]Join leading UBC scholars, artists, curators and critics in a series of midday conversations. We invite two prominent, disciplinarily distinct voices into the Gallery to discuss productive intersections of their own work and the current exhibition, followed by a discussion that includes the audience. In this series, guests will address Lalakenis/All Directions: A Journey of Truth and Unity, an exhibition that remembers Kwakwaka’wakw carver Beau Dick’s 2014 journey from UBC to Ottawa, which culminated in a ceremonial copper-breaking on the steps of Parliament Hill.
[more]Join UBC Artist in Residence and Kwakwaka'wakw Hereditary Chief Beau Dick, community members, elders and activists on select Thursday afternoons at the Gallery, where they will share their knowledge, experiences and discuss the themes of the exhibition Lalakenis/All Directions: A Journey of Truth and Unity.
[more]On July 2, 2014, renowned Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw artist Chief Beau Dick along with 21 companions set out from the University of British Columbia on a journey to Ottawa which they called Awalaskenis II: Journey of Truth and Unity. Intending to raise awareness about the plight of the environment and to challenge elected officials to attend to the relationship between the federal government and First Nations people, the group brought with them many objects including a copper shield known as Taaw made by Giindajin Haawasti Guujaaw, the Haida carver and former president of the Haida Nation. Guujaaw had encouraged Dick to make this journey, having been inspired by the 2013 Awalaskenis I journey from Quatsino on the northern tip of Vancouver Island to Victoria.
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