Jeneen Frei Njootli

Produced by the Contemporary Art Gallery and presented to Vancouver audiences in Summer 2018, the solo exhibition and accompanying publication of Vuntut Gwitchin artist Jeneen Frei Njootli is now hosted by our touring partner, the Art Gallery of Burlington in Ontario.

### Biography
Jeneen Frei Njootli is a Vuntut Gwitchin artist who has performed and exhibited her work internationally, from galleries to rooftops, casinos, runways, and the bush. She works across numerous media and modes, including performance, sound, installation, fashion, and with community, and is a co-creator of the ReMatriate Collective. Frei Njootli holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2012) and an MFA from the University of British Columbia (2017). In 2016 she was one of three recipients of the William & Meredith Saunderson ,from the  Hnatyshyn Foundation. She was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award in 2017 and in 2018, she was shortlisted for the same. Her work has been the focus of solo exhibitions at Fierman Gallery, NYC; Artspace, Peterborough; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; and Definitely Superior Art Gallery, Thunder Bay. She has participated in the 2018 Biennale d’art contemporain autochtone (BACA) / Contemporary Native Art Biennial, and in group exhibitions at Western Front, Vancouver; ONE AND J + 1, Seoul; Mercer Union, Toronto; Available Light Film Festival, Whitehorse; LandMarks2017/ Repères2017, PAVED Arts, Saskatoon; Whitewater Gallery, North Bay, ON; Art Gallery of South Western Manitoba, Brandon; Vancouver Art Gallery, Trinity Square Video, Toronto; Yukon Arts Centre, Gallery 44, Toronto; and many others. Her work has been part of Indigenous Fashion Week in Toronto (2018) and Vancouver (2017) as well as at the Adäka Cultural Festival in Whitehorse (2015). Frei Njootli has completed multiple residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts and, has collaborated with James Luna, Olivia Whetung, Tsēma Igharas, Krista Belle Stewart with Laura Ortman, Lyndsay Lachance, Dana Claxton, Angela Code, Tania Willard, Gabrielle l’Hirondelle Hill and Chandra Melting Tallow. Her work is in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s permanent collection. Jeneen Frei Njootli is currently a grateful, uninvited guest on unceded Tsleil-Waututh, Musqueam and Squamish territories.



A close up view of a steel sheet marked with two hand prints pointing downwards and made of grease. The steel is covered with other faint markings and appears to be gray, blue and purple.

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my auntie bought all her skidoos with bead money

Babak Golkar

*All the blind men* presents the results of Babak Golkar’s two-year long investigation into the possibilities of painting: the apparatus of its circulation and its tenacity as a means to carry meaning and value. The subjects of these representational works draw upon key historical characters and political moments from the last 100 years, each of which continues to resonate with uncomfortable potency in our current political moment. Manifesting in an array of media and object forms, they demonstrate the artist’s signature working process of deconstruction, replication and transformation.

Golkar’s research emerges from his interest in the relationship between space and human conditions in the contemporary world, and aims to both examine and upend established ways of looking. The exhibition’s title references an ancient parable about a group of sightless men who come to blows after each attempting to describe an elephant based on the part of the animal’s body they are able to touch. Elements of this story, which warns about the limitations of perception, the danger of misinformation and the folly of claiming absolute truths, surface throughout the exhibition, in both form and content: the image of Chairman Mao swimming (or is it perhaps his body double?) appears in multitude in a wallpaper design that is itself multiplied on the surface of a field of mirrored ceramics; The Third Reich’s Minister of Propaganda confronts visitors in a monumental, anamorphic painting; and Brecht’s sobering stage-play *Mann ist Mann* is conjured through a triangular dialogue between sound, video-recorded performance, and a painted image of the Czar of Russia pretending to fly. In each case, by distorting assumed certainties of perspective, Golkar questions accepted cultural and socio-economic systems and ideological viewpoints—as well as their persistence over time.

Organized by Kimberly Phillips
Additional support provided by Stephen Fitterman

*All the blind men* has been organized by the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, in partnership with the Servais Family Collection, and presented at their collection space The Loft in Brussels. It forms part of an ongoing series of international off-site exhibition projects by CAG produced in association with other venues.

The Servais Family Collection is a publicly accessible private art collection, committed to supporting artists and inspiring audiences willing to discover an international repertoire of contemporary art practices.

### Biography
Born in the United States and raised in Tehran, Babak Golkar has been based in Vancouver, Canada, since 1996 and is represented by Galeria Sabrina Amrani, Madrid and The Third Line, Dubai.

A black and white painted portrait of the Third Reich’s Minister of Propaganda. The image appears to be stretched out horizontally. It has bold brush strokes and unfinished edges. 

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All the blind men

Myfanwy Macleod

Myfanwy MacLeod is best known for her irreverent artworks that often explore the overlapping and intersecting of pop culture, folklore, traditions, and histories. Her practice examines how perceptions of “high” and “low” culture are interpreted through themes of gender, privilege and value and ranges from museum and gallery exhibitions through to celebrated permanent and temporary works in the public realm. Her interest in how an image or object can be transformed to change its meaning through shifts in scale or materiality for example, and importantly the context of indoors or out playing a specific role within her deliberations is the starting point for her first solo exhibition in the UK. MacLeod examines this dialogue as a way to visually communicate the shift of ideas that occurs through process, materiality, scale and context. To this end and as a means to illustrate this proposition, a selection of recent works is presented alongside maquettes and visual documentation for public commissions.

Central to the exhibition is a sequence of framed watercolours that were used in 2018 as the basis for a public artwork, Neighbours, a series of large-scale posters displayed at twenty sites around the City of Vancouver corresponding with two major events in Canada. Firstly, in 2018 we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act established between Canada and the US. One of the most successful conservation laws in North American history is now currently under review by American Congress. Coinciding with the anniversary of this major achievement by Canada in protecting species and its consequent positive environmental impact, was the International Ornithological Congress (founded in 1884) which takes place every four years and in 2018 convened in Vancouver from August 19-26. The second event was the celebrated re-installation of MacLeod’s acclaimed commission The Birds (2010), a large-scale public sculpture of two house sparrows located in the Olympic Plaza, Vancouver.

Sharing content therefore and immediately following on from this global environmental conference as context, MacLeod’s twelve watercolour drawings depict various birds protected by the treaty that annually migrate from all over the world to live and breed in Canada and incorporates different species gathered together into one diverse flock. Not unlike the “impossible bouquet''—a concept that emerged in Dutch still life painting in the seventeenth century where flowers were visually brought together from different seasons and geographic regions—this assemblage of birds is made up of a varied, polyglot group. Those depicted include House Sparrow, Common Nightingale, Northern Goshawk, Sandhill Crane, Northern Raven, and the Blue Footed Booby, amongst others. Through such a considered selection, MacLeod represents the national birds from countries which make up Canadian communities thus mirroring the physical and cultural identities of the inhabitants of the country.

Alongside these original watercolours is documentation of the large-scale photographic public works. These posters combine the original, delicate drawings of the birds with a Latin text of their species and popular name thereby evoking the layout of typical ornithological text books and field guides. A particular visual reference is the 1912 book, Color Key to North American Birds, one of the first publications to rely on a visual approach to identification, rather than the lengthy, technical and difficult to use taxonomies, thereby opening out and making information more accessible to the many. MacLeod’s work embodies this same impulse.

To further elaborate the process inherent in MacLeod’s practice and the move between gallery and public space, other works presented include the small-scale sculptural maquette of The Birds and the original sculpture—a small wooden log and initial plaster casts taken from it—that were used to form the basis for Wood for the People (2002), a permanent installation of 230 cast concrete logs outside the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver.

Acclaimed Canadian author Margaret Atwood was the keynote speaker at the opening of the International Ornithological Congress. Prompted by Atwood’s conference speech where she pointed out that although cats are the major killers of migratory songbirds in North America, she was interested in creating a positive conversation around cats and birds that “didn’t completely annoy cat people,” MacLeod produced a wall-hanging woven felt piece Purr, Purr, Purr (2018). Characteristically this embodies the underlying playful humour present in her work while encompassing her ongoing interest in more profound environmental concerns.

Curated by Nigel Prince


### Biography
Myfanwy MacLeod lives and works in Vancouver. A recipient of the VIVA Award (1999) presented by the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts, Vancouver, she has had solo exhibitions at Or Gallery, Vancouver (2015); Vancouver Art Gallery (2014); Museum London, Ontario (2013); Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver (2012) and Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2006). Selected group exhibitions include The Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver (2017); Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (2013); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2012); MASS MoCA, North Adams (2012); Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Toronto (2008); Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston (2006); Kunstverein Wolfsburg, Germany (2004); The Power Plant, Toronto (2002); Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (2002); Gasworks, London (2002); Canadian Pavilion, Melbourne International Biennial (1999) and Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (1998). She is represented by Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver.

Two small scale metal birds sit on top of a plinth. The bird in the foreground is dark brown and in clear focus, the one in the background a lighter shade of brown and blurred.

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Twelve framed small scale paintings hang in a vertical line on a gallery wall. The watercolours depict various migratory birds. To the left, a pile of plaster cast wooden logs sit on the floor.

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A view of Myfanwy MacLeod’s exhibition in a gallery. On the left wall, brown fabric with red shapes hangs off a curtain pole. On the right side,  a pile of plaster cast wooden logs sit on the floor.