Duane Linklater

From Our Hands

With Ethel Linklater and Tobias Linklater

9 September 2016 - 5 November 2016

Opening Reception 9 September 2016 7pm

Mercer Union is delighted to present a solo exhibition by Duane Linklater titled From Our Hands, with Ethel Linklater Trapper and Tobias Linklater. Working across installation, performance, film, and photography, Duane Linklater excavates histories to unearth folds and knots addressing cultural loss, recovery and sovereignty. Unearthing work hidden beneath gallery walls or re-inserting iconic Indigenous imagery inscribed within Canadian identity, he explores the migration and exchange of knowledge and ideas, and their consequences.

This is Linklaters first solo institutional exhibition in Toronto and is the third in a series of commissioned solo exhibitions at Mercer Union generously supported by Partners In Art.

The title of this exhibition From Our Hands refers to an exhibition which toured Ontario between 1983 and 1985 presenting Indigenous craft, and including the work of Ethel Linklater, Duanes grandmother, which are re-presented within the galleries and displayed on new support structures. That this loan was negotiated by Mercer Union through the Thunder Bay Art Gallery mobilizes present day structural relations of cultural heritage while highlighting traces of genealogy and questions of legacy. This intergenerational relationship is extended in the presentation of a recent claymation film by Duanes twelve year old son, Tobias Linklater.

Linklater explores the structural language of an institution and space to develop a series of structural responses. He considers the internal language of walls, the spaces for the Indigenous body, and how spaces of inclusion can be extended. Ubiquitous materials of construction, gypsum, plywood and steel mined and extracted from the land, are repurposed in a series of 8 foot high sculptures, their span mimicking that of Linklaters chest and height referring to his height with extended arms. Furthermore, there is a large-scale structural intervention in the galleries, the removal and replacing of the east gallery wall introducing a sentence questioning Indigenous sovereignty of land and law, and legacy.

From Our Hands is an intervention into given structures, and given spaces are expanded, the residue will persist.

Duane Linklater is Omaskko Cree from Moose Cree First Nation in Northern Ontario. Born in 1976, he holds bachelors degrees in fine art and Native studies from the University of Alberta 2005 and a masters degree in film and video from the Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts at Bard College 2012. His work is currently on exhibition in a two-person exhibition Parallel Excavations w/Tanya Lukin Linklater at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta and he is participating in the SeMa Biennale 2016 in Seoul Korea. Recent solo exhibitions include; Salt 11: Duane Linklater, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City 2015; ICA@50: It means its raining, ICA, Philadelphia 2014; Decommision, Maclaren Art Centre, Barrie, Ontario; Learning, Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto; Something about encounter, Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Ontario; Grains, in collaboration with Tanya Lukin Linklater, Images Festival co presentation with Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto; and Secondary Explanation, The New Gallery, Calgary all 2013. Linklater was awarded the Sobey Art Award in 2013. Duane is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery Vancouver. He lives with his family in North Bay, Ontario.

Ethel Linklater was born November 24 1932 near the community La Sarre Quebec. She was raised by her parents in the area who then relocated to Moose Factory, Ontario. A fluent Cree language speaker, she was taught to make objects at an early age by her mother, matriarch of the Trapper family, Emily Trapper. Ethel developed her practice over her entire lifetime and the high quality of her work was well known and sought after throughout the James Bay region. Linklater passed away July 7, 2004 leaving a strong cultural legacy behind for her many children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Tobias Linklater b. 2004 is a member of Moose Cree First Nation Ontario, Canada and the Native Villages of Afognak and Port Lions Alaska, USA. Tobias is Omaskeko Cree and Alutiiq and resides in North Bay, Ontario. Origin of the Hero 2016 is his first video for exhibition and was developed at Near North Mobile Media Labs Animation Creation Camp in August 2016.

Special thanks to Thunder Bay Art Gallery for the loan of works by Ethel Linklater.

Image credit: Ethel Linklater, Mitts, c1980, Moose leather, glass beads, fabric, beaver fur and wool. Collection of the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, From Our Hands Collection, Gift of the Government of Ontario.