POUNDMAKER’S GARDEN
Artists: Sandra Semchuk & James Nicholas
Exhibition Essay: Elwood Jimmy
Godfrey Dean Art Gallery, Yorkton, Canada (2005)
The Godfrey Dean Art Gallery is honoured to present the work of Sandra Semchuk & James Nicholas as part of the gallery’s summer-long program marking the Centennial anniversary of the province of Saskatchewan. The photo, text and video collaboration that comprises Poundmaker’s Garden allows the community of Yorkton to bear witness to an historically overshadowed, but nonetheless important narrative that has contributed to the development of the mind/landscape now known as Saskatchewan.
Historically, the plains region of Canada has been the site of unique social transition and transaction. The collapse of the fur trade industry was followed by western expansion and the establishment of the prairie agricultural complex. Within a forty-year time frame, the growing agricultural complex displaced and replaced a number of intact collective-based communities within the region such as the First Nations, Metis, and the Dukhabour. And while still dependent and driven upon a farming economy, the province’s economy has evolved from being an agricultural centre to becoming increasingly resource, service and information based.
Poundmaker’s Garden presents but one of the many intersections between the Indigenous and the non-Indigenous within the time frame of western expansion. Semchuk and Nicholas have utilized the landscape as both a starting point and focal point for historical and artistic inquiry into one of the many significant Plains narratives and individuals alive in memory and archive. Through this exploration, they have privileged a particular narrative and knowledge within a critical and contemporary context.
The garden itself acts as a rich visual and metaphorical link to ideas arising from a community’s past, present and future. Through their work, Semchuk and Nicholas have developed a space for the viewer to reflect and engage in thought around concerns surrounding history, community, cooperation, restorative practices, and art.
In their collective body of work, Semchuk and Nicholas have facilitated the dissemination of the rich and diverse knowledge bases housed with the plains region of Canada. In this exhibition, the collaboration with Eric Tootoosis - a direct descendant of Poundmaker, envelops the audience within a Cree (Nehiyaw) dialectic and worldview that runs parallel yet distinct from ‘official’ Euro-Canadian histories.
By engaging in and incorporating community discussion, storytelling (oratory), historical research, ethnobotanical research and ecology and culturally based principles within their work, they provide a visual and textual narrative ripe with knowledge from which we can derive a greater and richer understanding of past and present self-concepts as individuals, and as a community.
In working from the notion that community can comprise disparate mediums, voices, processes, philosophies, worldviews and needs, Semchuk and Nicholas have created an exhibition that contributes to efforts to bridging ideological gaps surrounding historically polarized issues such as traditional/contemporary, rural/urban and Indigenous/non-Indigenous.
Artists: Sandra Semchuk & James Nicholas
Exhibition Essay: Elwood Jimmy
Godfrey Dean Art Gallery, Yorkton, Canada (2005)
The Godfrey Dean Art Gallery is honoured to present the work of Sandra Semchuk & James Nicholas as part of the gallery’s summer-long program marking the Centennial anniversary of the province of Saskatchewan. The photo, text and video collaboration that comprises Poundmaker’s Garden allows the community of Yorkton to bear witness to an historically overshadowed, but nonetheless important narrative that has contributed to the development of the mind/landscape now known as Saskatchewan.
Historically, the plains region of Canada has been the site of unique social transition and transaction. The collapse of the fur trade industry was followed by western expansion and the establishment of the prairie agricultural complex. Within a forty-year time frame, the growing agricultural complex displaced and replaced a number of intact collective-based communities within the region such as the First Nations, Metis, and the Dukhabour. And while still dependent and driven upon a farming economy, the province’s economy has evolved from being an agricultural centre to becoming increasingly resource, service and information based.
Poundmaker’s Garden presents but one of the many intersections between the Indigenous and the non-Indigenous within the time frame of western expansion. Semchuk and Nicholas have utilized the landscape as both a starting point and focal point for historical and artistic inquiry into one of the many significant Plains narratives and individuals alive in memory and archive. Through this exploration, they have privileged a particular narrative and knowledge within a critical and contemporary context.
The garden itself acts as a rich visual and metaphorical link to ideas arising from a community’s past, present and future. Through their work, Semchuk and Nicholas have developed a space for the viewer to reflect and engage in thought around concerns surrounding history, community, cooperation, restorative practices, and art.
In their collective body of work, Semchuk and Nicholas have facilitated the dissemination of the rich and diverse knowledge bases housed with the plains region of Canada. In this exhibition, the collaboration with Eric Tootoosis - a direct descendant of Poundmaker, envelops the audience within a Cree (Nehiyaw) dialectic and worldview that runs parallel yet distinct from ‘official’ Euro-Canadian histories.
By engaging in and incorporating community discussion, storytelling (oratory), historical research, ethnobotanical research and ecology and culturally based principles within their work, they provide a visual and textual narrative ripe with knowledge from which we can derive a greater and richer understanding of past and present self-concepts as individuals, and as a community.
In working from the notion that community can comprise disparate mediums, voices, processes, philosophies, worldviews and needs, Semchuk and Nicholas have created an exhibition that contributes to efforts to bridging ideological gaps surrounding historically polarized issues such as traditional/contemporary, rural/urban and Indigenous/non-Indigenous.