MacKenzie Art Gallery

MacKenzie Art Gallery receives 2009 York Wilson Endowment Award Gallery

Regina - The MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina is the recipient of the 2009 York Wilson Endowment Award, administered by the Canada Council for the Arts. The Gallery will use the $30,000 award to purchase six works from the Trading series by Saskatoon aboriginal artist Ruth Cuthand.
 
"The MacKenzie Art Gallery is honoured to be the recipient of this important award," said Stuart Reid, Executive Director of the MacKenzie Art Gallery. "This purchase of Ruth Cuthand's work will add significantly to the Gallery's collection of contemporary Canadian art. By addressing questions of history, identity and colonialism, the Trading series holds particular relevance for the people of Saskatchewan."
 
The MacKenzie Art Gallery will acquire six of the eleven images in the Trading series which investigates the diseases and goods European traders introduced to the Americas as well as the one disease that was brought back to Europe. "The images of the Trading series are hauntingly beautiful," noted Michelle LaVallee, assistant curator of the MacKenzie Art Gallery. "Through the use of beads, Ms. Cuthand has rendered the viruses as seen under the microscope. The names of the corresponding diseases are painted in white acrylic paint on a black suede-like surface below the intricate beadwork."
 
According to the artist, "The beads are a visual reference to colonization; valuable furs were traded for inexpensive beads. On the plains beads were a valuable trade item and they replaced the method of using porcupine quills. Trading examines both sides of European trade from the new items that revolutionized Aboriginal life to the decimation of many tribes through disease."
 
Photos of Ms. Cuthand's artwork can be downloaded from the MacKenzie Art Gallery image gallery at: www.mackenzieartgallery.ca/About/News_Room/Image_Gallery

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