HENRY SPECK AT SATELLITE GALLERY

Henry Speck, Moon Mask Dancers
gouache on paper
circa. 1962
image source: MOA/Satellite Gallery

We are very happy to know that Satellite Gallery exists in our beloved city. An experimental exhibition space shared between the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, the Museum of Anthropology, and Presentation House Gallery, it is an invaluable resource and venue for groundbreaking exhibitions in Vancouver's downtown core.

Showing now at Satellite are works by Kwakwaka'wakw artist Henry Speck, or or Udzi’stalis (1908 – 1971). The bright, charming paintings depict scenes from both everyday life and the phantasmagorical, populated as they are by masked dancers, coastal creatures, and sea monsters. First exhibited at Vancouver's New Design Gallery in 1964, Speck's work drew unprecedented amounts of attention for its modern application, "declared by the Haida artist Bill Reid to be “far beyond anything attempted before in Kwakiutl art.”"

At Satellite, you can experience the work "through originals and large-scale projections that refigure his work against a backstory of media images, sound, and film—an installation that evokes the changing contexts of the mythic and the modern in the 20th century." 

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