LUKE PARNELL EXHIBITION PANELS: 1 & 2

Luke Parnell's Re-contextualising the De-consecrated is an challenging and inquisitive look into the exhibition history of Northern Northwest Coast Aboriginal Art. Parnell's installation of paintings and didactic panels surveys the exhibitions both aesthetically, and critically through writing. The viewer is confronted with varying degrees of positive and negative feedback on the significance of each exhibition, and can begin to see how perception of NWC art has changed and transformed over the years.

According to Parnell: Each artwork appropriates heavily from the exhibition that it explores.  The words for the didactic panels are completely appropriated and while the paintings are original each one is inspired by either artworks from the exhibition or the philosophy of the exhibition. The creation and methodology behind this series of paintings enables the work to explore notions of appropriation, authenticity and what is considered sacrosanct.

Over the course of the next two weeks we will be sharing with you all 8 of these responses. Below are the visual representations of the first two exhibitions Parnell reviewed, Arts of the Raven and The Legacy. Underneath each image you will see an excerpt of the accompanying appropriated text panel. We encourage you to visit the gallery to look at all of the work in context.

Arts of the Raven, Luke Parnell, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 36"

Excerpt of quote(s) taken from Parnell's Arts of the Raven panel: This is an exhibition of art, high art, not ethnology. It proposes to bring together many of the masterworks of this art, to show the wide range and aesthetic excellence of its forms and to explicate and establish its claim to greatness...

The Legacy, Luke Parnell, 2013, 36 x 36"
Excerpt of quote(s) taken from Parnell's Arts of the Raven panel:  I have never believed that the arts mean just the arts of Europe. I had the opportunity early in my life, often through exhibitions, to come into contact with other cultures and other traditions and this gave me a continuing interest. One of the more encouraging developments of recent years has been a growing availability to wider public of all forms of art from all kinds of places. Sadly the indigenous arts of many countries have declined in our century, both in their quality and in their integrated role as part of a society’s daily life. Happily this decline has been challenged in British Columbia... 


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