0:02

(slow gentle piano music) – [Tim Whiten] The raw experience of
going into nature

0:07

is an important thing.

0:18

Tom Thomson took a chance. Thomson understood the
need to actually engage

0:24

with the natural environment in order to understand who he was

0:30

and what he could contribute. And I believe firmly that, that is what is translated in the works.

0:43

(slow gentle piano music) – [Chaka Chikodzi] Tom Thomson’s landscape
paintings are also self-portraits.

0:52

You can feel his presence
on every painting. He imbues the landscape with the feelings.

1:00

So his painting is not
just a landscape painting,

1:05

it’s also a connection
between himself and the land.

1:13

– [Suzy Lake] Thomson’s sense of poetry
about Algonquin Park, it’s focused on his whole
relationship to the land

1:25

and how he is in that land and trying to let his audience know

1:32

what that experience is like. Not what it looks like, but it’s like being there.

1:40

And I think that that’s where the notion
of spiritual or poetic

1:45

is attributed to his work beyond just the fact that
they’re beautiful paintings.

1:51

– [Dorian FitzGerald] Like every other Canadian, never mind Canadian art student, like the Group of Seven is presented as something of significance.

2:00

And it was immediate to me that I like Tom Thomson’s paintings.

2:06

There’s a vitality to
them, that’s beautiful. So as much as the Group of Seven

2:12

and the idea of the
Canadian landscape tradition and all these things, I mean, I understand it’s theirs, nothing I really engage with

2:18

but certainly if you
handed me a Tom Thomson, I would put it up on the wall. And I’m like, yeah.

2:26

– [Allyson Mitchell] The story
of the Group of Seven in some ways feeds into
the story of colonialism.

2:33

I do like the paintings, many of them. I don’t know that much about
them because I’ve resisted

2:40

that certified national history, about this jolly adventure of explorers,

2:47

having these heroic
individual experiences.

2:53

And I feel like I could group Tom Thomson into that conversation of myths
of what Canada supposedly is

3:00

and has become because it’s
been constructed that way. – [Deirdre Logue] When I think about his subject

3:06

being the Canadian natural landscape, and I think about climate
change and climate justice surely you could find a way

3:13

to make that kind of revered art more productive in contemporary times,

3:18

than it is sitting in the dark
waiting for an exhibition. And maybe selling the Tom Thomson’s

3:26

and donating the money to climate justice or you’re like, isn’t there,
what would Tom Thomson– – [Allyson Mitchell] That would be amazing.

3:31

– [Deirdre Logue] What would Tom Thomson want to do if it was really about, this
is his love, his subject, the Canadian North?

3:38

– [Anong Migwans Beam] The Group of Seven, people have strong
opinions about their work. There are a lot of pushback

3:45

from the Indigenous point of view that they were painting terror in all this, an empty Canada.

3:51

That might’ve been what
they did but I don’t believe that they did it with
that intent to exclude.

3:57

Up until that point, Canadian
landscape was all painted

4:02

in a mimicry of European style
and European romanticism,

4:07

all of the European landscape. But in Europe, they
don’t have giant forests

4:13

of changing colored maple leaves. So for them to really celebrate
Jack pine and Northern pines

4:20

and these wild landscapes that we have, was really a radical thing in their time.

4:56

(peaceful music) – [Anong Migwans Beam] Authenticity is a really
unique topic to me.

5:03

Having experiences with handling an estate after an artist passes away.

5:10

I come from a family of artists. My father is Carl Beam
and my mother Ann Beam.

5:16

They were both visual artists. My dad was a real trailblazer and he was the first indigenous artist

5:23

to be purchased as a Contemporary Art by the National Gallery of Canada.

5:29

I live in M’Chigeeng First
Nation on Manitoulin island, and it’s the largest
freshwater island in the world.

5:37

I’m a painter and a paint maker. Water and things of that nature,

5:43

pervade my work, natural landscapes.

5:49

– [Nathan Eugene Carson] The predominant
subject matter in my work would be portraiture. I’m really fascinated in the human soul

5:57

and how I can put the human
soul into a piece of work.

6:02

When I let things just arrive
or show up or come to be, it’s always so much more beautiful

6:09

than intentionally trying
to paint something.

6:14

– [Suzy Lake] My formative years,
I was a political activist and it was really very important

6:21

to marry what was happening in the streets with what was happening in the studio.

6:27

So I started using the body to represent ideas

6:33

of what was happening culturally from a feminist perspective. The subject matter in the image

6:40

may be a constructed set
of an activity that I do. So there’s a difference between
subject and subject matter.

6:49

– [Shelley Niro] I’m originally
from the Six Nations, Mohawk on the Grand and my predominant subject
matter is mostly women.

6:57

My mother, my sisters, my
children and my nieces.

7:02

I like putting images to my work that can be translated in different ways.

7:08

And sometimes people on
first viewing won’t see it, they won’t recognize it but maybe on the third or
fourth viewing they’ll say,

7:15

“Oh, I never saw that before.” So that makes it more
interesting for myself as the artist who created it

7:21

that other people can see
different layers in the work. – [Dorian FitzGerald] The subject matter,

7:27

initially, was of a completely
self-indulgent process. I would come across images

7:32

in particular the one I can think of. It was like Oprah Winfrey’s birthday party that she threw for Sidney Poitier

7:39

and then like these insane
assemblage of 1000 roses that were the centerpieces on this table

7:46

and it was on a magazine rack. And it was like this
electric thing of like, oh, that is a perfect summary of the kind

7:54

of egregiously wasteful display of wealth.

7:59

I’m not sure that the painting
actually says that,(laughs) but that was the motivation. But yeah, so that kind of
random encounter was sufficient

8:07

at the beginning for the practice. But then as soon as it became something

8:12

I could make a living out of, a random encounter was
completely unreliable(laughs)

8:18

by its nature. And so then it became
much more research-based. So the subject matter
started out as excess.

8:26

The technique is excessive. The amount of material is excessive. Like the effect is one of excess.

8:36

(birds chirping) – [Anong Migwans Beam] My dad went to residential school. He went there only speaking Ojibwa

8:43

and having an Ojibwa name and then coming out

8:50

not speaking his own language and having had it like
removed from him through abuse.

8:56

All of his work really was about examining colonial viewpoints.

9:03

We live inside a colonial framework that even without judging it, it’s just to say that
there are so many things

9:10

that we do in an unthinking way that are totally normal to us that are part of a conditioned,

9:17

just because that’s just
how things are done. He wanted to be free to be
an artist, to be a painter.

9:25

He never really was allowed to be that. He always had to be

9:31

Carl, the political artist who is an Indigenous person

9:37

and he explicitly states
that in some of his work. – [Allyson Mitchell] The artworks that we’ve made

9:44

come from a feminist
and a queer perspective.

9:50

That perspective has to be critical, and not necessarily in a negative way.

9:58

But that if you are identifying
as a feminist artist and your work is grappling with the ideas

10:06

that are troubled through feminism, it has to be critical of the institutions

10:12

because the institutions are based in patriarchal, capitalist, colonial,

10:20

classist, racist, sexist foundations. Let’s throw in homophobic as well.

10:26

So there’s no way that your
work would not be critical.

10:37

(gentle music) – [Anong Migwans Beam] A lot changed
in my art practice

10:42

when I started making paint. I think the first time
that it really struck me was that I was out in a
boat in the North Channel

10:50

and I was finding rocks and
I’m collecting rocks and I take them back and
I make paint out of them.

10:57

And then I’m doing a painting
in my studio of that place

11:03

and of those rocks. And then I had this realization that I’m painting these rocks

11:08

with paint made of these rocks. And it was this really neat, circulus moment.

11:16

Most people feel that, oh, paint red is red and paint is paint. As a paint maker now,

11:22

I’m really aware of how
there’s many different ways to get to red.

11:27

Every component that goes into that is so identifiable at a molecular level.

11:35

They’re very different ways and they come from different places, they’re made by different companies,

11:40

they’re very traceable. Now, we live in a different
time where anyone has access

11:46

to anything from all over. But even up to just 20 or 30 years ago,

11:52

most artists are working with supplies from their local supplier. (hammer pounding)

12:00

– [Chaka Chikodzi] I haven’t
lived in Zimbabwe for about 23 years. So the longer I was away from home,

12:09

the more connected I was with the stone. The material I work with
is a type of volcanic rock,

12:18

unique to Zimbabwe. So Zimbabwe means house of stone.

12:24

It is one of the largest
volcanic ridges in the world that did not erupt.

12:29

I work exclusively with
this rock with my practice. It helps me mediate

12:36

my place here in Canada as an African.

12:42

I let the stone guide the process. I’m interested in my
relationship with the stone.

12:52

I look at the forces
that created the stone is like a co-creator.

12:58

Think of some of the big rocks that even if I was to go up the mountain to get it by myself, I can’t do that.

13:05

So I have to work with a team. My whole process is like a collaboration.

13:10

– [Nathan Eugene Carson] I would
say the material that I mostly work in
that’s been consistent throughout my whole
artist practice is paper.

13:18

I really enjoy the tactileness. I also prefer paper that’s been recycled

13:25

or found on the street or something that has a little bit of, I always call it life to it.

13:31

I work on the floor and I always bring an
image up from the paper.

13:38

– [Tim Whiten] Within the last
maybe 15 years, I’ve actually started to
invest my time in use of glass.

13:44

Glass is a constant mirror of
what we are as human beings. People carry cell phones in their pocket.

13:50

We have computers that actually allow us to communicate from distance. It’s all based upon the nature of glass.

13:57

It’s an old material. And yet we’re finding
that it has the capacity to extend our consciousness.

14:03

We live in a world now which
functions on the basis of glass and it’s major use for communications.

14:11

We can look at things that are very small through the use of glass
as a magnifying condition.

14:17

We can look at things from a far distance through the use of glass as well. It’s the same material but it affords us

14:24

to extend our human consciousness. (gentle music)

14:31

– [Chaka Chikodzi] I don’t really
think about style. I look for beauty.

14:39

When I first traveled, that’s when I first started questioning

14:45

what the viewer wanted from me as an African artist.

14:51

In the end I didn’t
want to give the viewer what they wanted from me.

14:57

Once you have arrived to a style, I think it’s because you
have gained an audience

15:03

or maybe because you are selling. Once you are selling,
it means it’s working,

15:10

but then if it’s working,
you probably don’t want to try something new

15:17

because trying something
new can be pretty costly. – [Anong Migwans Beam] I think a lot of
artists are always looking

15:25

to find their style. My own early work looks an awful lot like my mum and dad’s

15:31

because I was learning from
them how they make painting. And you’re trying to find your own style.

15:37

I think artists want to have a style that people know when
they look at that work, oh, that’s and your name comes to mind.

15:46

But there’s an awful lot of
experimentation in between.

15:51

– [Nathan Eugene Carson] I try to
break style as much as possible. And when I kind of get known
for a particular style,

15:59

I switch it up quite quickly. I find it’s like repeating yourself. There’s not a challenge there.

16:07

And also too, it’s quite boring. My style has evolved and
changed over the years.

16:13

If I’m known in one decade
for drawing and painting, then I try to do the
complete opposite the next,

16:19

which would be maybe black
and white photography or go into making sculpture

16:25

or music or just another creative path.

16:32

– [Shelley Niro] I like to
characterize my own technique and my own style as
being imagination first.

16:38

In my practice, I don’t
really think about style because I go from bead work,

16:45

painting, photography, sculpture and it’s like, what’s my idea and how am I gonna get that idea done?

16:52

Sometimes I finish something and I go, “Well, it’s the weirdest
thing I’ve ever done.”(laughs) (birds chirping)

16:59

– [Allyson Mitchell] When you think
about style and how an artist develops a voice or becomes known for a
way of making things,

17:08

I think that a dilemma of
commercially successful artists would be when something that
they produce sells well,

17:16

that they are asked to reproduce that and it can be a bit of a trap to continue

17:21

to reproduce the same
sort of looking thing. – [Deirdre Logue] But also on the
subject of style,

17:27

you have a style with your
work as an individual. I also have a style.

17:32

But when we do other projects like the feminist art gallery
of “Killjoy’s Kastle,” I mean, we’re talking about
other ways of depicting style.

17:39

– [Allyson Mitchell] Yeah. – [Deirdre Logue] Like I would say
chaos would be a style that we have or derangement.

17:46

It’s so multi-dimensional
that there is a style to it but it’s not described as
you would describe style.

17:53

– [Allyson Mitchell] Like a particular
kind of brushstroke. – [Deirdre Logue] It’s described as, it’s described in the language
of large-scale performance.

18:04

It doesn’t mean we don’t have style. I mean, come on.
– [Allyson Mitchell] Look at us. – [Male Interviewer]
(laughs) Totally, yeah.

18:12

(gentle music) (gentle music)

18:17

– [Tim Whiten] I don’t think
that I have ever signed a three-dimensional work in my life ever. – [Nathan Eugene Carson] I think
about signature a lot.

18:24

And I always sign all my work on the back.

18:30

– [Suzy Lake] I deal with notions
of signature and dating from tradition

18:35

because of my painter printmaker training. So paintings are signed
on the front lower right.

18:44

And as a printmaker if
there’s an edition, you put the edition on the
left, the title in the center

18:51

and the name and the date on the right. – [Dorian FitzGerald] The idea of
signing a work

18:58

especially on the face of the work, I mean, it just hasn’t
seemed like something to do.

19:05

Sign on the back.(laughs) – [Shelley Niro] I sign my work
hesitantly. I think it ruins the work sometimes,

19:12

it’s like I’ve ruined
my work by signing it. Sometimes I make the signature too big

19:17

and then sometimes I make it too small and I was like, oh, I
have to start rub it out, start all over.

19:23

– [Allyson Mitchell] It’s not like oil
painting with a signature at the bottom.

19:28

We made this project called “KillJoy’s Kastle: A Lesbian
Feminist Haunted House” and for that project over the years

19:35

that we’ve done it, there’s
been hundreds and hundreds. Hundreds of artists
have contributed to that

19:40

and nobody signs the work. – [Nathan Eugene Carson] It’s something when I
go into an art gallery

19:46

is I see a big signature on a painting. That really agitates me.

19:51

Like I just like staring at
what it is that I’m supposed to and then maybe I’ll think
about who created it after.

19:59

– [Shelley Niro] I guess it’s necessary
for you to have ownership over what you’ve done.

20:05

But I just find that kind
of ruins it for me really as the last thing you do on your painting.

20:10

It kind of finishes the
piece once you’ve signed it. I don’t know, it feels like
you’re abandoning your work

20:16

by signing it. Okay, I’m done with you,
now leave me alone. (laughs)

20:21

Whereas if you don’t sign it ever, it’s like you could still kind of float in and out of your work.

20:27

(water burbling) – [Anong Migwans Beam] Well, my dad,
he always signed his name on the bottom right, Carl Beam,

20:34

but not every work gets signed. Most of them do but I think there’s a lot

20:40

that you’re doing them and you think you’re gonna come back to
it, but then you don’t.

20:45

And so I’ve gone through
his work and found those.

20:50

And it’s funny to
describe that to somebody. They’re valueless for
missing the signature.

20:58

If the artist was habitually
signing everything, missing a signature it
just makes it practically,

21:05

well, it’s not valued. – [Interviewer] So like significant. – [Anong Migwans Beam] Significantly. We have this interesting
thing in our family

21:12

that Beam is not actually
our genetic name, we’re not really related
to any Beams directly.

21:19

And his real last name was Migwans. And just through the
tussle of the last century,

21:26

he came to have that name. And when I was in my 20s, he said,

21:31

“I’ve come too far as Carl Beam, you could change it though.” But I really had that name
as part of belonging to me.

21:38

So we ended up really redefining a name that didn’t really belong to us

21:45

and then inhabiting this name and now I’ve named my business
Beam Paints after that name.

21:53

So it’s definitely ours now. – [Tim Whiten] To sign the work
has a lot to do with ego.

22:01

There is no need to sign it to affirm the condition
that exists within.

22:08

It is in itself a signature. The nature of the work
which issues from me is a very very specific understanding

22:14

about who it is that I am, who it is that I aspire to be and the conditions surrounding
that can’t be faked.

22:22

(gentle music) (gentle music) – [Nathan Eugene Carson] There was
this one gallerist and he was like,

22:28

“I wanna sell this work,
I wanna sell this work.” And I was like, you’re
not breaking up my series, like this is one series

22:34

and one day it will be
shown as a full series or if somebody wants to collect it,

22:39

they can collect the whole series. And he said to me, “Oh, that’s so hard, that’s not the way things are done.”

22:46

But I was trusting that that right person, place will come.

22:53

One of the laws of the universe
is the law of attraction and like attracts like, so I often just think like
most of the time those systems

23:03

that aren’t for me, just
aren’t attracted to me and I’m not attracted to them. Like I’ve never had a
commercial gallery ask me

23:10

to be part of their system. – [Suzy Lake] The kind of work that
I make isn’t the kind of work

23:17

that’s gonna easily hang
in someone’s dining room. And yeah, I mean, my family has works

23:23

of mine that they don’t hang. So I do think that my
quote end quote client

23:29

would be institutions. And so that’s really quite an honor because institutions have
to be very selective.

23:37

But when a private
collector purchases my work, the work form or content
wise really touches them

23:44

and you get to meet them
and they’re the people that you want to have it.

23:50

It’s important to them. I mean, that’s an ultimate compliment. – [Shelley Niro] I’ve been fortunate
enough

23:56

to have my work purchased
by the National Gallery. I think it’s really kind of
an honorable thing to happen.

24:03

And I’m always surprised and
excited when it does happen. It becomes pretty serious at that point.

24:10

‘Cause if I was to keep it
for much longer, who knows? Like, “Oh, we don’t need
this painting anymore,

24:17

I’m gonna paint over it.” So it helps me look at my work
in a much more serious way.

24:25

– [Tim Whiten] For me, the works
have to be found in a place or repository which has the
capacity to retain those works

24:32

so they can be accessible to people. I’m not interested in my work going to someone in their home
where they’re hidden from view

24:40

other than for a few people, but not available to a larger population. It limits the import of the work.

24:47

If people have dollars and
cents dancing in their mind, it most often prevents
them from getting the sense

24:53

of the real value of a work. And so it’s a commodity, it’s a thing. And they don’t care about the nature

24:59

of what its real purpose was. We’ve lost sight of the real
purpose of cultural objects in the first place.

25:07

– [Dorian FitzGerald] In 2011, I painted
a vase that was interesting because of questions about its provenance

25:13

and how it was valued. It had come up for auction at Bonhams

25:19

and was presented as a beautiful example
of Chinese porcelain,

25:24

and had a high estimate
of millions of dollars. And then at the last minute,

25:30

they were unsure about attribution. And so suddenly minimum bid
was $15,000 or something.

25:38

So this vase ended up going for, I think it was $7.89 million. In reading about it,
this idea of provenance

25:47

being paramount in the West, if it’s a fake then it’s of no worth

25:52

or very little worth, maybe a curiosity, but that the craftsmanship required

25:59

to make a credible fake is of course comparable to
the craftsmanship required

26:06

to create the object in the first place. I appreciate the idea of
enjoying an object for what it is

26:12

as opposed to only enjoying an
object based on who owned it or that it came from the original source.

26:18

The fact that one could
appreciate one object as being as valid as the other one. I think is far more appealing to me

26:24

than dismissing it out of hand ’cause it’s a fake. So I find it compelling.

26:31

– [Deirdre Logue] The institution
enables collectors in ways that are problematic for artists.

26:36

So when institutions choose to restrict and collectors choose
to restrict an artwork

26:43

to a certain level of provenance that it has to be signed all these things,

26:49

they actually set themselves
up for failure first because there’s the
vast majority of artists that made that way.

26:56

We tend to want to help the museum, move it a little bit more into more contemporary thinking about

27:01

what it is that they’re doing. – [Allyson Mitchell] And the people
inside of them can see themselves as dismantlers rather than
protectors of status quo.

27:12

But unfortunately I think
the whole collection of art and how it’s set up is
only about the status quo,

27:19

because I think that they
desire to have things quote end quote change but they don’t wanna give up the power

27:26

that they already hold. So you kind of can’t have
both of those things. It’s like how can we
appear to be or like…

27:34

– [Deirdre Logue] Progressive. – [Allyson Mitchell] Progressive and
all those kinds of things but we’re still gonna keep
our board of directors,

27:41

we’re still gonna keep our CEOs, we’re still gonna keep
our directors who are like

27:47

from a long line of white settler cis men.

27:52

– [Deirdre Logue] The perfect
collector or the perfect curator or the perfect institution
would take all of the same risks

27:57

that the most adventurous
art of their times take. And that collectors actually
would be chosen by the artists,

28:04

not vice versa. There’s a real inversion
of something fundamental

28:09

that I think it forms the
nature of art entirely. (gentle music)

28:14

(gentle music) – [Shelley Niro] The Group of Seven
were a group of gentlemanly painters

28:20

who would go out into the
wild during the summer, collect all their sketches
and their rough work

28:28

and then come back into their
own studio in the winter and paint these tableaus,
what they’ve experienced.

28:35

Sounds very nice. All these gentlemen just
painting away. (laughs)

28:41

– [Deirdre Logue] I think the question
of Tom Thomson and all of the ways in which his work and the Group of Seven’s work
is authenticated in many ways,

28:51

created impossibilities for other artists. That a work has to have a signature, that the work has to be part of a group

28:57

which is part of a movement. It fit really nicely into a European art historical framework.

29:03

And remember that’s where
settler colonialism comes from. So it’s these White European models

29:09

that really are very problematic. – [Dorian FitzGerald] Notions of
authenticity and things like looting
of historical sites

29:18

to provide what is an authentic object. Yeah, there’s all sorts
of problematic things

29:24

about what value is
placed on authenticity.

29:30

– [Suzy Lake] I was approached
not too long ago by an institution that was offered an
artwork supposedly by me.

29:39

And they sent me a photograph to confirm whether or not it was mine.

29:44

And I was mortified at
the quality of the work. I wasn’t pictured in the
image which I always am.

29:52

And definitely it was not my work. So I was really grateful
that they checked with me

29:59

before putting my name on it. – [Allyson Mitchell] If somebody were
trying to authenticate an artwork of mine

30:05

or ours together, they
would have a tough time trying to prove that we had made it.

30:13

And partly that’s because it is unusual. It’s ephemeral, it’s performance,

30:20

or it’s collaboratively made
with a large group of people. – [Deirdre Logue] We kind of defy
and redefine

30:27

authenticity, signature, style and all the other things that a museum or a collector would need

30:35

to create some sort of value. – [Allyson Mitchell] I like to dream
of a different world where institutions

30:41

and collectors actually value
collectivity, connectivity

30:47

and if that were valued, the more that went into
something as a culture,

30:53

as a collaboration, we would be living in a
different kind of world.

30:59

– [Anong Migwans Beam] Authentication
puts a lot of authority to experts. And then really you have to ask yourself

31:07

how credible is that authority. Early on in managing my father’s estate,

31:12

I had an instance where an individual who was very well thought of
in the artistic community,

31:19

made a comment on Facebook that they had seen some
work of my father’s

31:25

and because they didn’t recognize it, they stated, “Look at these fakes”

31:31

because they were signed Carl Beam but visually they didn’t
match his expectation.

31:36

And I had to track him down immediately and tell him really clearly
that he was mistaken

31:43

and that it was irresponsible of him to make statements like
that without first checking

31:49

with the estate. And part of that is
because I think artists

31:54

are by nature really
adventurous curious people. And especially over
the span of a lifetime,

32:01

artists are experimenting even ones that have a very defined visual style.

32:07

So it’s really difficult
to declare yourself enough of an expert in one artist

32:13

to be the arbiter of
this is or this isn’t.

32:18

– I’m not agreeing with the
whole idea of authentication. The basis of authentication has to do

32:25

with the monetary value. And monetary value, there’s
essentially a problem.

32:31

My own belief is the works that are much more significant to us have no real monetary value at all.

32:39

What they have is essentially
a spiritual value. I think that spiritual value outweighs the concerns
for commodification.

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And yet people actually
misunderstand the nature of the real transaction of a work of art. The means by which we understand
ourselves as human beings,

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what we are, who we are
and what we can aspire to.

33:53

(gentle music)

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