A brief recap from a panel discussion (on Saturday, October 15, 2022, from 10:30am-noon) in conjunction with the Public Open House for the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts 2021 exhibition.
This exhibition, presented by the AGGV in collaboration with the Canada Council for the Arts, features the work of the 2021 winners of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts: Germaine Arnaktauyok, Lori Blondeau, Dempsey Bob, Luc Courchesne, Bonnie Devine, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Bryce Kanbara, and Lou Lynn. The artists discussed their work with curator, Jaimie Isaac.
Watch the full panel discussion: • Governor General’…
Learn more about the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts 2021 exhibition: https://aggv.ca/exhibits/governor-gen…
The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria is located on the traditional territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən speaking peoples, today known as the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations. We extend our gratitude and appreciation for the opportunity to live and work on this territory.
Videography and editing by Marina DiMaio.A brief recap from a panel discussion (on Saturday, October 15, 2022, from 10:30am-noon) in conjunction with the Public Open House for the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts 2021 exhibition.
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so how do I want to build the space in
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which I invite people and I was always I
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love painting but for me I I could not
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feel I would not feel a competent to
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prove to make a painting I see when I
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see a frame I want to enter I want the
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frame to become a door
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so I say what if I can contribute to the
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development of art and culture and ideas
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for me the frame becomes a door and I
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want to enter and I if I enter that
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painting you know I can imagine it in 3D
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I can imagine like going some fields are
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transparent I go beyond them I look at
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it from behind so this is what I’m
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trying to do my material are photographs
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their videos they’re like the things you
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do with these simple tools but I try to
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arrange them to create a sort of Garden
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of sound and images and transparencies
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and a place where it’s not a game you
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know I’m using game engines to put this
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together and let you navigate through it
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but it’s not the game the game it would
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just be too
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hang around looked at something that
1:01
grabs your attention why I don’t know
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maybe something that speaks to you at
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one point uh you stop you spend some
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time with it and then you move on
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I’m a Sculptor I’m an installation
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artist
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and I have these stories inside
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and what I try to do with my work is
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find a way to tell a very complex story
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in a object
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[Music]
1:30
unlike Luke
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I don’t take a library of images that
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you can travel through and construct a
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narrative
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The Narrative is clear already we know
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the history
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we should know the history what I find
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out of course is
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we don’t know the history the history
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has been hidden
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it has been withdrawn from our
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grasp and we are the poorer because we
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don’t have a hold of our history
2:05
and so gradually over the years my life
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and my work has come to be about trying
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to grab that history back
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because I believe that only when we have
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knowledge of what occurred
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can we begin a work of repairing
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what what was what was wrong about that
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what I like to do is take materials of
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different kinds
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and use their complexity and also their
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Simplicity to help me to construct that
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narrative
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but I I should say that I’ve been
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involved in two communities all my life
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the Japanese Canadian community and the
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Art of artists community
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and my activities and projects in these
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two communities have run through my life
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in parallel pretty well
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and sometimes they get to cross over and
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blend and it’s um particularly
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gratifying when that happens
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all the while I’ve made art
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and I wrote this description of what I
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do years ago but I think it still holds
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true I said in my personal work
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um and it kind of explains the
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eclecticism of my work in my personal
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work I like it when I can combine two or
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more of the following Japanese
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canadian-ness abstract expressionism
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Hamilton the City by where I live
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literature and a sense of communality
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I want them to be gracefully awkward
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combinations
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and surprising Encounters this new work
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I did I did a residency at one Escape
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one which is a Heritage Park in
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Saskatchewan
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where I’m from I’m from treaty four
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but it’s for the cree people would
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gather and there’s five bison jumps
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and so I was invited to do a residency
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in the summer
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and two years ago
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they reintroduced the Bison back to this
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land
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where they had
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lived for millennial
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and
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because bison you know they like to get
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down and rub and bathe in that dirt they
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exposed four rocks for petroglyphs
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I know
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and I knew this before they told you
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know the public about it and I had to I
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couldn’t tell anybody I was just like
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it’s kind of like getting this GG award
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I couldn’t tell anybody for four months
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[Music]
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and then I just found out on
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International indigenous day on
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September 30th
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there was a baby bison born so this
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residency I just wanted to honor the
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bison
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and I was thinking about how our our
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people are contemporary indigenous
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people we use a ribbon and we use it for
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ownership celebration like ribbon skirts
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ribbon shirts so for me this is honoring
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the Bison being returned to their
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Homeland
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and I didn’t go to art school but I
5:28
studied myself like people asked me and
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I said I went to Art School like the
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prince super Public Library
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but I know a lot and I I wanted to know
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what good art was and um and I found too
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that like to be a true artist you have
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to continuously learn and use it and
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what I’m trying to do now is put what I
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know in into my pieces into my sculpture
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and that’s what I’m doing now with my
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new pieces and I’m I’m working on a show
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now about the cameras because I realize
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we’re the last First Nations can
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regeneration that lived there work their
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fish there you know like and uh
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there’s no more cameras and the calories
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have been running in in northern BC for
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over 100 years and our people were
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always involved First Nations
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so what I want to do I want to make
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statement about that and also I want to
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make statement about we’re losing our
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salmon like the Buffalo you know like
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that’s our buffalo
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you know because you know like all the
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animals that depend on it and um
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so that’s that’s what I’m working on now
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I’m working on a show about the Cannery
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days I’m going to call the Cannery days
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The Glory Days
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it took me many years
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to get back to
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my Rouge because I want to wear
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residential school it had something to
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do with that
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so it took me many years
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to get back to my roots where you know
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where I was born
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and uh and I’ve been that’s what I do is
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mostly
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lectures and how to do our animations
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[Music]
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uh about uh elections and men and that’s
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one of them I think about seven Legends
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uh put together so that’s where I am now
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and I’m you know slowing down a little
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bit
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but I probably will keep going
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until right to the end you know what
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else can I do you know
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so I’ll be doing artwork all my love
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I’ve never done anything else it’s an
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art
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in my early work I did mostly
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performance art and it’s not depicted
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here at all but
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um I think it was because of the time I
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didn’t have my language I’m learning it
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now as an older person but um
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so I realized that the early performance
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work with me trying to find a sort of a
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personal lexicon with my body and
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materials you know and I was trying to
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say something I was trying to express
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myself and when I started learning my
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language
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my desire to sort of be performing and
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to be making the work I was making sort
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of started to fade away because I
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realized the language the language knew
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me you know my language knew me and and
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I didn’t have to do all the kind of
8:55
gestures I was doing for so long
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and then so I started moving from making
9:02
work that was about me performing to
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work that was about other people
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getting to participate but other people
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being the focus of the work so I started
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realizing that uh in in my life when I
9:17
went visiting and then my languages
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like knowledge transfer you know you go
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to someone’s house and in that process
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of having that visit you know some
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knowledge has been transferred you know
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there’s an interchange and I started
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realizing that there was like stories
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that would be like oh that’s an amazing
9:35
story you know and it had a
9:36
transformational effect on me and so
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this piece is a piece about
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transformation and it’s based on a story
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from our our Elder sibling my name is
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Amy gogurdy and along with Rayne Mackay
9:49
the director of The Craft Council of BC
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I had the very great honor of nominating
9:54
lulin for the 2021 Sadie brownsman
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Governor generals award
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the trajectory of her career events is a
10:02
continual development and refinement of
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her technical skill and artistic Vision
10:07
throughout she has focused on the iconic
10:10
forms of tools and other functional
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objects these attract her for the
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relationship to craft and human culture
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emphasizing what craft historian Howard
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rizzotti has described as the
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relationship between Cool Tools and the
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human hand which is the very basis of
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craft in many ways Lynn thinks of her
10:30
work in terms of the archeology of
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everyday life she collects antique tools
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admiring them for the beauty of their
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forms and for their archaeological
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interests the tools she makes however
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are impossible they will never be used
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combining the strength of bronze with
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the fragility of glass her abstract
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forms exaggerate and expand the notion
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of the tool yet they speak to the mind
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and the imagination rather than to any
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pressing task
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many of lulin’s tools appear to be
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fragments of larger machines
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although obscure as to their original
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purpose these works are characterized by
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Precision attention to detail and finish
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[Music]
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foreign
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[Music]
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