Special Program at the AGO

Pootoogook, Joyfully I See Ten Caribou (1959) Photo courtesy of Dorset Fine Art

Thursday, October 15, 2pm Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario

The Art Gallery of Ontario, in partnership with imagineNATIVE, are proud to present a special presentation on Cape Dorset art presented by Dr. Gerald McMaster, Curator of Canadian Art, Art Gallery of Ontario.

This program will consist of a screening of Ghost Noise and James Houston: The Most Interesting Group of People You’ll Ever Meet, followed by an interview with the filmmakers, and then a gallery tour of the Cape Dorset print show that is currently on display at the AGO.

Free for Festival Pass Holders.

Public Tickets: Members $15, Public $18, Students $12 Tickets available by phone at 416-979-6608 or on-line at https://tickets.ago.net or in person at the door. Screenings:

Ghost Noise Canada · 8 min · Beta SP Director: Marcia Connolly English and Inuktitut with English Subtitles

Third-generation Inuit artist, Shuvinai Ashoona was born, and continues to live, in Cape Dorset, Nunavut. She stands out amongst her peers for her fantastical representations of her co-existing interior and exterior northern life. In this short portrait film, Shuvinai shares her thoughts on drawing.

Marcia Connolly is a Toronto-based filmmaker whose work has screened at The Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Palme in Paris, the Toronto International Film Festival, Artecinema in Naples, Italy, and most recently at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

James Houston: The Most Interesting Group of People You’ll Ever Meet Canada · 49 min · Digital Beta Director: John Houston English and Inuktitut with English Subtitles

The Inuit call him Saumik, meaning “the left-handed one.” Appropriately, the film begins with Saumik, James Houston (1921–2005), sketching the northern landscape en plein air. We eventually discover his other identities – father, husband, friend, colleague, artist, author, arts administrator and grandfather – through a series of interviews with “the most interesting group of people.” Directed by award-winning filmmaker John Houston, this is a very personal examination of a remarkable man. An accomplished artist, James Houston was born in Toronto in 1921. He studied with Group of Seven artist Arthur

Ghost Noise

Lismer at the Art Gallery of Ontario and later attended the Ontario College of Art. His service in WWII – with the Toronto Scottish Regiment (Canadian Active Service Medal ’40 – ’45) – is seen through family photographs and sketchbooks of soldiers, mottos and statistics. Following the war, he studied life drawing in Paris.

But it is Houston’s work in the Far North among the Inuit that he is most celebrated for. He arrived in Inukjuak in 1948 and lived among the Inuit until 1962. He worked through the Canadian Guild of Crafts, the Federal Government and the Hudson’s Bay Company to bring to the attention of the outside world the flourishing Inuit prints and carvings. For nine years Houston was a Northern Service Officer and Civil Administrator of West Baffin Island in the Northwest Eskimo Co-operative. We see footage of young Houston examining carvings brought to a local co-op by Inuit artists. Throughout the film we hear personal and affectionate Inuit memories of Saumik, who first introduced printmaking to the community. In one poignant scene, renowned artist Kenojuak Ashoona recalls Houston commissioning her to do her first drawing; in a later scene we see them holding each other affectionately as they stroll down a Cape Dorset street.

The film ends as it began, with the gathering of friends and relatives at a memorial service to scatter Houston’s ashes in Cape Dorset. With profound sadness the final moments of the film shows some skilful and effective knitting of cuts of Houston looking over the land he loved with the filmmaker’s young son, Dorset, building inukshuks.

Filmmaker John Houston has directed such award-winning documentary films as Diet of Souls, and Nuliajuk: Mother of the Sea Beasts. Others include Songs in Stone: An Arctic Journey Home, about the Inuit artists of Cape Dorset, which won the Best Arts/Entertainment Award at the 2000 Yorkton Short Film & Video Festival. He worked as first assistant director on Carroll Ballard’s Never Cry Wolf and several other

productions before making his own films. Houston was raised in Cape Dorset, Baffin Island, Nunavut. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Gerald McMaster has been the Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto since 2005, where he is leading his curatorial team in the re-installation of the Canadian galleries. From 1981 to 2000 he was Curator at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, in charge of exhibitions, acquisitions and publications of contemporary Indian art. He later became Curator-in-Charge of the First Peoples Hall from 1995 to 2000. While with the Canadian Museum of Civilization, he curated some of the most important exhibitions in our history, including Indigena (1992), Reservation X (1998) and Edward Poitras: Canada XLVI Biennale di Venezia (1995). These exhibitions were always at the forefront of establishing a critical and articulate voice for aboriginal artists in the art world. In 2000 he left Ottawa for Washington to work at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian where he was the both the Director’s Special Assistant for Mall Exhibitions (2002-2004) and Deputy Assistant Director for Cultural Resources (2000-2002). During his tenure at the Smithsonian he was responsible for the design and content of Museum’s new permanent exhibitions, as well as curating First American Art and New Tribe: New York. He is widely published and has received our country’s highest awards, including the 2001 ICOM-Canada Prize for contributions to national and international museology; the 2005 National Aboriginal Achievement Award; and more recently, the Order of Canada. Gerald is originally from Saskatchewan.