Stephen Foster: Remediating Curtis: Toy Portraits
June 22 to Sept 29, 2013
Stephen Foster, Sioux Archer on His Knees – Item # 70305, 2011, back-lit film for lightbox.
Kelowna-based artist Stephen Foster will be showing examples from a new series of work called Toy Portraits, which is part of his on-going, multi-part investigation titled Remediating Curtis. Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) was an American photographer who documented Indigenous Peoples over a huge geographical area of the United States and Canada. His magnum opus was The North American Indian, a multi-volume work that was published as a serial from 1907 to 1930, and contained about 2000 images. Curtis has had a huge impact on popular images of Indianess in film and mainstream media throughout North America and Europe. As an artist of mixed European and Indigenous heritage, Stephen Foster works to deconstruct such images, and to place them in a more complex perspective.
In his Toy Portraits Foster has photographed small plastic toys made in Germany that depict North American First Nations peoples. Some of these toys appear to have been modeled on Curtis photographs. The images of toys will be enlarged and then displayed in light boxes in the gallery, and 3-D glasses will be available for visitors to view the images in that vernacular format.
Stephen Foster holds an MFA from York University in Toronto and teaches at the University of British Columbia Okanagan Campus. He works in video and new digital media and has exhibited widely.
Opening reception
Friday, June 21, 2013, 7 to 9 pm
Artist’s talk begins at 7 pm
This is a free event, open to members and guests by invitation.
June 21 is National Aboriginal Day and admission to the Gallery will be free.
If you could select one object to best represent who you are, what would it be?
Take part in Project Identity: Exploring Identity with Digital Images
It’s simple!
Take a photograph of an object that tells us something about your identity; who you are, whether personally, physically, or culturally and email it to us.
Photos will be printed and displayed in The Scotiabank Studio which can accommodate 4000 4 x 6 inch-sized images, so spread the word and help us to fill the walls!
Click here for all the details.
