January 22 to February 6, 2005
The Kelowna Art Gallery is pleased to be a host venue for Our Walk With the Land, an exhibition highlighting the strength and diversity of film and video work by Indigenous filmmakers across Canada.
Our Walk With the Land features innovative Aboriginal films and videos that create a greater understanding about the unique and culturally diverse relationship between Indigenous People and their traditional lands. Many of the selected works explore land use and spiritual and collective relationships and how these relate to environmental and cultural practices. Each television monitor in the gallery features four film and video works ranging from four to ninety-six minutes in length. The exhibition includes documentary, short narrative and experimental works.
Accompanying the film and video exhibition is a selection of paintings by Vancouver-based artist Garry Todd, a Red River Métis/Cree. Todd’s work looks at how Aboriginal people have managed and maintained a functioning economy that superceded European arrival and continues to this day. Referencing to archival images, this series depicts Aboriginal women at work on the land and reveals how Aboriginal Nations’ connection to the land is an economic as well as a spiritual inheritance. Todd’s work combines a variety of influences including Aboriginal history, bio diversity and food culture, as well as political, economic and art history.
Our Walk With the Land has been brought together by the Indigenous Arts Service Organization in partnership with the Okanagan Producers Collective known as the Ullus Collective. The Ullus Collective supports the training and development of Aboriginal video and visual artists and provides a forum for voicing stories, issues and concerns that are not addressed by current mainstream media.