Mother Tree, red cedar and acrylic. Photo courtesy of Rande Cook.
When a Tree Falls, Are We Listening?
WHERE: VIU’s The View Gallery
WHEN: October 14 – November 27, 2021 – Artist talk and reception October 21, 6-8 pm
The View Gallery is thrilled to present an exhibition of new works from Kwakwaka’wakw multimedia artist Rande Cook. The exhibition will run from Thursday, October 14 to November 27, 2021, with an opening reception and artist talk to be held on October 21 from 6-8 pm.
Rande Cook makes artwork that is rooted in the land. It reflects the deep relationship he has to his home community in Alert Bay and to the traditional territories that his people have occupied for thousands of years. With the rapid disappearance of the last old growth stands of cedar, fir and spruce on the Pacific Coast, he has started to question the use of this precious material in his own art practice and begun to raise his voice, to bring awareness to unsustainable logging practices that are still going on here on Vancouver Island and the mainland BC coast. Works in various media use form, line, colour and image to ask us to think about our own relationship to the land and to the commodity-driven culture that consumes it.
Rande Cook (b. 1977) is a Kwakwaka’wakw multimedia artist and hereditary chief of the Ma’amtagila people. He has studied under master craftsmen/artists, John Livingston, Robert Davidson, Art Thompson, Bruce Alfred, William Cook and Calvin Hunt. He has completed artist residencies at Pilchuck School of Glass (Stanwood WA), Museum of Glass (Tacoma WA), and the Vancouver Airport Residency through Douglas Reynolds Gallery. In 2015 and 2016 Cook held the Audain Professorship of Contemporary Art Practice of the Pacific Northwest with the Visual Arts department at the University of Victoria (UVIC). In 2021 he graduated from UVic with his Masters of Fine Art.
The View Gallery is VIU’s contemporary art gallery. The VIU community acknowledges and thanks the Snuneymuxw, Quw’utsun, Tla’amin, Snaw-naw-as and Qualicum First Nation on whose unceded traditional lands we teach, learn, research, live and share knowledge.
B330, 900 Fifth Street, Nanaimo, BC. Entrance 5D.
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Chai Duncan, VIU Visual Art Instructor and View Gallery Curator, Vancouver Island University
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