First Things Don’t Come First

Kiinamit kiinamut (Face to Face), Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory , 2016


Programmed by Native Art Department International
(Maria Hupfield & Jason Lujan, NYC)


Friday, July 28 to Sunday, July 30, 2017

Opening Hours 10 to 5pm @ Jest Arts

Tour and Talk on Saturday, July 29 @3pm

Kiinamit kiinamut (Face to Face), Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory , 2016

First Things Don’t Come First is a video installation based around a site-specific construction that
uses new and recycled materials with video displays and other materials integrated in the
structure.


The six artists selected by Native Art Department International offer a unique array of viewpoints
on land and landscape, but share a common motif of environment as active participant. Among
the locations these artists operate in is Canada, Sweden, Japan, Greenland; many operate from
two countries. Video screens deployed along and within the framework of the structure invite
viewers to consider placement and location of video works along with what they are showing.
Mixed in are common objects and visual motifs that stand in for human activity such as labor,
ceremony, and communication, and commerce. What came First, whether it be physical, environmental, spiritual, mythical, cerebral, emotional, or accidental, is the starting point for these
videos.

A couple drives through Tokyo on a scooter, the passenger holding a bullhorn and a taxidermied crow; a view from a speeding car of a field in the Phillipines on fire; a mist creeps over a forest in Scotland, assuming shapes that evoke human gestures; a cartoon cowboy interacts with Swedish furniture and forest spirits; two viewers contemplate a New York City museum exhibition of early man, and its many meanings and misdirections; a woman applies facepaint in forward and reverse against
a Greenland landscape.

The site of Durham, Ontario, one of the first ever selfsustaining communities in Canada, is an excellent location to present this video work by six artists that initiate a dialogue on manifestations of the land. The installation method itself invites viewers to consider how history, space, and material, are implicated in everything we do and every decision we make.

Programme
Black of Death, Chim Pom, 2013
New work by John Rasimus
Spirit, Jill McDonald, 2013
New work by Adam Khalil and Zack Khalil, 2017
Aurora, Jennifer Berklich, 2016
Kiinamit kiinamut (Face to Face), Laakkuluk Williamson
Bathory , 2016