DAVID GARNEAU  |  ROAD KILL WILD-LIFE ART AND MÉTIS IMAGINATION: AN ILLUSTRATED ARTIST TALK

Friday, August 15, 7:30 PM in the KIAC Ballroom

This philosophical, poetic, and occasionally humorous, illustrated artist talk considers wild life art as the anthropomorphic expression of our desire for family and freedom; roadkill as spiritual objects; the ditch as a site of existential and spatial anxiety; and how the Métis experience shapes the Plains landscape.

DAVID GARNEAU is Associate Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Regina. He was born and raised in Edmonton, received most of his post secondary education (BFA Painting and Drawing, MA American Literature) at the University of Calgary and taught at the Alberta College of Art and Design for five years before moving to Regina in 1999.

Garneau’s practice includes painting, drawing, curation and critical writing. His solo exhibition, Cowboys and Indians (and Métis?), toured Canada (2003-7) and Road Kill toured twenty one centers throughout Saskatchewan (2009-11). He is most interested in the collision of nature and culture, metaphysics and materialism, and in contemporary Indigenous identities. His paintings are collected by The Canadian Museum of Civilization; Parliament Buildings; Indian and Inuit Art Collection; The Mackenzie Art Gallery; Mendel Art Gallery; Dunlop Art Gallery; The Glenbow Museum; NONAM, Zurich; Musée de la civilisation, Québec City; City of Calgary; the SaskArts Board; Alberta Foundation for the Arts; Paul Martin foundation; and are in many other public and private collections.

He has curated several large group exhibitions: The End of the World (as we know it); Picture Windows: New Abstraction; Transcendent Squares; Contested Histories; Making it Like a Man!, Graphic Visions, TEXTiles; two person exhibitions: Sophisticated Folk; Reveal/Conceal, and solo shows: Diana Thorneycroft, Tim Moore. Garneau has written numerous catalogue essays and reviews and was a co-founder and co-editor of Artichoke and Cameo magazines. He has recently given talks in Melbourne, Adelaide, New York, San Diego, Sacramento, Saskatoon, and keynote lectures in Sydney, Toronto, Edmonton and Sault Ste Marie. Garneau is currently working on curatorial and writing projects featuring contemporary Indigenous art and curatorial exchanges between Canada and Australia, and is part of a five-year, SSHRC funded curatorial research project, “Creative Conciliation.”