An opening reception was held last Friday at the main gallery at the Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art exhibition looking at RESERVE(d), a photo-based exhibit showcasing Gods Lake Narrows.
Award winning director Kevin Lee Burton, who is originally from the community of Gods Lake, directed the exhibition because he wanted to showcase what life is like in his hometown.
"I wanted to showcase the beauty and the kind of charismatic characters that live within specifically Gods Lake Narrows but in general on all of our Northern reserves," he says. "On the other side of the spectrum, I'm kind of showcasing housing and what not and making kind of a comment on the very prefabricated construction of native reserve housing and how inadequate it is."
Also joined with Burton's part of the exhibit is award winning media artist and director Caroline Monnet's archival image of her great-grandmother and textured birds in flight printed on large format Plexiglass. The exhibit also features Monnet's video projections of landscape.
Burton says the main theme of the exhibit is the fact that aboriginal people can make even dire living conditions beautiful with their culture and uniqueness of spirit.
