Thompson artist Teresa Burrows' The Sul(fur) Queen, which was exhibited at the Cheongju International Craft Biennale in South Korea last fall, has been chosen to continue touring with the Selected Works of Unity & Diversity.
The first venue is in British Columbia at the Museum of Vancouver as part of the official Cultural Olympiad for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.
The Selected Works of Unity & Diversity are being displayed as part of a triptych of contemporary craft exhibitions titled The Art of Craft. Two other exhibitions, including By Hand and Moments In Between will be displayed alongside the national exhibition.
The Art of Craft opened Jan. 13 and the exhibition runs until April 11.
Last July, the Manitoba Arts Network named Burrows the Hudson Bay Company's (HCB) People's Choice Award winner at the 7th Annual Rural and Northern Art Show.
Burrows won for her piece, called Caribou Women: The Sun Staff, which was made of beadwork, antlers and mixed media. It was chosen, from over 90 other artwork pieces by artists in rural Manitoba, by visitors attending the Rural and Northern Art Show.
Burrows was born in London, England and came to Canada in 1965, becoming a Canadian citizen in 1986. She completed a Bachelor or Fine Art degree at the University of Manitoba in 1984 and moved to Thompson in 1981. Since then she has worked as a cultural programer, addictions counselor, probation officer and school librarian.
Her work has been shown regularly at different Northern Juried Art Exhibitions since 1984 and with the Manitoba Society of Artists in Winnipeg. She has created art pieces by painting, printmaking, drawing, watercolour painting, photography, collage and craft, and has received the Best in Show and People's Choice awards.
Burrows has also been included in group exhibitions in the province and was featured in solo exhibitions at the National Exhibition Centre in 1999 and 2002. Her works have been featured at the Godfrey Dean Gallery in 2003, the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 2003, and the National Exhibition Centre also in 2003. The next year her work was included at Winnipeg's Bound-8 Manitoba Painters' show, and in 2005 was displayed in the National Exhibition Centre. Later on in 2006 her work became part of the Heritage North Museum in Thompson.
Burrows exhibit A las(s) in Rupertsland was exhibited at the Heritage North Museum in July 2007. She said aboriginal myths, ravens and Lewis Carroll inspired her. The exhibit was comprised of 43 artefacts, including 34 altered photos, five large oil paintings and five mixed media works. Burrows called her solo exhibit A las(s) in Rupertsland because she transported some characters and events from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, the children's books by the British author Lewis Carroll, into a Northern Canadian setting in her works.
The City of Thompson commissioned the exhibit and gave Burrows the opportunity to show some large paintings never seen locally in the museum's gallery.
The altered photos include portraits in mysterious landscapes, and many feature native mythology and some surreal or bizarre scenes with animals and people. Most were shot, scanned and printed on watercolour paper.
The ravens featured in many of her images were a result of her long-standing fascination with the large crow, which is found in the myths of many cultures.
Three large oil paintings showed dark scenes with undertones of violence and sexuality, and two of those were large works that provided images of people whose desperation is intensified by the stark black and white tones.
One of them called Manifestus of the maenads used nude images of young native women to explore their humanity, and the violence that can result from teenage gang activity.
The term "maenads" is from Greek mythology and refers to the wild and insane women who indulged in violence, bloodletting, sex and intoxication, and who wandered through the forests and climbed mountains at night to practice strange rites.
The maenads' bizarre behaviour demonstrates the intoxicating effects of alcohol, as do the women in Burrows' painting.
She painted the picture long after contemplating the female gang activity she was seeing in Thompson after she moved here in 1981.
