Artist
Biography
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Kavavaow Mannomee was born in 1958 in Brandon, Manitoba, where
his mother was being hospitalized for tuberculosis. He rejoined
other members of his family in the Baffin Island community of
Cape Dorset when he was seven or eight. In the early 1980s, he
began working as a printmaker for the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative,
learning to translate skillfully the drawings of the community’s
elder artists into elegant prints. He started making his own
drawings while he was still in his teens. Part of a new generation
of contemporary Cape Dorset artists who are reshaping the community’s
expressive traditions, Mannomee continues to work both as a printmaker
and, at home, on his drawing.
...
As the critic Lloyd Dykk has noted, Mannomee’s ink and
coloured pencil drawings do not so much represent an Inuit way
of life as “document the contours of an idiosyncratic mind.” In
a style that is spare and precise, Manomee’s delicately
coloured images address themes ranging from man’s relationship
to nature to the negative effects of alcohol dependence. He often
plays with scale, as in a series of works inspired by Inuit legends
of a small race of people, featuring diminutive human forms struggling
under the weight of giant objects such as harpoons and traditional
utensils. Although the majority of Mannomee’s images include
human subjects, some focus solely on the natural world. As a
wildlife artist, Mannomee is best known for his highly accomplished
images showing birds engaged, like their human counterparts,
in various kinds of work. His selective attention to detail gives
these drawings a shifting, even surreal quality.
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Selected
Press
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CANADIAN
ART
CANADIAN
ART
Gallery Exhibitions
Selected Other Exhibitions
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The Drawing Room,
Pendulum Gallery, Vancouver BC, July 17 - August
7, 2010, presented by DRAWN
Public Collections
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Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, ON)
National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON)
Selected References
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Robert Kardosh, "The New Generation: A
Radical Defiance," Inuit Art Quarterly,
Winter 2008
...
Amy Karlinsky, "Land of the Midnight Sons
and Daughters: Contemporary Inuit Drawings," Border
Crossings, Issue no. 105
Gallery
Information
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MARION
SCOTT GALLERY
2423 GRANVILLE STREET
VANCOUVER, BC CANADA V6H 3G5
TEL: 604.685.1934
FAX: 604.685.1890
ART@MARIONSCOTTGALLERY.COM |