The theme of Looking Up arose from discussions about the impact The Winnipeg Art Gallery’s (WAG) renowned Inuit art collection has had on Winnipeg’s strong contemporary art community.  The exhibit Looking Up, held at The Winnipeg Art Gallery December 21, 2013 – March 16, 2014, explored that influence and the relationship between two distinct art communities.  This publication is the catalogue of that exhibition.

For Looking Up, a spectrum of Winnipeg artists who, through conversation, had acknowledged the WAGs’s Inuit art collection on their work were invited to produce new work in response to the collection, the largest of its kind in the world. Through a series of informal visits to the Inuit vault, the artists collectively selected work to exhibit alongside their own work.  The result was an exhibition of connection between two art communities with idiosyncratic histories who mythologize, share stories, tell jokes, and capture their landscapes through the common language of art. Looking Up not only ‘looked up’ to the North, but figuratively as well, in homage.

Published by the Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2013, Paperback

English, Colour Photos

ISBN 9780889150157

80 Pages

Curator / Writer: Paul Butler