Gathie Falk: Revelations takes us on a reflective journey into the significance and reality of our experiences with everyday objects. Known for her range as an artist, the exhibit features an incredible display of multi-media installations, sculptures, and paintings highlighting important yet mundane pieces of life.
Strolling through the Audain Art Museum exhibit, you’ll notice glistening towers of fruit around the Whistler gallery. Each one inhabits the space like smaller versions of the pyramids of Giza, except these look almost edible. Are they plums? Apples? They sit reflecting the light like the hyperreal innards of a pie, carefully selected and waiting to be peeled. You can almost smell the fruit’s sweetness as you pass by. On the walls hang colourful paintings of familiar objects and places. The most captivating and welcoming ones being those that make our homes feel whole. Thriving houseplants, full teapots – you can almost hear the chatter of a full household in the background.
Down the hall, numerous cabbages hang whimsically, wet-looking and glossy. The green-filled space makes you think simultaneously about making cabbage soup – or cabbage rolls, while also imagining the garden they came from. Each one looks beautiful and fresh, just waiting to be made into a meal. The sheer number of them is as overwhelming as it would be to cook them— you can almost feel the anticipation from Falk, waiting for hungry guests to arrive.
Another room is filled with dresses and the memories of wearing them. Uncomfortable ones, ones that itch and button too tight or pull at your waist; the dresses that people compliment you on but make you feel out-of-body, or hyper-feminine, and confined. Then there’s Falk’s most famous piece: The Problem with Wedding Veils. It’s symbolic and sensory; it looks itchy and hard. Typically viewed as a feminist piece on marriage and the presumed expectations of Falk as a young woman, it can also be seen as a commentary on the audacity of what we wear and why. The significance of it, this expectation to wear it, and the lengths we will go to maintain it.
Experience Gathie Falk: Revelations – on now until May 6, 2024, at the Audain Art Museum in Whistler.
Article by: Jaclyn Hayward
This exhibit is a continuation of the journey of reclamation and rebuilding bonds of cultural knowledge. An original reboot of the Tāpis exhibit, it adds three new makers now holding the knowledge of tāpis/tuppies (dog blankets).
When Adele ᒪᐢᑿᓱᐤᐃᐢᑵᐤ asked to be taught this knowledge from her mentor, it was with the intent of restoring important cultural knowledge taken from so many Northern Nations. For this cohort, Adele ᒪᐢᑿᓱᐤᐃᐢᑵᐤ chose makers who exhibited personal and cultural ethics close to her own, along with levels of skill necessary to undertake such a large project. “Each of these blankets takes a minimum of 200 hours (or more) to be brought to completion. It is with great pride to be able to showcase this exhibit. It has been created to show the beauty and celebration of dog regalia as completed by Michif, Dene, and other Nations to celebrate our valued dog kin.”
Originating from the Métis, Northern Cree, and Dene communities, ‘li tāpis’ (small carpet), named by the French Michif and known as ‘tuppies’ by the English and Scottish Michif, are dog blanket regalia created to celebrate dogs. Tāpis are made from wool and embellished with intricate beadwork, silk embroidery, moose or caribou hair tufting, fringed with ribbon or yarn and adorned with bells. Showing respect for sled dogs, tāpis were draped over the backs of dogs.