fabric, thread, grommets, rope and book pages
Joyce Wieland worked with her sister, Joan Stewert, and some others to make this powerful piece when she was 40 years old. The delicacy of the hand embroidered cloth draws poignant attention to the vulnerability of Canada's arctic environment and protests the idea that the government might sell Canadian water.
Each square is hand embroidered with an arctic flower.
Under the hand stitched fabric, startling excerpts from James Laxer's
The Energy Poker Game (1970) outline a scheme by an American corporation to seize control of northern waterways in Canada.
"I felt a sense of responsibility. .. It infuriated me to think that someone outside could be drawing up plans for stuff like that" Joyce Wieland
above:
Wieland 2006 made by
Brian Jungen (born 1970) from red leather gloves.
The title refers to Joyce Wieland, who was passionate about Canada, and was activelly engaged with Pierre Trudeau's nation-building project in the 1980's. Brian Jungen is a first nations artist and the gallery wall text states "while feminism and sexual rights formed an important part of the discussion in the 70's and 80's, indigenous rights were not addressed" and that is why this maple leaf is upside down.
I have long admired
The Water Quilt and was thrilled to see it during my visit to the Art Gallery of Ontario last weekend. Joyce Wieland did love Canada and is one of our art heroines. I've written about her before on this blog,
collected here and on modernist aesthetic blog
here.
I keep writing about Joyce Wieland because she was a pioneer in using domestic techniques and materials to make throught provoking art. Biographer Jane Lind says: "Her first quilts pre-dated by five years the explosion of women's work in many media at Womanhouse in Los Angeles, California in January 1972. That she was influential is evident in the red-glove sculpture that Brian Jungan named after her. I feel his work and hers are connected. He was born the same year that she made the Water Quilt. I was 19 that year.
ReplyDeleteWould I have seen this in the National Gallery at one time way back? Or was it another one of her pieces?
ReplyDeleteThis piece was created for her solo exhibition at the National Gallery 1971 entitled True Patriot Love. It was astounding that a woman of her young age would have a solo exhibition in this important gallery at that time. How old were you in 1971? The piece entered the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario and there was a solo exhibition in that institution in 1987. The important art critic Lucy Lippard wrote an essay for the catalog which I own. (signed by Joyce) So perhaps you saw it at the AGO. I saw it (I think for the first time in real life) just last week. There is a quilt Reason over Passion - her gift to Pierre Trudeau - in the collection of the National Gallery which is very often on view. I saw it at the National Gallery around 2010. xo
DeleteSo powerful...and beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteIncredible on so many levels!
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