lessLIE - yOURS & tHEIRS (drums)
Teddy Balangu and John Marston carve together in Palembei’s haus tambaran (spirit house) during the first artists’ exchange between the Pacific Northwest Coast and the Sepik River in 2006. (Photo: Art Holbrook)
Hailans to Ailans provides many opportunities for cross-cultural sharing, including exchange between Papua New Guinean artists and Coast Salish artists from Canada’s Northwest Coast (see our map section to locate their cultural areas). When the show opens in Victoria on Vancouver Island, it will be with strong participation from the local Coast Salish community. They will be welcoming the PNG artists to their land, and it is fitting that Coast Salish artists John Marston and lessLIE should also participate in this exhibition. They will share their culture through ceremonial exchange at events on both sides of the Atlantic. During their stay in London, they will accompany their counterparts from PNG to view great collections from Oceania and the Northwest Coast, collected in earlier times and now housed in major London museums. My thanks to Rebecca Hossack for welcoming this opportunity to introduce the innovative work of these young men to a wider audience in the United Kingdom.
lessLIE
Leslie Sam (known as lessLIE) is a graphic artist with a lively interest in other cultures. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that he was eager to represent his culture in this exhibition.
I had always found the idea of introducing the two cultures intriguing, since for twenty years, work from both had been exhibited side by side in our gallery. Young artists from several of the Northwest Coast traditions had been inspired by the PNG work they saw in the gallery, but it was the Coast Salish artists who showed the most interest. lessLIE, who is especially interested in Salish design as a visual language, recognised the trigons, circles, crescents, and ovoids from his own tradition echoed in the surface design on Sepik sculpture.
“lessLIE’s use of art to mediate complex historical and contemporary intersections of Salish and non-Salish peoples begins with his sincere fascination of the human desire to create line marks for the purpose of communication. His interest in the development of formal systems of lines used in visual communication spans temporal and cultural contexts.”
-Dr. Andrea Walsh, thesis advisor to lessLIE at the University of Victoria
lessLIE - Four Salmon
lessLIE has created four paintings for Hailans to Ailans. The two illustrated here address his interest in the ambivalence around creating art for sale, yet also recognize that its presence in society reinforces cultural renewal.
Using drums as a canvas for his painting yOURS & tHEIRS provides an opportunity for discussion around the questions of appropriation and the removing of Northwest Coast art from its original intended context. “At the same time,” he says, “it is an image of sharing, with two of four faces sharing the same mouth as well as design colOURS.”
JOHN MARSTON
John Marston - New Moon
Carver John Marston accompanied me to the Sepik River in 2006. A film team also came to record the first meeting between members of these great carving traditions, resulting in the acclaimed documentary Killer Whale and Crocodile.
John Marston - Spiritual Transference
Teddy Balangu - Killer Whale and Crocodile II
Nothing, however, that John researched beforehand prepared him for a journey that took him into a society that still lived in traditional houses and travelled by canoe, despite much influence from outside. He found a carving tradition where perfectly proportioned sculptures emerged without benefit of measurement, and natural pigments were used to provide a finely painted finish. He visited great meeting houses where everything from floor to ceiling had been created in materials from the rainforest. Best of all, he was able to work with thirty other master carvers!
A primary focus of John’s visit was to meet Iatmul carver Teddy Balangu, who had been invited to Canada as a carver in residence at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. John and Teddy have both created remarkable sculptures that reference their time together on both sides of the Pacific. Some are included in this exhibition.
Since returning from Papua New Guinea, John Marston has created several works illustrating the value of cross-cultural influences. One of these influences is reflected in John’s choice of materials, which also reference the name of this exhibition. John has used both garamut and kwila woods, gifted to him during his stay in PNG, in the creation of major works. Echoing his previous use of the sun and moon as symbols of sharing across both sides of the Pacific, he has created a moon mask for Hailans to Ailans that uses maple and yew. These woods grow close to the base of mountains in the interior of many of the islands off the west coast of Canada. In his carved panel Spiritual Transference, John has used yellow cedar, a highland wood found in the mountains just below the snowpack in northern Canada.
