David Garneau: Dark Chapters
Dark Chapter, 2024, acrylic on panel.
Dark Chapters is a touring exhibition of paintings by David Garneau, curated by Arin Fay from the Nelson Museum Archives & Gallery. It is accompanied by a publication of the same name.
In his exhibition Dark Chapters, David Garneau presents meticulously rendered metaphorical still life paintings of objects set in intriguing, deliberate arrangements. These configurations illustrate the intertwined reality of modern and traditional Indigenous life alongside the complicated ramifications of colonization. Garneau titled the exhibition Dark Chapters to conjure Justice Murray Sinclair’s description of the residential school system in the Reports of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as “one of the darkest, most troubling chapters in our nation’s history.” As with traditional still life painting, the items in Garneau’s work carry deep significance, associations, and stories. The titles of Garneau’s paintings are also an important part of his meaning-making, which guide viewers toward understanding his intention while prompting thoughtful dialogue around reconciliation.
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David Garneau’s Dark Chapters still life series creates a complex but accessible visual language. Through countless hours of studio practice and deep reflection about art, materials, and culture, David has created a creative dialog that is recognizable yet multilayered, irreverent, and deeply meaningful; an unnervingly realistic combination of lived experience and philosophical musings about place and people. These works function on a variety of levels and can be read on a spectrum from realism to compound metaphors. The still life symbols in these works reflect binaries and synergies that are relevant to everyday life, the time immemorial distance between a stone and a book, between Indigenous and environmental ways of knowing and modern realities—a choose-your-own adventure of appreciation and interpretation. The still life genre is both usurped and supercharged in this series, easily read on the surface yet compressed into emblematic vignettes of multifaceted meaning.
The book Dark Chapters: Reading the Still Lives of David Garneau (Published by the University of Regina Press) is an ode to the series and was intentionally produced well in advance of the exhibition tour. The book was meant to elicit wide-ranging responses and provide a road map of sorts, which illustrates the power and importance of perception. The invited contributors, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Cecily Nicholson, David Howes, Dick Averns, Fred Wah, Jeff Derksen, Jesse Wente, John Hampton, Larissa Lai, Lillian Allen, Paul Seesequasis, Peter Morin, Rita Bouvier, Susan Musgrave, Tarene Thomas, and Trevor Herriot, along with editor Nic Wilson, bring a diversity of perspective and creative license to the project. There are reflections and responses in the book that do not necessarily echo the artist's intentions and in many ways this was a hoped-for outcome of selecting such a diverse group of writers from a variety of disciplines from across Canada to contribute thoughtful and critical conversations. Each contributor was invited to respond to one or several of the works without any additional oversight or caveat, and given the time, space, and support to contemplate and create a response. David’s hands-off approach to this undertaking examples a generosity of spirit and trust in the process of creative and intellectual discourse. It opens the door for the viewer to apply their own interpretations to the work and engage in a supported critical dialog.
The Dark Chapters series asks us to think about history, culture, and identity in new and interesting ways. The concept of allyship, for example, was the subject matter I attempted to tackle in writing about the work Ally Tear Reliquary. The call and response exercise gave me the opportunity to consider issues both practical and personal, relevant, and revealing. As a curator, I recognize the privilege of the position as the caretaker/gatekeeper of the gallery space, and what that represents. Allyship, as Larissa Lai dissects in her fascinating contribution Allies (After Hsieh and Montano) can be literally and figuratively tied together, a beard to privilege, a white-saviour foil to Indigenous sovereignty and truth. Both things can be true. I have tried to explore these ideas honestly in my contribution to the book and in my approach to curation generally, with as much honesty and open-hearted intention as possible, but it is a constantly mediated terrain, as befits any important relationship.
The tour of Dark Chapters across the country has necessitated a great deal of time and reflection and dedication, and every facet has underscored the importance of the process and the meaningful nature of the artist / curator / viewer connection. At many of the galleries along the Dark Chapters tour (NMAG, Yukon Art Gallery, Founders Gallery, Dunlop Art Gallery) it was important to factor in the connectedness of the museum, archive or collection to the series and how this reality in many ways compounds the colonialist history between the works and the respective organizations. The Dark Chapters works contribute cues and content to have these complex critical conversations. Works such as The Museum and its Discontents (after Holbein and Luna), on loan from the Remai Modern, Shrouded Ancestor, and Visiting a Relative in the National Gallery, that were loaned for the inaugural NMAG exhibition, for example, acknowledge the complicit ‘cabinet of curiosity’ history that all museums represent. The relevance of this conversation is succinctly outlined in an essay that David wrote, and one that I refer to often, which gives context to the literal and figurative architecture of colonialism and the importance of critical care between settler and Indigenous negotiations.
“A favoured tactic for settler art magazines, galleries and museums responding to the reconciliation, decolonization and Indigenization surge is to cede display territory—temporarily. That is, they celebrate Indigenous resilience, showcase Native pride, display Aboriginal pain and otherwise “hold space” for First Nations, Inuit and Métis whatever. That is, their concern appears to be with filling the space with anything Indigenous, rather than being concerned with the critical quality of the contribution. These actions are designed to momentarily re-present, but not to engage the Indigenous beyond that moment. Making, holding and sharing space reinforces settler ownership of these display territories; critical engagement jeopardizes authority, on both sides. A lack of critical care reifies settler–Indigenous binaries.”
Writing about Indigenous Art with Critical Care, C Magazine, 2020.
In addition to speaking to and providing context for the works on display in any gallery setting, it is paramount that curators consider the complex and often fraught realities of inclusion and representation in these privileged spaces. Since galleries and museums are brick and mortar byproducts of social systems (often reinforcing the concepts inherent in structural functionalism, and maintaining the status quo), it is important to recognize opportunities to both reflect and challenge the cultural currents that these spaces are designed to embody and explore. Simply put, the role of a gallery should be reflexive and relational, challenging, and creative in every respect. Art is a perfect conduit for such contemplations, to create and bolster critical conversations, consider chaos and connectedness, and ponder our collective ability to be awestruck and outraged, creative and complicit. It is important also, in this art and culture process, to consider the infinite variation and intricate beauty that artists employ. The Dark Chapters series undertakes this work with beauty, generosity, and a sense of humour.
There is so much to learn from David Garneau’s Dark Chapters series, from the resonant realism of the works themselves, and the metaphoric language they speak, to the conversations that the works have amongst themselves, as they range around the walls, and how they occupy each respective gallery space, challenging the structure of institutions, while claiming their rightful space.
The Dark Chapters exhibition tour and publication were generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Arin Fay, Curator
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