Camden Art Centre and New Curators are delighted to announce akâmi-, the first major UK institutional exhibition of Duane Linklater, an Omaskêko Ininiwak multimedia artist based in North Bay, Ontario, Canada.
Curated by the second cohort of New Curators fellows, the exhibition interrogates power, individual and collective identity, absence and memory within contemporary Indigenous life and institutional practices.
akâmi- features a new ceramic commission created with Sugpiaq artist and choreographer Tanya Lukin Linklater, under the collective name Grey Plumes, a recent painting series and a sculptural sound installation. It also includes an installation acquired by Tate, but not yet seen in the UK, which incorporates a video by his son, Tobias Linklater and objects made by Linklater’s grandmother, Ethel (Trapper) Linklater borrowed from the Thunder Bay Art Gallery in Northern Ontario, confronting questions of ownership and the responsibilities that accompany it.
akâmi- is Omaskêko Cree for “across”, with multiple figurative and literal meanings that disrupt Western notions of temporality, confronting past, present and future simultaneously to create space for Indigenous presence in every moment. In different ways, the works engage with enduring legacies of colonialism, while also exploring new possibilities for museum structures, questioning distinctions between fine art and craft and the concept of the solo exhibition itself. By incorporating work from his family members in the exhibition, Linklater challenges the singularity of authorship and highlights the importance of community and intergenerational transmission of knowledge and creativity.
New Curators will publish a catalogue on the occasion of the exhibition, featuring contributions from the 2024–5 Fellows. An edition of Camden’s ‘File Note’ series will also be published with an essay by Will Heinrich. Both will be available for purchase at Camden Art Centre.
Image: Duane Linklater with Ethel (Trapper) Linklater and Tobias Linklater, Speculative apparatus for the work of nohkompan and nikosis, 2016. Installation view, From Our Hands, Mercer Union, Toronto, 8 December 2016 – 18 February 2017. Courtesy Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.
