Video: Respondent Series | Artist Talk with Bracken Hanuse Corlett

Programmed as part of our winter solo exhibition Sweetgrass and Honey by Skeena Reece, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is extremely pleased to present interdisciplinary artist Bracken Hanuse Corlett, who presented an artist talk as part of our ongoing Respondent Series on Saturday, January 20 at 2pm.

For Sweetgrass and Honey, Corlett has been commissioned by Reece to paint a new mural, Stekyawden Syndrome, 2018. Created in collaboration with Reece, the mural reinterprets a Gitksan myth, The Mountain Goat, in which village people are punished for their poor treatment of mountain goats who they kill or harm cruelly without reason. For the mural, Corlett and Reece frame this myth within a psychological trauma (Stockholm Syndrome) that leaves captives overly sympathetic with their capturers. Contextualized within the frame of the exhibition, Corlett will give an introduction and overview of his most recent works, and upcoming projects, with insight into what drives him as an Indigenous person, writer and artist.

Working in a breadth of forms and media, including mural painting, animation, and VJing, for this talk, Corlett will speak about the mural at Plug In ICA, as well as his large-scale public art projects, such as Listening. On. Waking Terrain, 2017, a recent commission from the city of Vancouver; his animation Ghost Food, 2017; and SEE Monsters, an audio-visual collaboration with his cousin Dean Hunt.

Bracken Hanuse Corlett is an interdisciplinary artist who hails from the Wuikinuxv and Klahoose Nations, currently based in Vancouver and the Sunshine Coast. With formal training in theatre and performance, Northwest Coast art, and visual arts, Corlett’s work is a hybrid that incorporates Northwest Coast aesthetics and symbols, and fuses painting and drawing with digital media, audio-visual performance, animation and narration. He is a graduate of the En’owkin Centre of Indigenous Art, Penticton and has a B.F.A. from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver. He studied Northwest Coast carving, art and design with the acclaimed Heiltsuk artist Bradley Hunt, and his sons Shawn Hunt and Dean Hunt. In 2014 he was awarded the BC Creative Achievement Award for Aboriginal Art, and in 2017 he received a large-scale public art commission for the City of Vancouver, and the Vancouver Mural Festival. His work has been exhibited widely, including at Grunt Gallery, Vancouver; Museum of Anthropology (MOA), Vancouver; Urban Shaman, Winnipeg, and the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina; and the ImagineNative and Toronto Film Festivals, Toronto. His work Electricity Blanket Protoype 004, 2017 is currently included in the exhibition INSURGENCE/RESURGENCE at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

This artist talk is programmed in conjunction with Skeena Reece: Sweetgrass and Honey | January 19 – March 18, 2018.