The Ottawa Art Gallery is proud to present its first exhibition to tour abroad!

Wrapped in Culture, a collaborative, Indigenous-led and community-grounded project, organized by lead-artist Rosalie Favell, will stop in three Canadian galleries and will make two stops in Australia in 2021.

In 2017, the project brought ten Indigenous artists from across Canada and Southeastern Australia to Ottawa, where they created contemporary works based on a North American Indigenous Plains-style buffalo robe and an Australian Aboriginal possum-skin cloak. This work sought to bridge together people from Indigenous and non-Indigenous backgrounds to foster creativity, exchange cultural knowledge and share life experiences. For the exhibition tour, we aimed to bring the exhibition to each artist’s home territories and to present it to several different Indigenous communities. The participating artists represent several diverse nations which include: in Canada, the Anishnaabe (Odawa), Cree, Métis, and Siksika (Blackfoot); and in Australia, the Barkindji, Boon-Wurrung, Mutti Mutti, Yorta Yorta, and trawlwoolway.

In April 2019, the exhibition opened at the OAG in Ottawa, the current home of Barry Ace, Meryl McMaster, and Rosalie Favell. This past winter, it traveled out to the Prairies at Wanuskewin Heritage Centre in Saskatoon, closer to Adrian Stimson’s home in Alberta. Later on this year, it will head to the Art Gallery of Algoma in Sault-Ste-Marie, ON. In 2021, Wrapped in Culture will be off to the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston, Tasmania, where Vicki West will welcome the exhibition to her home state. It will then travel to Footscray Community Arts Centre in Melbourne, home to Maree Clarke and Mitch Mahoney, and close to Kerri Clarke, Molly Mahoney, and Wade Mahoney in New South Wales. The final stop will be back in Canada, at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery at the end of 2021.

To learn more about the project, the artists, and to view a 3-D virtual tour of the exhibition’s installation at OAG, please click here. Scroll down to bottom to access virtual tour. 

Wahsontiio Cross, Assistant Curator, Touring Indigenous Projects

This tour is made possible through the generous support of the Ontario Arts Council and from the Canada Council for the Arts.