December 21, 2024 – March 1, 2025
David Garneau : Present, Tense
A special project organized by:
The Contemporary Native Art Biennale (BACA)
5826, St-Hubert, 2nd floor
Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang / Montréal (QC) H2S 2L7
Metro : Rosemont
The European Academy recognized still-life painting as the lowest form in its hierarchy. Being the depiction of the things of everyday life, it was considered a poor container for the lofty concepts found in history, portraiture, and even landscape painting. David Garneay challenges this assumption.
David Garneau first painted still lifes when his eldest child, B, now twenty-nine, was born. In small paintings – due to cramped living conditions – he wanted to represent not only the artefacts of his new domestic situation but his thoughts and feelings about parenthood and how his life was changing. He also wanted to infuse the work with his interest in theory, psychology, philosophy, and other subjects. A tube of paint confronts a soother before a wall of books. Can one be both a good parent and a good artist? Another pacifier lies on a mirror (Lacan) in front of Freud’s collected works.
In 2016, while he was attending the O k’inadas: Complicated Reconciliations residency, at UBC Kelowna, he returned to still life, this time focusing on Indigenous issues. For the past five years, he has dedicated himself to this genre, posting a new painting every week on Facebook to respond to current public and private events.
David Garneau is head of the visual arts department at the University of Regina. He works in painting, exploring the various creative expressions found in contemporary Aboriginal lifestyles. In 2023, a retrospective of his work was shown at the Nicle Arts Museum in Calgary, and he is working on a traveling exhibition in 2025. His work can be found in many public and private collections, including those of the Canadian Museum of History, the Museum of Civilization, Parliament, the City of Calgary and Regina, among others.
