Duane Linklater is a Sobey Award-winning artist of rising international stature. Working in a variety of media, Linklater explores notions of exchange, ownership and the authority of language, and raises powerful questions that stretch well beyond the artworks themselves. His practice often stems from cooperative and collaborative interactions and focuses on process and gesture.
Decommission features a new sculptural work, 2005 Grand Jeep Cherokee, Linklater’s retired family vehicle stripped down to the frame. The work functions as an inquest into the jeep’s problematic model name, which stereotypically associates land and nature with Indigenous cultures. Stranded and vulnerable, the dismantled jeep memorializes the vehicle’s service as a workhorse to the artist and his family, as well as the decline of the SUV—a car that was branded for forays into the great outdoors. Here, Linklater acknowledges his own contradictions and compliance with systems of consumerism and identity, and similarly prompts us to consider our own complicity.
Duane Linklater is Omaskêko Cree from Moose Cree First Nation on James Bay. He obtained a Bachelor of Native Studies and a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Alberta, followed by a Master of Fine Arts in Film and Video at the Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts at Bard College. Duane is the 2013 winner of the Sobey Art Award, Canada’s pre-eminent award for contemporary art. Over the past year, he has had solo exhibitions at Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto; Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Thunder Bay; Or Gallery, Vancouver; and Family Business, New York. Modest Livelihood, a film installation co-created with Brian Jungen, debuted at the Walter Phillips Gallery as part of dOCUMENTA (13) and has since traveled to Chicago, Vancouver and Toronto, where it is currently on view at the Art Gallery of Ontario. His work has been included in group shows at the Esker Foundation, Calgary; Le Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montréal; The Power Plant, Toronto; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver; UBS Gallery, Redhook, New York City; The Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta; and Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton. Duane lives and works in North Bay, Ontario.
