In a career that spanned four decades, the artist Alootook Ipellie combined aspects of southern Canadian colonial culture with Inuit culture in a complex process that he described in a poem as “walking on both sides of an invisible border.” A retrospective exhibition at Carleton University Art Gallery takes its title from that poem, which is displayed along with other published and unpublished material by the artist to provide a well-rounded portrait of Ipellie and his achievements. Curated by Sandra Dyck, Heather Igloliorte, and Christine Lalonde, the exhibition presents selections of Ipellie’s output as an accomplished journalist, author, poet, illustrator, cartoonist, and artist from the 1970s until his death at the age of 56 in 2007. The title poem’s description of Ipellie’s process places it somewhere between a method of torture and a choreographed dance routine, and demonstrates the seriousness and sense of humor that the artist brought to his work.
Alootook Ipellie, Self-Portrait: Inverse Ten Commandments, 1993, ink on illustration board
The exhibition succeeds in representing the breadth of Ipellie’s activities as a visual artist, a literary artist, and more. It fittingly spills over into a satellite exhibition in Centretown at the Manx Pub where a selection of drawings for his comic strip
Nuna and Vut, curated by Danielle Printup, is on display. The complete text of my review of the exhibition was published
here on the October 10
Akimblog.
