Jerry cans, bottles of soy sauce, canned meats — these are just some of the everyday objects depicted in Tarralik Duffy’s latest body of work.
The award-winning multidisciplinary artist is based in Saskatoon, but she grew up in a small village in Nunavut called Salliq (Coral Harbour). In Gasoline Rainbows, her new solo exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Duffy has assembled a series of nostalgic touchstones that bring her back to her childhood, with a pop art twist.
She joins Q guest host Saroja Coelho to tell us what these everyday objects convey about life in Nunavut, and how her show explores the multi-layered meaning of home.
Listen to Duffy’s conversation with Coelho and follow along using this visual companion guide.
Jerry Cans, 2023. Soft sculpture, courtesy of the artist. (Submitted by Tarralik Duffy)
When I was growing up, I felt like life was happening anywhere except in Nunavut.
[Gasoline cans] are ubiquitous, like they’re everywhere…. You watch your uncles and cousins and your grandfather tying them down to the back of a boat.
While I was growing up, it’s like you don’t realize the things that you take for granted, or the things that you’re going to maybe find beautiful in a strange way because it means home in a way you never expected.
Klik
Klik, 2023. Leather, thread. Collection of the artist. (Photo by Tommy Illfiger)
Klik is a funny thing, you know, because it’s premium pork. These are the things that we would put in our grub boxes when we’re going out [hunting] on the lands…. It means sustenance, in a way, right? It was brought to us to sustain you while you’re looking for the things that will actually sustain you.
China Lily
China Lily, 2022. Digital drawing, courtesy of the artist. (Submitted by Tarralik Duffy)
I like to play with language, so [this piece is] like the Great Wall of China Lily. All these stupid puns amuse me.
My dad was always playing with language and he taught me that language is fun to play with, and English is kind of a ridiculous language to begin with…. I just thought it was funny because of the pun, and I thought it would be a nice visual image.
Blubber Yum
Blubber Yum, 2023. Digital drawing. Collection of the artist. (Submitted by Tarralik Duffy)
[Blubber Yum is] one of my favourite pieces because it’s just a large drawing of, you know — I don’t even know the real name now — Bubble Yum? I’ve completely twisted my own brain, but yeah, it’s like purple and pink….
I was working on the Klik can and it’s got this, like, blubber pink for the pork, kind of like a Barbie pink. And it just made me think of this time I was eating with my auntie and she had said, “Oh, you know, I love this so much I could chew it like a big piece of bubblegum.” And that memory had just come to me and suddenly there was this madness that took over because I just pictured it immediately. So I just had to put everything else down and I just hurriedly made this piece. I didn’t even know if it was going to be in the show, but I advocated for it because I ended up loving it so much.
Tea Time
Tea Time, 2023. Digital drawing, courtesy of the artist. (Submitted by Tarralik Duffy)
The full interview with Tarralik Duffy is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Tarralik Duffy produced by Matt Murphy.
Q17:59Tarralik Duffy: Pop art, finding beauty in unexpected places, and Gasoline Rainbows
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
