KLATSASSIN

Stan Douglas

Central Gallery
June 7 to September 4, 2010

Curated by Annette Hurtig

Internationally renowned Vancouver-based artist Stan Douglas has shown his work at and had it collected by prestigious institutions around the world. His photographs and projections are celebrated not only for their conceptual acuity and formal precision but also for how they continually extend the possibilities of film and video, and art itself. Klatsassin defies the official version of events leading to the Chilcotin War of 1864 by focussing on the story of a Tsilhqot’in chief who was accused of murder, tried and executed. Set in B.C.’s Cariboo-Chilcotin region, it depicts events related to gold rush efforts to build a road through Tsilhqot’in territory to the gold fields and the First Nations insurgency in response. Current events in the region echo those of the earlier conflict between aboriginal and colonialist interests. Klatsassin is composed of three elements: a filmic projection, a series of photographic portraits of characters from the film, and a series of landscape or location photographs.