Beau Dick: John: Fazakas Gallery, Vancouver, BC

Beau Dick: John

Feb 6 - May 30, 2021

Fazakas Gallery, Vancouver, BC

Amidst these times of upheaval and uncertainty, perhaps a vital opportunity afforded to us is to hold close the connections deemed most important to us. These forces act as elixirs that flow through our bodies and spirits. Our kinships transcend the fragmented fissures of a society marked by division, providing us with the restoration we need the most. And this, we should celebrate.

In 2015, Fazakas Gallery hosted the solo exhibition, Drama, exploring the unique cultural perspective of Beau Dick: an artist who produced for Kwakwaka'wakw performance and ceremony, while upholding his moral and financial responsibility towards his larger community through activism and mutual support.

During this exhibition, LaTiesha Fazakas introduced Beau to John Todrick who was similar to him in manner and sensibility. The kindred friendship formed between the two was instant and would keep them symbiotically entangled through many avenues during their lifetimes. 

John supported Beau, not only through the acquisition of his carvings but in allyship and friendship; endorsing his multiple walking expeditions in protest of the Federal government's abuse of the land, water, and treaties of the First Nations. 

As such, John chronicles the relationship between Beau Dick and John Todrick, paying homage to the cross-pollination of their individual legacies, which meet to produce a formative kinship that was at once generative in the material sense, but also deeply personal. Here, we are met with the significance of uncovering not only the political, social, and intellectual motives behind an artist's creation, but also the multitude of relational and collaborative forces that embrace and fortify the perception of the world in which the artist seeks to articulate. This, for Beau, was John.