Meryl McMaster Bloodline and Lekwungen: Place to Smoke Herring

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courtesy of the artist, Stephen Bulger Gallery, and Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain

Meryl McMaster (b. 1988) 'I Listened As The World Became Silent', 2022, digital chromogenic print, 101.6 x 152.4 cm (courtesy of the artist, Stephen Bulger Gallery, and Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain)

Meryl McMaster Bloodline and Lekwungen: Place to Smoke Herring

Launch a New Season of Exhibitions at the AGGV

This summer, visitors to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria will have the opportunity to view outstanding contemporary Canadian exhibitions, Meryl McMaster: Bloodline and Lekwungen: Place to Smoke Herring, a film by Brianna Bear and Eli Hirtle, on view at the Gallery on June 18 and running through October 19.

“Much of the art on view at the AGGV this summer is grounded in a sense of place and the relationships that exist between land and people with deep ancestral roots to that land. In Bloodline, Meryl McMaster’s works speak to her blended Plains Cree, Métis, Dutch and British ancestry and especially to her roots in the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. McMaster’s photographs incorporate beautiful, contemporary garments, made by the artist herself that echo ceremonial regalia,” said Steven McNeil, AGGV Chief Curator & Director of Collections and Exhibitions.

The exhibition, curated by Sarah Milroy, Chief Curator, McMichael Canadian Art Collection and Tarah Hogue, Curator (Indigenous Art), Remai Modern, looks back to McMaster’s past accomplishments and brings us up to date on her current explorations of family histories, in particular those of her Plains Cree female forebears from the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in present day Saskatchewan.

Bloodline features photographs across six bodies of work, evoking themes of memory, containment, erasure, and self-determination. McMaster’s most recent series in this exhibition, Stories of My Grandmothers (2022-2023) highlights the artist’s deep reckoning with her family’s history focusing on the lives and experiences of her great-great-grandmother Mathilda “Tilly” Schmidt, great-grandmother Isabella “Bella” Wuttunee, and grandmother Lena McMaster.

Lekwungen: Place to Smoke Herring, curated by Toby Lawrence, AGGV Curator of Contemporary Art, was collaboratively created in order to share a brief history and overview of the Lekwungen territory; the land where the film’s creators work, live and play. Filmmakers, Bear and Hirtle, want to centre the Indigenous knowledge of, connections to, and responsibility for these lands. Their hope is that this film will help people gain a deeper understanding of and respect for the culture, language, traditions and history of this territory, which have been nearly erased and under attack in many ways since first contact with Europeans, and subsequent settlement of this area.

“Brianna Bear and Eli Hirtle’s film Lekwungen: Place to Smoke Herring speaks to the culture, traditions and language of the Lekwungen people and the Lekwungen territory, on which present-day Victoria stands. We hope the film will inspire visitors, and especially those who live and work in Victoria, to learn more about the Lekwungen people,” said McNeil.

Join the AGGV for their Summer Exhibition Celebration on June 18, 2025, from 5:00 to 9:00pm, for the launch of a new season of exhibitions, the evening is free to attend.