Quick Pick - Joel Richardson and Nyle Miigizi Johnston at Thunder Bay Art Gallery

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Joel Richardson and Nyle Miigizi Johnston, “George & The Eagle,” mixed media, 2023.

Friends for more than a decade, multimedia artist and filmmaker Joel Richardson and painter-mural artist Nyle Miigizi Johnston started their conversation about art and life many years ago in Toronto's High Park. 

They share some of the results of that conversation in their new exhibition, Gaganoonidiwag: They Talk To Each Other, on view Jan. 11 through April 13 at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery.

An Anishinaabe storyteller, Johnston is also the cultural director of the youth organization Finding Our Power Together. Richardson, on the other hand, is co-founder of the Metipso Portal, an experimental media lab in Kenya.

Curated by Virginia Eichhorn, the new show is “the most recent iteration of a decade-long project...Their conversations began with the blending of stories from Indigenous and settler perspectives, harnessing art and technology to stimulate dialogue, promote cultural revival, and inspire collective responsibility for our environment. Merging historical facts with created narratives, this body of work includes mixed media and video components that follow the artists’ time travelling alter egos, Captain Jimmy Swann and Commander George Nadjiwon, as they grapple with what it means to reconcile.”

Interesting stuff. Check it out. ■

Joel Richardson and Nyle Miigizi Johnston, Gaganoonidiwag: They Talk To Each Other, is on view Jan. 11 through April 13 at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery

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