Since stepping into his new role as curator of contemporary art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery last year, Paul Butler has been busy. His first major curatorial project there, “Looking Up: Contemporary Connections With Inuit Art,” opened this winter along with two exhibitions of his own artwork in Montreal. “Looking Up” features works that contemporary Winnipeg artists have created in response to the WAG’s Inuit art collection. But according to Butler, it’s only the beginning of a much more ambitious project. Here, Butler discusses the unexpected proposal that led him to become a curator, crossovers between art-making and exhibition-making, and the international reach of the Weakerthans lyric “I Hate Winnipeg.”
Britt Gallpen: What inspired you to invite Winnipeg artists to engage with the WAG’s Inuit collection?
Paul Butler: Last year, I was at school at Concordia University and visiting home [Winnipeg] often. I approached WAG director Stephen Borys with the idea of an exchange between Cape Dorset and Winnipeg—taking four Winnipeg artists up to work alongside Cape Dorset artists in the Kinngait studios, then bringing four artists from Cape Dorset to Winnipeg to work at Martha Street Studio.
The idea was to use drawing and printmaking as a common language, a way to exchange cultures. I wanted to create a platform where these two Canadian art communities could build a relationship.
So I came in and visited with the director about this idea. At one point, he said, “I need to hire a curator,” and also, “Would you be interested?” Of course, I said yes.
BG: So your path to taking a job at the WAG actually hinged on this idea of North-South exchange. “Looking Up” didn’t involve travel by the artists involved, however. Is that still part of the plan?
PB: Yes, we’re developing the idea.
The WAG is building an Inuit Art Centre sometime in the next two to four years, and that is the kind of programming the director and the WAG are interested in—focusing on Inuit art and contemporary art, and maybe building a bridge between the two.
In a way, an artist exchange sounds simple, but it’s quite complicated to accommodate everybody and bring them up there. So this exhibition is sort of a prequel to that larger project.
BG: Have you considered inviting an Inuit artist down to the WAG to respond to some other part of the collection?
PB: Yes, definitely. Early on with this exhibition, we wondered, “What are we doing without bringing Inuit artists down here to be a part of this conversation?” But again, it is a prequel.
“Looking Up” is about Winnipeg artists and their relationship to Inuit art through the WAG’s collection. We’ve had this relationship to the work itself while growing up here, and it’s had an impact and an influence on this art community. None of us has been up there, and we don’t know the artists, we don’t know the community—it’s all knowledge gained through the work. That’s why we maintained the idea this way.
Without getting into the postcolonial impact, or any of these broader issues, too much, it feels like an olive branch to say, “We are really big fans of your work.” The Winnipeg artists and myself were sensitive to these issues, and we were hesitant to develop the show because we didn’t want to be a part of what seemed to us to be a history of exhibitions that treats the work as a curiosity or something exotic without actually addressing these darker, larger underlying issues.
Part of our solution was to do a publication where we could include that kind of conversation about larger underlying issues in the project. Some of the didactic texts touch on it too.
BG: How did you select the Winnipeg artists who participated? What was the process that followed?
PB: I have a collaborative art practice, in addition to running a commercial gallery for about a decade, so I had relationships with a lot of artists in Winnipeg already. I chose eight Winnipeg artists who I trusted with these issues and who I trusted could produce work—also, artists who I knew through past conversations had already recognized the impact of Inuit art on their own practices.
After I selected these artists, we set up a mini-residency in the vault where all the Inuit art is stored at the WAG. I wanted to have the artists come down with me and collectively select the work.
We went about five times, just scratching the surface, really. There was anxiety that we wouldn’t be able to actually go through everything, but we found a lot of amazing work. We had Darlene Coward Wight, the curator of Inuit art at the WAG, available to answer questions and to navigate us through the collection. Then we just hung around in a circle, going through portfolios, and we edited it down to what the show ended up being.
BG: You occupy a rare position in the art world: the artist who does curatorial work as a staff member of a major institution.
PB: Well, I’d give credit to Stephen Borys for coming up with the idea. And it’s one thing to make that gesture and hire an artist, but the WAG has been very supportive with my ideas and new approaches. They didn’t hire an artist and force a circle to fit a square.
BG: What is the relationship between your curatorial and artistic practices?
PB: A number of people had acknowledged the curator in me in the past, and I’d always resisted it for one reason or another until I was asked to apply for this job. At that point, I looked at my artistic CV and said, “What can I move over to curatorial experience”?
As soon as I flipped a little switch in my mind, I started to see what people had been telling me. A lot of my work moved easily over to curatorial, leaving few projects as true solo exhibitions. That helped me reframe my thinking curatorially.
I ran a nomadic web-based art gallery for a long time, and it was mainly about relationships—making connections between the audience and the artists. I think that represents my approach to curating, which is tied to community, relationships and making authentic connections.
And then, with the collage parties, I was really interested in making art accessible to everybody. You know, the person who says they can’t draw a straight line can sit down at a collage party and make an equally attractive collage as some senior, professional artist.
BG: Some observers might wonder how you will handle acquiring works for the WAG collection when several significant Winnipeg artists are represented by your own dealer. What are your thoughts on this?
PB: There’s always going to be people who see conflicts, and I’ve accepted that. My focus is on building the collection. I’ve got nothing to gain by my art dealer’s relationship to the rest of the stable.
I’m very committed and dedicated to the Winnipeg art community. I go into our collection and say, “We’re missing this person, and this person, that make up the last 10 years of contemporary art in Winnipeg.” It’s very clear to me what holes there are. The challenge is not having a budget like the National Gallery or the AGO to collect work. Everything has to be done creatively, through donation for the most part.
So I don’t go in and say “we need so and so” and start writing cheques—we don’t have cheques to write. I have to work closely with the artists and their dealers, and hopefully collectors who recognize the importance of keeping this culture local and protected here at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
I really want to work on the collection while I’m here because, you know, it’s tough to buy a big Marcel Dzama or Sarah Anne Johnson. Some of the more important works go to larger collections and a lot of the time they go to collections outside of Canada, so that’s where we really need the help of the larger community to keep these works here—in Canada and in Winnipeg.
BG: Can you tell us anything more about your collecting plans?
PB: As I said, my first priority it to fill holes in the collection from the last 10 to 15 years. We don’t own a Karel Funk, for example, and Karel’s a Winnipeg artist who’s got a huge international reputation. It would just be a shame 50 or 100 years from now for someone to look at the permanent collection and see those gaps. I worry that down the road, those opportunities are going to be out of our reach.
BG: Is there anything else you can tell us about what you’re working on?
PB: Right now at the WAG we have Ragnar Kjartnasson’s The End–Rocky Mountains. We have the biggest Icelandic community outside of Iceland here in Manitoba, and it’s been received very well. Ragnar sent a video greeting that we projected at the opening, because he couldn’t come, and he sang “I Hate Winnipeg.” That was a real crowd-pleaser. There are so many great Icelandic artists here; I was surprised to discover that half of my friends are Icelandic, including Simon Hughes and Guy Maddin.
Also, regarding “Looking Up,” I want to remind people that this is just the beginning of our renewed commitment to contemporary and Inuit art, so please stay tuned!
This interview has been edited and condensed.
