Edmonton, AB - The Art Gallery of Alberta is pleased to present RED TILE, on view from May 24 through August 10, 2008. This exhibition highlights work by important Canadian Aboriginal artists who established culturally unique art forms that drew from Native heritage and used European methods to carry meaning.  This exhibition features over 25 works by key Aboriginal artists such as Daphne Odjig, Jane Ash Poitras, Norval Morrisseau and Alex Janvier, the latter who was recently appointed to the Order of Canada and will be given an honorary doctorate by the University of Alberta in June 2008. 

These artists broke new ground with subjects and styles that were politically inflected from the start. Norval Morrisseau, for instance, was chastised on one side by elders for representing and exposing sacred signs outside their intended context and on the other by an artistic establishment that refused to see his work as anything but artifact. RED TILE provides a glimpse of art-historical precedents that established the hard-fought base on which younger generations of contemporary Aboriginal artists now work from.

RED TILE is curated by Marcus Miller, Assistant Curator at the Art Gallery of Alberta and compliments the Gallery’s summer exhibition FACE THE NATION, which opens June 21, 2008.

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