Update + Special Guest: 1981 The North Pole Dig | Henri Robideau

H E N R I R O B I D E A U

1981 The North Pole Dig

Please Join Us for Opening Day
Saturday 6 April 2 - 4 pm
Artist in Attendance

** With Ceremonial Musqueam Welcome Song by James Louis **

Joining us on Opening Day will be James Louis, dear friend of Henri and his wife Jeannie, singing a ceremonial Musqueam Welcome and a Journey song, in celebration of Henri’s exhibition ‘1981 The North Pole Dig’.

“Back in the late 1960’s Jeannie and her then-husband Phil took in Angel as a foster child. Angel was fleeing the foster and residential school system in Saskatchewan. Jeannie and Phil were her 53rd foster parents and her last before reaching adulthood. Through the years Angel remained part of our family and about 17 years ago she partnered up with Gerald Louis who is Musqueum. Gerald was much younger than Angel but he was a very good man for her, protective and caring. Angel passed away February 4, from multiple health problems, though it was the lung cancer that felled her, leaving behind eight children and a devastated Gerald. She was 66 years old. Gerald’s family put together an amazing healing and memorial ceremony at Musqueum which is where I first met James who sang Angel’s spirit to the other side. James is Gerald’s brother.
It is a great honour to have him sing at my opening and he has shared that he is honoured as well.
He told me ceremonial singing is his calling.
He has a great voice and is a terrific dancer.” - Henri Robideau

All welcome. James will begin at 2.30pm

The Pancanadienne Gianthropological Survey was originally conceived of as a photographic book project, a study of the major manifestations of human activity in the second largest country in the world, the land of my ancestors, Canada.
The 1981 North Pole Dig was the maiden voyage of The Pancanadienne Gianthropological Survey.

Leaving Vancouver August 1, the dig party arrived at its destination ten days later, Inuvik NWT, the land of the midnight noon, after having traversed the equivalent of a trip to Chihuahua, Mexico. Another two weeks later the dig arrived back in Vancouver with only five of the original eight members having survived the entire trip. Much of what was learned on that first outing would serve the Pancanadienne Gianthropological Survey well for most of the next decade of cross country digs.

" In 2016, at the age of 70, and after 50 years in photography I began working on the Pancanadienne Gianthropological Survey again with the intent of editing down the 2,000 or so panoramas into the book I had envisioned back in 1980.
That’s what is in this show – the first six pages of contact sheets from the first dig, along with the preliminary edit pages where I
have selected, grouped and narrated the images on a work sheet. From these work sheets will come the final stories and book pages of The Pancanadienne Gianthropological Survey." - H. Robideau

Henri Robideau is a photographer and cultural narrator whose practice is grounded in history and animated by the politics of our times. His lifelong involvement in photography incorporates more than fifty years of teaching, professional production for many of Canada’s leading artists and personal art creation incorporating photographic imagery with narrative handwritten text.

TRUTH AND BEAUTY

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