Additional Images

Provenance:

Nunavut Gallery, Toronto, ON
S. Family Collection, Toronto, ON

Note:

Few sculptors have been able to capture fluidity of posture or richness of anatomical detail with the apparent confidence and ease of Davie Atchealak. One of the great sculptors to come out of southern Baffin Island, Atchealak is much renowned, particularly for his expertly engineered dancing bears, and his exuberant, muscular shamans.

Atchealak’s engineering daring and expert use of cantilever is on marvellous display in Drum Dance, a sculpture among his most ambitious works, which notably fuses the two subjects for which he is most renowned.

Atchealak, who worked mostly in Iqaluit and Pangnirtung, carved Drum Dance in Toronto in 1989 with the encouragement and financial support of Nunavut Gallery, owned by Paul Hallett.[1] At the time of the work’s conception, Atchealak was in a period of creative florescence, and collectors were taking note. On May 30th of the same year, a sculpture by the artist, Drum Dancer (later acquired by the National Gallery of Canada) was sold at Waddington’s for $45,100, then a record price for Inuit art.[2] A Toronto Star article on 13 June 1989 singled out the ambitious but as yet unfinished Drum Dance as a project of looming significance, noting both its complexity and record size.[3]

Nunavut Gallery had hoped to facilitate the acquisition of Drum Dance by the National Gallery; however the sculpture was promptly acquired privately. Amazingly, it has remained largely unknown to the public beyond the brief exhibition of the work by Hallett in 1989.[4]

Inuit shamans healed the sick, summoned spirits or game, and could also perform death-defying feats of strength and endurance, intervening on behalf of their community in moments of danger. In Drum Dance, Atchealak appears to have gathered the many disparate elements of the shaman's vocation into a single scene, the massive space afforded by the whale’s skull integrating multiple vignettes that span both spiritual and physical realities. The use of numerous vignettes in a composition is unusual for Atchealak, but is employed in the work to powerful effect, conjuring the rhapsodic energy of the drum dance.

[1] Christopher Hume, “Inuit Artist Takes on a Whale of a Sculpture”, The Toronto Star, June 13, 1989.
[2] Richard Crandall, Inuit Art, A History (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2000), 311.
[3] Hume, “Whale of a Sculpture”, June 13, 1989.
[4] Ibid

Drum Dance is one of forty-five works in the present auction from a pioneering and important Toronto collection of Inuit art, the S. Family Collection.

Distinguished by its remarkable diversity, and uniformly high quality, the collection was built on over fifty years of dedication. Acquisitions were made both from the leading dealers and private collectors of the period, as well as directly from artists during several excursions to the north, including to Qamani'tuaq (Baker Lake), and Arviat.

Although the S. Family organized a handful of exhibitions specializing in sculpture, many artworks from their personal collection have remained largely unknown to the collector community. Significant sculptures and graphics come from artists including Davie Atchealak, Ooviloo Tunillie, Parr, John Tiktak, Joe Talirunili, Kiugak Ashoona, Nuna Parr, Aqjangajuk Shaa, and Mathew Aqigaaq.