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Titirtugait | Tᐃᑎᕐᑐᒉᑦ

Written by jolmes on .

Indigenous Prints from Station Gallery

July 10 – August 23, 2025
Heritage Galleries 

Station Gallery has served as Whitby’s public art gallery for over 50 years. In 1980, the gallery founded a permanent collection. The subsequent decade saw a rapid expansion of the gallery’s holdings. The local print community initiated the fond by acquiring gifts from numerous Ontario artists associated with the gallery along with Open Studio, a prominent Toronto printmaking facility. On display are some fine examples of printed production and artworks that form the core of the gallery’s expansive collection.

This exhibition intends to highlight holdings created by First Nations, Métis and Inuit (FNMI) printmakers. The title of this exhibition is Titirtugait (Tᐃᑎᕐᑐᒉᑦ), which is the word being used for “printmaking” in the Inuit language. Inuit from Kinngait (formerly known as Cape Dorset, Nunavut) feel that it could be either a traditional or a modern word.

The core of Station Gallery’s Indigenous print collection started with the 1996 Cape Dorset Folio—an annual print suite issued in the capital of Inuit Art and Canada’s most artistic community today known as Kinngait. Today the gallery’s permanent collection contains over 50 pieces created by Indigenous artists. They vary greatly, ranging from traditional content created by visionary artists such as Norval Morrisseau and Sheojuk Etidlooie, as well as to up-to-the-minute contemporary studio production such as the works of Greg Staats and Christian Chapman, both of whom had solo exhibitions at Station Gallery.

Image: Norval Morrisseau, Thinking Of Fishes, 1982-85, colour serigraph on paper, Gift of Craig Schlichter and Carole Robinson, 1997.