ARTIST STATEMENT
Jordan Bennett is a multi-disciplinary visual artist of Mi’kmaq decent who calls the west coast of Newfoundland home. His work is derived from a combination of popular and traditional cultural reflections, which he portrays through his passion for and knowledge of pop culture, traditional craft, and his own cultural practices. He has recently developed an affinity for language, mainly directed towards learning his ancestors’ native tongue of Mi’kmaq. Through the processes of sculpture, digital media, text based media, installation, painting, endurance performance and various others, he strives to push boundaries and play with the ideas of re-appropriation, reclamation, participation and the artifact within traditional aboriginal craft, ceremony, and contemporary culture.
In 2010 Jordan’s work has been shown in five curated group exhibitions in Toronto, Winnipeg and Banff along side artists such as James Luna, Rebecca Belmore, KC Adams, Cheryl L’Hirondelle and various others. In the same year Jordan was short-listed for a permanent installation at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and was brought into Vancouver to attend the Vancouver Cultural Olympiad Aboriginal Artist Exhibition. So far in 2011 he has been one of four artists selected for an Aboriginal Performance Arts Series titled “Acting out. Claiming Space” at Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre in Kingston, ON, with an upcoming group exhibition at the Ottawa Art Gallery scheduled for this September. In the summer of 2012 he will be having his first solo exhibition at Alternator Gallery in Kelowna, B.C under the curation of Heather Igloliorte.
In May/June 2010, Jordan participated in an artist residency at Manitoba’s major alternative space, Plug In ICA, in Winnipeg and was accepted to a thematic residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts—Towards Language, led by visual artist, Greg Staats. Jordan’s work has been featured in a variety of publications including the world wide published Skateboard/Lifestyle magazine COLOR.
Over the past few years Jordan has had the honor to meet various artists that have influenced him in the past, and has keep contact and even collaborated with a number of them. In 2009 he had the opportunity to participate in the recreation of Rebecca Belmores performance “Speaking to their Mothers” and last fall, Jordan put his skills with film and photography to good use when he acted as film and photography assistant to internationally renowned native artist, Brian Jungen. The film documented Jungen’s and Duanye Linklater’s trip to Northern Ontario to hunt. He will be joining Jungen and Linklater again this upcoming summer to assist in this project in Northern British Columbia.
Jordan has been the recipient of several awards and honors including: being selected for the National Artist Program at the Canada Winter Games in Whitehorse, Yukon, in 2007; winning the Memorial University Medallion for Academic Excellence in Visual Arts; being selected for a work-study position at The Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre for the Arts; receiving the RBC Youth Excellence Scholarship to attend a visual arts residency at Banff Centre for the Arts; and in 2009 receiving both a Canada Council Travel grant and a Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council Project Grant.