In celebration of Kent Monkman’s public art commission The Colony at the Lassonde Art Trail, Cowley Abbott is hosting a selling exhibition of preparatory drawings in graphite, ink and charcoal as well as etchings and paintings featuring the iconic Castor canadiensis. Available works are on view from October 7 - November 6 at Cowley Abbott Toronto, 10 Alcorn Ave.

The Artist's Statement:

The Colony, my public art commission for the Lassonde Art Trail, references the essential role that Castor canadiensis has played in the natural, Indigenous, and colonial histories of Turtle Island.

The sculpture will inhabit a site at the newly-remediated mouth of the Don River in Toronto’s groundbreaking Biidaasige Park. Here, my larger-than-life beavers will feast, sing, dance, and celebrate, evoking Indigenous ceremonies as well as the opulent baroque sculptures of the gardens at Versailles.

To bring The Colony to life, I created hundreds of drawings in graphite, ink, and charcoal over the past three years. The drawings evoke the fanciful lodge and anthropomorphic beavers depicted in Italian artist Veremondo Rossi’s 1763 engraving La Caccia Dei Castori. I exaggerated those human qualities in my beaver sketches to embody a variety of mythological subjects and bacchanal scenes from art history.

The preparatory drawings and final version of The Colony honour the gifts of our beaver kin and invite them to once again assert their presence, share their knowledge, and help restore our ecosystems.

— Kent Monkman

Kent Monkman: The Colony