Craig Francis Power: Wild Life
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Giant Ass Squid -
Narrows -
Love Is Colder Than Death -
Dead Partridge Hung From Nail -
Blue Belton (Duke) -
Trash Family -
The Three Brothers -
Mother and Child -
Trophy -
Green Man -
Flies -
Trigger Mitts -
Ducks In A Row
Christina Parker Gallery is pleased to announce Wild Life, an exhibition of new textile works by Craig Francis Power! This will be Craig’s inaugural exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition will open with an artist reception on Friday, Nov. 3 from 6–8pm, and will continue until Nov. 25. Music at the opening reception will be provided by Boyd Chubbs.
Craig Francis Power will also be giving an artist talk and tour in the gallery on Saturday, Nov. 18, from 3–4pm.
I make hooked rugs that draw from the history and iconography of Folk Art to interrogate notions of “good” and “bad” taste, and how our evaluation of quality and value is governed by a classist, racist, sexist, and homophobic dominant cultural orthodoxy. Rather than a hand-made approach to the production of these rugs and a reliance on natural materials and processes, recent developments in my practice have seen me embrace an industrialized method of working that foregrounds a mechanized power-tool (a tufting gun) as well as non-natural acrylic wool (a petroleum product).
What appears naïve, quaint, rustic, and romantic in each piece is in actuality the opposite. While what is grotesque, playful, and disturbed are just that. My work occupies a space that is both heartfelt and satirical at once.
The hooked rugs in Wild Life are influenced by imagery from Newfoundland and Labrador’s cultural tourism industry, the brutalization of the environment through extractive resources, my own experience salmon-fishing and hunting in the province, and by the genres of Science Fiction and Horror vis-à-vis the climate crisis.
Craig Francis Power is a visual artist and writer from St. John’s. His hooked rugs, videos, and installations have shown widely at galleries across Canada and internationally. In 2022 he was awarded the Cox & Palmer Pivotal Point Grant and is a previous nominee for the Sobey Art Award. The award-winning author of three previous books, his fourth novel, and a collection of poetry, are forthcoming.