Sandy Bay

Art Gallery of Ontario

Robert Houle. Sandy Bay, 1998-99. Oil on canvas, black and white photograph + colour photograph on canvas, Masonite, 300 x 548. 4 cm. Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Acquired with funds from the President's Appeal 2000 and with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance program © Robert Houle. Reading this work from left to right, Houle assembles a black and white photograph, a colour photograph, and three vertical rectangle canvases. In the top left colour photograph, an older white priest stands in a garden in front of an ivy covered niche with a virgin mary icon, surrounded by a bright blue summer sky. This is Father Chion who was widely liked in Sandy Bay First Nation, where the artist is from, because he spoke Saulteaux and was kind. Below this is a black and white photograph of two priests and a group of young indigenous children standing in rows on the steps of a brick building. This is an image of a First Communion at which Robert’s sister Marilyn is present. We move from the two photographs to the first oil painting of a building and finally to two abstract colour field paintings. In the first oil painting, the Sandy Bay Residential School appears in a cool blue fog with words from a saulteaux hymn Houle’s mother sang to him: “ON SAM KI KISEWATIS ANA MANITOWIYAN” (“Oh you are so kind and so treasured although you are god-like”) (Ks are pronounced as Gs). The second oil painting is a thin vertical dark blue night scene of a curved shoreline with evergreen trees on Lake Manitoba at Sandy Bay. Finally on the far right is a swirling red canvas with black shadows and streaks that suggest the lower half of a figure in a dress-like garment with long bell sleeves. Abstract wavy yellow brush strokes create a horizontal line across the canvas and an orange vertical line with a pink u on the top is in the middle of the canvas. The painting is meant to represent Sister Clotilde who was one of the most abusive nuns at the school. Houle revisits memories of attending the Sandy Bay Residential School in order to let them go.