Tony Anguhalluq
b. 1970 Qamani’tuaq, NU
At 47, Tony Anguhalluq is part of a generation of Inuit drawers and printmakers who are extending and reinventing northern graphic traditions. The adopted son of Luke Anguhadluq and Marion Tuu’luq, Tony’s images differ markedly from those artists of an earlier generation who isolated individual figures against a blank background, rather than representing the land directly in their work. Tony fills the visual field making the land and landscape his direct and principal subject. In his exuberant and enigmatic images, Tony visualizes the treeless, hilled terrain and flowing waterways, in and around his Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake) hometown, as a series of overlapping abstract contoured blocks of solid colour. Eschewing uniform perspective and shading, Tony economically uses striking colour contrasts and stylized lines as an alternative way to index depth or recession. While the contoured northern landscape is the chief focus of his drawings, many of these works also include images—portraits, really—of northern animals and of people engaged in seasonal activities, such as hunting, fishing and camping. Tony documents the traditions and historical ways of his people, even as he suggests a rhythm in human activity consonant with the rhythms of the land that are so powerfully his subject.