Don’t Mess with the Pediment

Jeff Thomas’s work Drive-by will be held at
University of Toronto and Don’t Mess with the
Pediment will be shown at the Stephen Bulger
Gallery. Thomas is well known for his studies of
“indianness,” in which he investigates the legacy
of the kneeling brave figure featured in the
original crest of the Bank of Montreal and
Canadian historical monuments, as well as the
currency of cigar store “indians,” plastic toy
warriors and souvenir shop figurines. The
exhibition
recontextualizes historical imagery for a
contemporary audience and subverts entrenched
stereotypes of First Nations People.

Drive-by is an installation of new and recent
works that experiments with tricks of scale and
illusions of time, causing history to collapse
into the present. In this new work Thomas frames
an Aboriginal perspective within the rearview
mirror and uses the car to circumscribe questions
of place, time, history and identity. What he
photographes out
of the car window is a drive-by shooting. This
scenario echoes back the violence that pervaded
the history of colonial settlement, but Thomas’
images are all about recovery.