The Artists
Audie Murray
Audie Murray is a visual artist who works with a multitude of mediums such as sculpture, media, beadwork and drawing. Her practice is informed by the process of making and visiting to explore themes of contemporary culture, embodied experiences and lived dualities. These modes of working assist with the recentering of our collective connection to bodies, ancestral knowledge systems, and relationality. Murray is Métis and Cree from the Lebret and Meadow Lake communities located on Treaty 4 & 6 territories, and is a member of Flying Dust First Nation. She is currently based in Oskana kâ-asastêki (Regina, Saskatchewan).
Brody Burns
Brody Burns is a recent graduate from the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Saskatchewan, having previously obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in 2019. He is a member of the James Smith Cree Nation in Treaty 6 territory, and lives in Saskatoon as a full-time artist. Through his artistic practice, Brody explores his Indigenous community and the quickly evolving state of the world, furthermore, how these facets inform his sense of self, relationship, and culture. He interprets his own work as non-linear: a web of connections and influences. Most importantly, Brody seeks to remind viewers that everyone is a spark of the Creator, which in turn connects us all.
David Garneau
I am Métis, a professor, curator, and theorist of Indigenous contemporary art and identity. My mission for the past six years has been to translate into pictures ideas I have worked out in my writing. Occasionally, the translation goes the other way and paintings inform essays. European Art Academies positioned still life painting at the bottom of their hierarchy. Being the depiction of the things of everyday life, still life was considered a poor container for the lofty concepts found in history, portraiture, and even landscape painting. Dark Chapters challenges this assumption and status. These realistic paintings consist of things that are ready to hand: rocks, stones, bricks, books, flowers, water, hammers, mirrors, fabric, flags, honey, fish, teacups, jars, boxes, string, rope, and chains. And some less homey items: skulls, bones, smoke, ancient stone tools, sashes, bees, flies, rotting fruit, and hand cuffs. The objects are arranged to suggest meanings beyond representation. Books, for example, stand for book knowledge, universities, and professors. Rocks represent Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing, and, sometimes, Indigenous persons. Some rocks are stones or Grandfathers.
Melanie Monique Rose
Melanie Monique Rose is a Metis/Ukrainian visual artist from Regina, Saskatchewan Treaty 4 Territory, a citizen of the Metis Nation of Saskatchewan, and a long-time contributing member of Sâkêwêwak Artists’ Collective Inc. and board member. Rose’s work centres on kinship and relationships between the land, ourselves and each other. Through plants and flowers Rose invites transmissions of ancestral knowledge and teachings while also imagining and creating a de-colonial future through the lens of Metis worldviews.
She attended Kootenay School of the Arts with a major in the Fibre Arts in Nelson, B.C. Rose has exhibited her artwork in both group and solo exhibitions. Most recently, Melanie has her largest showing of work to date in her solo show, Li moond di fleur at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford Ontario. In the summer of 2023 Melanie’s natural dye practice took her to both Ottawa, at the National Gallery of Canada and Santa Fe, New Mexico’s SWAIA Fashion shows, where her work walked the runway. A recent career highlight was exhibiting in the group show, Storied Objects/Metis Art in Relation at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. A great honor was to receive the distinction of Excellence in Textiles from the Saskatchewan Craft Council in Dimension's 2013 touring show. In 2020, Melanie was named a CBC Future 40 for her work in arts and culture. In addition, she was one of seven artists awarded the Saskatchewan Foundation for the Arts Endowment Award to further artistic pursuits in 2021. In 2023 she was honored with the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal from His Honour the Honourable Russ Mirasty Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan for her work in Arts & Reconciliation. Most recently she was awarded the 2025 Indigenous Resurgence in Action category for the Regina YWCA Women of Distinction.
Rose has works in Saskatchewan as an independent curator, gallery facilitator, story-keeper, and art instructor and in addition teaches various workshops at both public and private institutions.
In 2018 her daughter Meadow Rose was born and is currently a full-time mom, caregiver, and artist. Becoming a mother has increased Rose’s desire to share the stories of her culture and family and has challenged the way she creates independently and as a shared experience with her daughter. Rose is inspired and excited to see where the journey takes her as an Artist.
Torrie Ironstar
Torrie Ironstar, a Deaf artist from Carry the Kettle Nakoda Nation and adopted into the Blackfoot community, lives and works in Regina, Saskatchewan. Art has always been Torrie’s way of communicating—of expressing what words or sound could not. Through painting, they share stories shaped by culture, kinship, and the land that raised them.
Torrie’s artwork is inspired by star blankets, the comfort of ancestral teachings, and the visual languages that Indigenous families pass down. Their Deafness contributes to a unique way of creating, where the world is understood through colour, pattern, and the subtle movements of life around them. Painting becomes a form of connection: a way to honour those who came before, to speak to loved ones, and to dream possibilities for the generations to come.
Blending traditional and futurist elements, Torrie’s work imagines Indigenous presence in both grounded and visionary ways. Each piece is a reflection of cultural pride, personal resilience, and the belief that art can carry identity forward into new worlds while still holding the strength of where we come from.
Wally Dion
Wally (Walter) Dion is a Canadian artist of Saulteaux ancestry living and working in Upstate New York. Working in a number of media including painting, drawing and sculpture, Dion's art is concerned with issues of identity and power.
Wally’s artwork that is being considered is owned by and generously offered to exhibit by Jillian Ross Print.