John Kurok

     

     One of the younger ceramists working with the Matchbox Gallery, John has been coming to the Matchbox since he was in junior high school. An artist whose skills in drawings were apparent even as a young teenager, he began working full-time as a ceramist in 1996. John's work reflects the inner focus of younger artists who have not grown up in a land-based tradition. He is one of a new group of younger ceramist who also work as printmakers. An Inuk artist very much rooted in the contemporary world, his ceramic works deal with states of mind, rather than experiences drawn from the past.

   In John's works, the story is often secondary. The emphasis is on the relationship of the forms, the visual movements created by those forms over the surface of the vase. Most of his work uses the human face as a base for his creative expression.

  Like many younger artists, his art reflects a time in which Inuit find themselves bound up in the ever-pressing demands for survival in a manmade world, rather than one rooted in nature.

   John has presented his works in shows of Rankin Inlet Ceramics at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, the Cerny Collection in Bern, Switzerland, and in arts festivals throughout Nunavut, southern Canada and the United States. His work is included in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Inuit Art in Toronto.

  John      
             
                 
   
     
       

Video Interview

John Kurok in October, 2010 at The Matchbox Gallery, Rankin Inlet, Nunavut