George Sawchuk
Individual
Roles
ArtistBiography
A self-taught sculptor, George Sawchuk does not claim to be influenced by his cultural background, except to admit that his parents' socialist inclinations may still be informing his work today. Attending both Catholic school during the week and Russian school on Saturdays, Sawchuk grew up exposed to the conflicting ideologies of Catholicism and communism with which he still struggles in his portable works and works in nature. Rejecting formal education at a fairly young age, Sawchuk was working on a construction crew when an accident resulted in the amputation of one of his legs, an event that ironically left him with the time that enabled him to explore his artistic interests. Instinctively using found materials to create sculptures that interacted with trees, gradually being overgrown and disappearing into the nature from which they originally came, Sawchuk was essentially unaware of his connection to previous and current art practices until he met the Baxters, two artists who had founded the N.E. Thing Co. and had moved to North Vancouver. Beginning with his discussions with them, Sawchuk began also to carve a place for himself in the art world, creating portable sculptures that could be displayed in galleries and museums, as well as his outdoor pieces. The portables are usually made with wood and metal, often incorporating found objects, as when a Bible is imprisoned behind bars (The Last Dinosaur, 1989) or an apple suspended inside a log (The Consummation, 1989). Sawchuk employs a strange iconography in which crosses are combined with coins, church steeples with cash registers, religious symbols, capitalist symbols, and symbols of the communist working class, functioning together to convey his intended social message. The forest site works around his home are well-known, particularly as they extend beyond his property onto Crown land and were the subject of a much-documented controversy in 1997. Sawchuk was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy in 1979.Art History Concordia, 2023
Collection
grunt gallery Programming Archive (Artist)Related program
New Work (Artist)Related Archive, Library & Publication Objects
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