Simply but importantly, it is a place for people to sit in a circle outside.
Perhaps more importantly, it is an act of reconciliation and understanding towards Ontario’s First Nations people.
On Thursday evening the Art Gallery of Guelph held a series of openings, including the unveiling – and initial sit-around – of artist Don Russell’s Circle Mound.
Known primarily as a painter, Russell, who is of Qalipu Mi’kmaq ancestry, has also completed major earthworks. Circle Mound, on the front, north lawn of the AGG, is one such work.
The piece involves an elevated ring of soil, reinforced at the inner base with stonework from reclaimed local limestone. The elevated ring, and a pair of snaking elevations symbolic of Guelph’s two rivers at the front of the piece, are covered with sod. The inner ground of the circle is lined with crushed red stone.
Russell observed silence during the unveiling, at which about 75 people gathered around the circle. But the artist’s longtime friend, Lou Henry, a local aboriginal man, spoke of the importance of the circle to aboriginal beliefs, and the importance of the Circle Mound as a gesture of reconciliation and a gift to the community.
Henry said all of life revolves around the circle. The earth and all the planets are circles that circle around the sun. The cycle of the individual’s life is circular. When people gather in a circle there is an equality between them, a connectivity that links them all.
Henry said now is the time for all to make the effort to better understand the residential school experience, and the devastating impact it had on Aboriginal People. Now is the time for all to sit in the circle of understanding.
Circle Mound was commissioned by the AGG with funds raised by the AGG volunteer association, and financial support from the Canada Council for the Arts acquisition assistance program. The work is the 39th permanent installation in the gallery's Donald Forster Sculpture Park.
As a sculpture that reflects a First Nations’ worldview, and that circles around notions and feelings of unity, cooperation, and gathering, it will act as a gathering/meeting place - a place of serenity and contemplation.
It was conceived by the gallery “as a step toward meaningful reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and the community of Guelph, an acknowledgement of the history and presence of Indigenous peoples on this land,” an AGG press release stated.
Russell grew up in Stephenville, Newfoundland. He is a graduate of the University of Guelph’s School of Fine Art, and the Dundas Valley School of Art’s postgraduate program. He lives and works in Cambridge, and has a painting studio at Boarding House Arts in Guelph.
