My Home and Native Land: Bobby Nock videos

Cape Breton-based artist Bobby Nock offered an affectionately ironic take on local culture in this exhibition of five videos grouped under the title My Home and Native Land: The Red Bush in Waycobah Series. The colour red, the primacy of the Group of Seven in Canadian art history, indigenous Mi'kmaq and imported Scots-Gaelic traditions, and a tourist's vision of scenic Nova Scotia became intertwined and then unravelled in Nock's dead-pan videomaking style. Out of the quirky humour and repetitive gestures emerged serious issues concerning national identities and colonial structures, as well as the contingent and complex manner in which communities and histories develop.