A MAGNIFICENT SCULPTURE BY GILBERT HAY – 1989
Hay’s travels and his contact with international artists at Banff and elsewhere gave him important insight into his own work. “I left Labrador to go around North America”, he told the Inuit Art Quarterly (IAQ) in 1991. “Then I went home and found my culture. That experience enriched my art and brought me to a conclusion of a sort. Not every young Inuk can go outside and experience the world and learn to appreciate their culture and express it in their art.”
Hay also strives to educate young artists. He has taught workshops to children in Goose Bay and contributed ink illustrations to a textbook about the Inuit way of life published by the Labrador East Integrated School Board. He is also a past director of the Inuit Art Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes and offers professional development services to Inuit artists.
Hay has exhibited his work across the province and the country. His shows have included Labrador Inuit Mythology Series, a collaborative exhibition of Ritchie’s and Hay’s lithographs organized by the Memorial University Art Gallery (today The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery) in 1982, and North and South: Tradition, Invention and Intervention in Labrador, a group exhibition at The Rooms in 2002.
In 1985, the government of Newfoundland and Labrador commissioned one of Hay’s largest artworks “a one-ton serpentine sculpture called Nuikkusemajak, (“Has Visited”)” to be displayed in the lobby of the Confederation Building annex in St. John’s.
In addition to being part of The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery’s Permanent Collection, Hay’s art is represented in many private and public collections including those of the McMichael Canadian Collection, the Province of Ontario, and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.
