This project involves a collaboration between artist-researcher Gavin Renwick and printmaker Paul Harrison. The outcomes include an exhibition, publication and an associated education program. Located in both Scotland and Canada the project combines visual research with printmaking methods towards realising an innovative representation of a postcolonial homeland.

Our starting point was a portfolio of drawings developed by Gavin Renwick through a series of visits to the Tlicho Dene community of Gameti, Northwest Territories. The drawings were the beginning of a process intended to illustrate how a sense of meaningful place, and functional space, is created by Tlicho people around the imposed government house. Through ongoing discussion Gavin and Paul realised the potential of utilising this resource as the starting point for a creative collaboration that utilises the layering and collaging potential of screenprinting.

The original drawings were deliberately contradictory in style; for example, a two-point perspective architectural-type drawing of a house was followed by an extremely rapid investigative sketch of an adjacent self-built assemblage.  The layering of these drawings achieved through the screenprinting process, aims to illustrate how post-colonial structures are often a hybrid between Eurocentric ideas and local knowledge.

The inaugural exhibition opened at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, in mid-April, 2007. Parallel to this was a Tlicho youth drawing and printmaking workshop utilising the exhibition Deh T’a Hoti Ts’eeda.