Jeff Funnell: Notes from the Inquest

55 pp. with B/W illustrations and biographical notes. Catalogue for an exhibition from March 22 to April 21, 1991 at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. "In April of 1988, Jeff Funnell made ninety-one sketches while attending the two week coroner’s inquest into the police shooting of J.J. Harper, a Cree Indian from Winnipeg. This series of drawings records local history in the making, and itself an historical document, recording the anatomy of a criminal hearing which exonerated a white police officer of the killing of a native man. Accompanying the sketches are the judges published verdict and a slow-motion video recording of a police recreation of the event. These persuasive official versions of the story contrast with Funnell’s intentionally low-tech and subjective-looking pencil and pen marks, which seem to take on an even greater authenticity juxtaposed with the television images and printed word. In raising native issues, Funnell’s series becomes implicated in current debates going on in the Canadian art community concerning the representation of non-dominant cultural groups.".…