Luke Parnell

Luke Parnell is Wilp Laxgiik Nisga’a from Gingolx on his mother’s side and Haida from Massett on his Father’s side. His training has involved a traditional apprenticeship with a Master Northwest Coast Indigenous carver, a BFA from OCAD, and an MAA from ECUAD. His artistic practice explores the relationship between Northwest Coast Indigenous oral histories and Northwest Coast Indigenous art, with a focus on transformation narratives. With an understanding of visual language as a material expression related to experience, Parnell’s artworks contain traditional and contemporary symbols, where meaning is related to the materials, methods, forms, and context of the works.

Parnell’s work has been exhibited at La Guilde in Montreal (2023), the Varley Art Gallery of Markham (2021), Macaulay & Co. Fine Art (2022, 2020), the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (2018), the Biennial of Contemporary Native Art (2016), the National Gallery of Canada (2014), MacLaren Art Centre (2011), and more. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre and the International Cervantino Festival. His solo 2020 show Indigenous History in Colour has travelled nationally from MKG 127 to the Bill Reid Art Gallery in Vancouver in 2021. Luke Parnell had held his inaugural solo exhibition Remediation at Macaulay + Co. in the Summer of 2022.