January 10, 2024
The University of Montana Western Fine Arts Gallery is honored to present “The New West” by artist Terran Last Gun. The gallery will host an opening reception on Friday, January 26, from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. in the Fine arts Gallery located in Main Hall.
Terran Last Gun, Saakwaynaamah’kaa (Last Gun) (b. 1989, Browning, MT) is a contemporary visual artist and citizen of the Piikani (Blackfeet) of Montana—Piikani is one of four nations that make up the Blackfoot Confederacy.
Last Gun’s work focuses on color, shape, and the visual documentation of nature, cosmos, narratives, and recollections. Employing geometric aesthetics through various media, ledger drawing, printmaking, painting, and photography, Last Gun works with Piikani (Blackfeet) visual aesthetics, cultural narratives, and modern sensibilities that create a continuum. His work often revolves around land, cosmos, shapes, and color and can be considered Indigenous geometric abstraction. Montana and Alberta’s ancient Blackfoot Confederacy territory inspired half of the ledger drawings in this solo exhibition. The other half represents his interest in pursuing the semicircle shape and its visual qualities by reconstructing it in various ways. He is interested in imagining the semicircle shapes turned into conical structures, such as a lodge cover, which have protected Indigenous Peoples of the vast Great Plains for thousands of years. All of the works depict powerful shapes and are of aesthetic importance.
Last Gun received his BFA in Museum Studies and AFA in Studio Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2016. He has received awards from the First Peoples Fund 2020 Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship, Santa Fe Art Institute 2018 Story Maps Fellowship, and Museum of Indian Arts and Culture 2016 Goodman Fellowship. Last Gun was named one of the 2022 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now in Southwest Contemporary (formerly THE Magazine). He currently lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The reception is free for all to attend and will feature light refreshments. “The New West” exhibition will be open for viewing from January 26 to March 2, 2024. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
For more information about the exhibition, please contact Montana Western Fine Arts Gallery Coordinator, Jennifer Boysen: [email protected].
