In contrast to the artist’s elegant Preening Crane (Lot 71), Sikkuark’s Fish Shaman is a delightfully macabre work. Having already revealed his penchant for bizarre imagery in his 1970s drawings, Sikkuark clearly felt a kinship with the Kitikmeot style of surrealist assemblages, so after his move to Kugaaruk he invented his own personal take on the style. In both his larger whale bone constructions and his small-scale antler pieces, Sikkuark combined his love of realistic detail, his mordant wit, his taste for organic materials of all types, and his fertile imagination to create works that are bizarre, grotesque, creepy, hilarious, and brilliant. Fish Shaman is a splendid example of his small-scale inventions; one of our favourites, it is comically impish and slightly malevolent.

References: For more information on the artist and his work see Marion Scott Gallery, The Art of Nick Sikkuark: Sculpture and Drawings, (Vancouver: Marion Scott Gallery, 2003). See the section on the artist in Darlene Coward Wight, Art & Expression of the Netsilik, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2000), pp. 32-43. For important sculptures by Sikkuark in the Sarick Collection at the AGO, see Ingo Hessel, Inuit Art: An Introduction, (Douglas & McIntyre, 1998), figs. 95-96; and Gerald McMaster ed., Inuit Modern: The Samuel and Esther Sarick Collection, (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2010), pp. 148-149. For a discussion of Sikkuark's sculptural style see Robert Kardosh's two-part article, "Natural Fantasia: The Wonderful World of Nick Sikkuark”: Part I in Inuit Art Quarterly (Spring 2005), pp. 8-14, and Part II in Inuit Art Quarterly (Summer 2005), pp. 10-16.