When you look closely at the base of this construction, you can see the carving of the narwhal’s face at the base of the tusk, as well as two more knives just below the two protruding from the base. While this carving could represent a scene hunting a narwhal, it is more likely that David Issuqangituq abandoned the narrative approach and focused solely on the form of his creation.

In 1971, the monumental Jerry Twomey Collection of 4,000 Inuit carvings was acquired by the WAG. Twomey was a geneticist and a co-founder of Winnipeg’s T&T Seeds. Beginning in 1952 and throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he collected sculpture from virtually every art-producing Inuit community. He was fascinated by the distribution of artistic talent within families and across generations and collected the work of individual artists in depth.

In 1969, Twomey decided to retire from the seed business and move to California to breed roses full-time. The disposition of his collection became a matter for intense negotiation with a number of museums and collectors. George Swinton persuaded then Premier Edward Schreyer of the collection’s importance and in August 1971 Schreyer quickly signed an Order-in-Council to raise $185,000, or two-thirds of the funds required to purchase the collection for the WAG. In June 1972, James Richardson, then federal minister of supply and services, presented a cheque for the remaining $75,000 at a ceremony at the Gallery. To celebrate both the opening of the new Gallery building on Memorial Boulevard and the acquisition of the Twomey Collection, a small show was installed in 1972. In 2003, a comprehensive WAG exhibition and catalogue revealed the incomparable record of the development of Inuit art in the 1950s and 1960s provided by the Twomey Collection.

A sales exhibition of Inuit carvings at the Montreal-based Canadian Handicrafts Guild in November 1949 is widely recognized as marking the beginning of an artistic industry that was to transform the lives of many Inuit. The use of stone to create carvings for export to southern markets began with a test purchase by the Guild in 1949 in the Inukjuak area of Nunavik.
In the early 1950s, the procurement of carving stone was largely a matter of gathering it from the ground, especially beaches. As demand for stone carvings increased, so did the search for more attractive carving stones. For many people, “carving stone” is synonymous with “soapstone,” but this is a com¬mon misconception. Soapstone is a specific type of rock called steatite. It contains a high proportion of the mineral talc, which gives the stone a waxy or soapy feel. Grey steatite stones have been mainly used by carvers from Baker Lake and Arviat, although a harder, dark-coloured peridotite stone from a quarry site at Jigging Point, at the east end of Baker Lake, has also been used by Baker Lake artists.
Many artists find steatite too soft for sculpting because it does not hold a good polish and will not allow intricate detail. The most desirable carving stones are serpentinite, and deposits of serpentinite have been located in most areas with carving activity. The stone can vary from a bright jade-green colour, as often associated with the sculpture from the community of Kinngait (Cape Dorset), to a nearly black colour mined by carvers from the Kitikmeot communities of Taloyoak, Gjoa Haven, and Kugaaruk. Currently, the main source of serpentinite on south Baffin Island is a large quarry site in Korok Inlet. Kitikmeot carvers mine their stone from a deposit near Murchison Lake.
Both serpentinite and steatite are types of igneous rocks that derive from molten material, such as volcanic magma. In a second main category are carving stones that derive from sedimentary rocks formed by the compression of layers of sediment. Marble and argillite are examples of such stones used by Inuit carvers. A large surface deposit of white marble stretches for miles north of Andrew Gordon Bay on south Baffin Island, but the hardness of this stone deters many carvers who do not have the necessary specialized tools. Argillite is a highly prized carving stone because it is soft enough to carve yet hard enough to produce a good polish. Its fine sedimentary layering lends a distinctive banded texture to carvings. Argillite is commonly used in sculpture from Sanikiluaq and Arctic Bay. In Sanikiluaq it occurs in varied shades of grey-green and in Arctic Bay the stone is a distinctive grey-ochre colour.
For more detailed information, see Susan Gustavison, Northern Rock: Contemporary Inuit Stone Sculpture. Kleinberg: McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 1999.