This sculpture is much larger than most by Talirunili. It may depict a scene from traditional mythology but it seems more likely that this work stems from his own life. When he was 19 years old his father’s gun discharged accidentally and the blast left Talirunili’s arm hanging from his shoulder “by three pieces of skin”*. In an interview, he remembered: “I could see the end of the bone of my arm but the rest of my arm was a long way away from me.” The arm was to remain lame and painful for the rest of his life. The struggle conveyed by the upturned face as the man drags the ponderous limb must surely be based on the memory of his personal agony.
(Interview in Joe Talirunili: “a grace beyond the reach of art.” Ed. Marybelle Myers. Toronto: Herzig Somerville Ltd., 1977, p. 20)

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.