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IQALUIT - The Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum in Iqaluit opened an exhibit featuring close to 30 print artists from the territory on Saturday.

The display is comprised of three new community collections from this year including Baker Lake, Pangnirtung and Cape Dorset.

Yesterday, by Ningeokuluk Teevee, is one of the contemporary prints on display at the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum in Iqaluit. - Photo courtesy of Cape Dorset Fine Arts

The prints from Pangnirtung and Baker Lake represent the annual collections from those communities. The nine prints from Cape Dorset, created by seven artists, form that community's spring release.

Pangnirtung has released print collections since the early 1970s, with a brief hiatus following a fire in the print shop in the early 1990s. The Baker Lake collection, the first to come out of the community in almost a decade, was assembled by the Akubliriit Art Society.

Cape Dorset celebrates its 50th year of printmaking in 2009.

"Cape Dorset has chosen a lot of the younger artists doing more modern prints," said museum manager and curator Brian Lunger. "It's an interesting collection."

Many of the Cape Dorset artists employ an abstract, modern approach to their printmaking, with lots of contemporary representations of traditional themes.

Printmaker Siassie Kenneally contributed an auatint etching of Arctic Char being dried titled Fish Tales. It's the first print edition of Kenneally's work.

"If it was hanging in a gallery of modern art it wouldn't seem out of place," Lunger said.

Ningeokuluk Teevee is another of the Cape Dorset artists. Teevee is the daughter of the late Joanasie Salomonie, who was know for his playful sense of humour. That playfulness is apparent in Teevee's work.

One of Teevee's colourful prints depicts a turntable spinning a Beatles' album. Teevee also designs prints that explore epic stories and mythology from the Eastern Arctic.

The Baker Lake and Pangnirtung exhibits present a mix of older and younger artists.

"Some of the scenes are contemporary and others are more traditional," Lunger said. "Each collection is quite a mixture of different things, different ages and different experiences. Each print is a different story."

The display opened on Saturday and runs until Sept. 21. The museum is open from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday.