Looking forward to seeing my colleagues from right across the country, and sharing ideas and practical tools to assist artists.
I am particularly happy that there will be a panel on Indigenous Intellectual & Cultural Property Rights. This is an area of artists’ rights I need and want to learn more about!
I am also really excited to hear updates on two different projects to help artists protect their copyright and earn more for their creative work:
Now that the dust has settled from the Opening of Boundary|time|Surface, I am happy to say that Dr. John Waldron and I will be presenting a talk on the project, and the ideas behind our collaboration!
This still point in the process always feels a little surreal. So much goes into the making of an exhibition. In this case, 5 years from the original project to now; at least a solid year of research and work in the studio; lots of challenges, changes, and rewards along the way.
Am I nervous? Yes, to be honest. I feel far too close to the work to be able to assess its merits at this point … one tends to dwell on the things that only hindsight reveals. But here we are.
It’s all process anyway – every work and every exhibition speaks to what is next, and new ways of doing.
At any rate, if you are around in the area, please join us tonight. It would be lovely to see you.
It’s officially one week from today that Boundary|Time|Surface opens at the Art Gallery of St. Albert! Not quite sure how the time flew by so fast (well, actually yes, I am – in the studio!) – but regardless – I find there’s always a sense of time speeding up just before a show.
And it’s been busy on a number of fronts: the not-glamourous jobs an artist does to make the stuff all happen the way it should for an exhibition.
Case in point (sorry of the awful sort-of pun):
Packing. Ah yes, making work is one thing – packing it is another entirely! Fortunately, I didn’t have to build crates for the work this time, as we can transport it ourselves – but the work still needs protection. And list -making becomes part of this process too, of course. Making sure that all the bits and bobs of hardware and tools and just-in-case things are sorted and packed and there when we need them for install.
And then there’s the transport part of it too:
Spent a couple of hours playing ‘car tetris’ with the bins and boxes and other stuff … and in a little while, we’ll be getting this all unloaded and dropped off at the Gallery.
There’s more to the upcoming exhibition of Boundary|Time|Surface – another labour of love attached to the work that I will be launching into the world on September 5th.
To accompany the exhibition, we will be launching a limited-edition book!
Boundary|Time|Surface – a record of change gathers essays that examine the work on exhibition and the ideas informing its creation from several distinct perspectives. A critical essay from Melinda Pinfold, PhD opens the book, and offers an insightful reading of the project as a whole, and the dialogue between art & science informing the project. John Waldron’s essay explores the history of geology as a science, and how his understanding of time and place is informed by a lifetime of practice within the discipline. And I spend a few pages in both prose and poetry trying my best convey what the original project – and the several years of work coming out of that original ephemeral installation – have taught me.
Boundary|Time|Surface – a record of change also functions as an artwork; we have selected a range of images from the time lapse stills we shot of the creation and dissolution of the installation at Green Point, and presented them in sequence in the style of a flip-book.
This is a limited-edition of 200, signed and numbered. For the duration of the exhibition, the book will be available exclusively through the Art Gallery of St. Albert.
It’s been a head-down, get-things-done time for several months now. Board work, projects in various stages of development requiring attention, travel, … and soon, an exhibition of work.
I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to return to the Boundary|Time|Surface project over the last several months – digging back into the images and video, thinking through the ideas again, making new work.
The exhibition opens on September 5 2019, at 6:00 pm. – and continues until November 2 2019.
It has been a really interesting process to look at this body of work with the fresh eyes of time and distance, and to consider the ways in which my perceptions of the place and the thoughts it provoked have both changed, and stayed the same. Interesting too, that many of the concerns I had that were brought to bear on the first iteration of work for gallery presentation have only become more urgent – closer to the bone for me.
Every time I look at the photos and video I took in 2014 during my residency in Gros Morne National Park, I learn something more. About myself and what I value as a human being, as much about the nuances in the place itself. It was good and difficult work to go back into the material, push harder with research and art-making both, and consider the implications of bringing this work (in essence) almost all the way across the country for a second showing.
A good friend and fellow artist asked me once “when do you know the work is finished?” For this body of work … I don’t know that I will ever be “finished” – at the least, not with the ideas inherent in the project. But I am, overall, happy with the results of reading and writing and running down rabbit holes of ideas that has been going on for the past year.
SO – this exhibition with feature a good bit of brand-new work, and those pieces from 2016 that ‘made the cut’ will have new conversations and readings in relation to what I’ve been working on/through. This is also the first time this work (in any iteration) had been shown west of Newfoundland … so even “old” work feels new in this context.
I hope those of you reading this in the Edmonton, Alberta, Canada region will join me at the opening (more exciting news on that to follow soon!) … hope to see you there.
It’s been head down and ‘getter done’ lately on a number of fronts, and so writing her has fallen by the wayside for a while.
In any case, in the midst of getting various jobs finished in the studio and elsewhere, I received a lovely thing in the mail:
The latest issue of Musicworks, with a great article by Ian Crutchley
It’s always a bit of a thrill for me to see the work of my collaborators & friends showcased – and this article about Scott Smallwood‘s work is well written and wide-ranging.
It’s also really lovely that Ian contacted me for comments fo the article, and that he wound up including some information and pictures from Macromareal – my first collaboration with Scott. Timing was more than fortuitous, as Macromareal (redux) had just closed at the ~Diffuser Gallery at Emily Carr.
A nice moment to look back on the work we did, and a great collaboration – in the midst of working on several things, and looking forward to new adventures.
Happy to say that the video work I did in collaboration with Deborah Carruthers – Slippages & Panelled/Slippages – is in a Group Exhibition at Zygote Gallery in Cleveland OH. Capturing the Aura of the Already Said, curated by Margaret Hart, is on exhibition until April 26th.
An Excerpt of the performance video with synched audio below:
After a whirlwind – and lovely – trip to Vancouver to install Macromareal(redux) at ECUAD, Scott and I are back in Edmonton and digging into all the other work we have to do.
Part of that for me has been editing the first batch of documentation from this exhibition, so I can share it with you.
So – without further hoopla:
macromareal redux walk thru from Sydney Lancaster on Vimeo.
