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Politics of Trade and Trash - Troy Ouellette |
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Opening date:
Friday, April 16 at 7:00pm
Artist talk:
Friday, April 16 – 7:30 pm
The artists in Detritus Ecologies Griffith Baker, Twyla Exner, Mae Leong and Troy Ouellette take waste, the occurrence of our excess and turn this into artistic statements, thought provocative projects that raise awareness to the tragic amount of stuff our lifestyle(s) generate. The works in this exhibition reach beyond any form of didactic that may be mistaken for guilt inducing messages. Rather they are subtle processes that utilize the creative process of contemporary practice and dialogue to grapple with a subject that will affect our culture, its means of production, sustainability and stability. Archeologists will attest that humans have always been creating waste, but never to such as degree and with such widening consequences.
The material used for the construction of objects can be as powerful conveyor of meaning as the form of the object itself. Griffith Baker’s The Raft of the Doldrums is part of his bottle cap series, works that are essentially constructed from used plastic. The work is inspired by Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault, a painting in the Romantic genre that embarrassed the French monarch due to the incompetence of one of its Generals resulting in a large number of deaths. The raft in the painting was constructed from the ships (Medusa) wreckage and proved to be ineffective in saving the lives of those who counted on its stability. Culturally, we count on the ability of our creations and discoveries to sustain us, just as those adrift on the raft. How would a contemporary artist call attention to a perilous situation – today a painting would be ineffective, instead he/she may create a piece such as Griffith’s Bakers Raft.
In relation, in the middle of Pacific Ocean floats an island of plastic debris that is about the size of Quebec, and estimated 3.5 millions tons of trash. It is an unexpected, absurd physical realization of lifestyles and attitudes that disregard the unseen result of our cast ways. Creating work out of discarded materials made from petroleum products is a contemporary twist on the toxicity of materials once plant, sand (glass) and animal based. Ironically, some of the objects such as syringes, laundry and water bottles and so on are carriers for liquids created to clean, heal, and nourish now have the opposite affect, poisoning our environment. Indeed Baker writes “Instead monumentalising this raft, afloat in the permanence and reality of the manufactured material condition of our time, reciprocates Géricault's painting both in its pyramidal composition and political engagement.”[i]
Twyla Exner is another artist whose interest in materials informs her practice. The works Circuit City, Alternative Context for Science and Technology II, & Outgrowth for Imput provide an account of disjointed inventions gone astray. Exner’s drawings, like some kind of madcap blueprints, successfully examine technology mixed with organic shapes. Perhaps both could be understood as fragile living things, but one is the creation of the other, in effect its God. In the western sense, is the all seeing and knowing ‘God’ replaced by technology with the ability to create life? Technology, like ‘God’, now has the ability to simultaneously peep at virtually many realities and actions that were once private. Lines are blurred and crossed, when does our technology mimic natural processes – as in this case and take over biological responsibilities? Technological creations spring from human consciousness, her works not only resembles biology, but technology manifested and imagined, if these things themselves were materially self-replicating. There is the belief that our demise is inevitable because it is part of the organic, natural process. Extinction of our species is part of its destructive nature and the inability for long-range planning.[ii] Exner’s work realizes that the distinction between nature and society is an illusion, invented by us as part of the culture making process, indeed this simple binary opposition, is too elementary.
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Raft of the Doldrums - Griffith Baker |
The amount of waste generated through consumption is called to mind in Mae Leong’s Barcode + Sound: Traces of Invisible Codes. The work is constructed from barcodes collected from items that Leong purchased over a one-year period from common products whose sources were global. The fluxus nature of the work is furthered by the musical sound the work generates. She creates a new type of music that usually forms part of the unacknowledged part of the purchasing process. It is a novel type of creation, a futurist possibility in the way that we may be forced to create art, to see the value in stuff that was once discarded. She writes that the process of creating the work, long hours of tedious construction, reflects the assembly line nature of those whose labour is used in mass production. Globalization when linked with consumerism is never an equal process, most often those most affected are the most vulnerable, in this regard those whose labour is cheapest to exploit and lands easiest to denigrate.[iii]
Leongs’ Barcode is similar in thought to Troy Ouellettes The Politics of Trash and Trade. Both artist artists reference international trade using garbage to examine the lack of the local in our consumption. On a map of North America, Ouellette traces the source of trash he collected to it’s found location in Windsor, Ontario. As individuals, our actions may seem small, and many times the choice of consumption is left to the higher power of who controls the market. But as a critical mass our actions may be reversible. The collection and movement of consumer products, many that can be produced locally is within our power as individuals acting as a critical mass. Ouellette’s work further offers awareness, “One couldn’t imagine product packaging reading: this item was not union made instead it was produced with materials from an important watershed made from sweetshop labour under a totalitarian tyranny with genetically modified organisms from countless hours of animal testing and undetectable nano technologies.”[iv]
The artists in the exhibition follow a legacy of creating critical works from found objects beginning with Duchamp’s urinal.[v] The artists Baker, Exner, Leong, and Ouellette, offer hope, the excess materials, say garbage that we generate, can be turned into something interesting, and move us forward to consider possible solutions while hopefully propelling us past stark awareness. Therefore, possibly the acts of imperialism and globalization may or may not turn the whole planet into a macrocosm of Easter Island.[vi]
Leanne L’Hirondelle
Bios:
Griffith Aaron Baker is a visual artist working in a variety of mediums, defined by post-consumed materials, in conjunction with metaphysical and environmental principles. His practice tends to manifest as monumental sculptures and intricate installations. Born in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1981, Baker grew up with an interest in sculpture and drawing, of which he studied at the University of Regina, graduating with honours in 2004 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in sculpture. After graduation, he worked as a contractor, collecting wasted materials in abundance, which have since been incorporated into his practice. Baker has exhibited and lectured widely across Western Canada and Quebec participating in an array of group and solo exhibitions. His sculptures are in the collection of the Centre d’Art de Baie-Saint Paul in Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec, and the Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan. Baker currently lives and works in Montreal, QC and Estevan, SK while completing his Master of Fine Arts degree at Concordia University.
Twyla Exner studied art at the University of Regina (Regina, SK), graduating with honours in 2004 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in sculpture. Since attaining her BFA, she has worked within the arts as a prop maker, technician, and art educator and has exhibited her work and lectured across Western Canada and in Ottawa and Montreal. Twyla's multidisciplinary practice focuses on the relationships between cultural and natural production, consumption and waste, high and low technology,and biological and mechanical growth. She engages in art making through an organic progression guided by e-waste materials and imagery, the process of de- and re- construction,and peripheral research in art, craft, biology, psychology, and technology. Twyla recently completed her Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture and ceramics at Concordia University (Montréal, QC) and has relocated to Estevan, SK to curate the Souris Valley Museum.
Mae Leong is a Hong Kong born, Canada and U.S. based multi disciplinary artist. Leong's recent art practice focuses on different sociocultural issues including migration and displacement, consumerism, globalization, and recycling. Her artistic endeavors are developed from her investigations on visible and invisible marks, everyday objects and sounds, human custom and behaviours. Leong has been exhibiting extensively since 2001 and her work has been presented in galleries in Vancouver, Toronto, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, California, and Montana, among others.
Troy David Ouellette is currently a PhD candidate at York University.He received his M.F.A. from the University of Windsor and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. He has taught Design, Sculpture and undergraduate courses at various universities and colleges in Southern Ontario and was the Sculpture Facilitator at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff Alberta, Canada from 1999 until 2005. His work has been included inseveral solo and group exhibitions in Canada and internationally.
[i] Griffith Baker, Artist Statement. http://www.griffithaaronbaker.com/Raft.htm
[ii] Some would argue that this is a western approach that supports linear thinking. Many north America cultures traditionally believe in the concept of intergenerational responsibility.
[iii] “Since 1950 . . . we have consumed more of the world’s natural capital than during the entire history of mankind”. Ellwood, Wayne. The No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization,, New International Publications Ltd., Oxford, 2001. page 92.
[iv] Ouellette, Troy, Statement on the Politics of Trash and Trade, http://www.flickr.com/photos/troyouellette/90776139/
[v] An interesting approach to the use of garbage, i.e. post consumer materials and community is the Heidelberg project created by Tyree Guyton in Detroit. www.heidelberg.org
[vi] Diamond Jarod, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Penguin Books, USA, 2005.
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