Process: Time Sculpture

On a stop-over in Toronto, I visited the AGO. Bypassed the KingTut exhibit in favour of Beautiful Fictions, an engrossing photography exhibit. Highlights amongst others were Arnaud Maggs' Hotel series and Bernd and Hilla Becher’s Watertowers (Typology), 1980. Anyone who has been to Sudbury would appreciate this series of industrial architecture. Taken out of context and aligned together, the structures are quite otherworldly.

Gazed out over the city from Gehry's light-filled staircases, and explored the Vivian and David Campbell Centre for Contemporary Art on the 4th and 5th floors. I particularly enjoyed the “land art” room. Remembered Ian Hamilton Finlay from my Scotland days. Responded to Robert Fones’ (b. London, CA, 1949) woodcut, Natural Range of Canada Plum, 1984.

Completely intrigued by Cycling Sculpture, 1-3 Dec. 1967 by Richard Long (b. Bristol, UK, 1945) — the simplicity of his documentation (a photo, a typed page with instructions, and a map with waypoints). His work has often been cast as “romantic” yet the artist always referred to his objective method of documentation. Perhaps it is because his photographs, devoid of human presense, are often strikingly beautiful.

I too tend to favour the rural scenes in my own project, conscious of how my documentation of placenames veer from an objective method in my reach for beauty. Finding the right vantage point to witness the play of light on water for instance. The gold of a swaying field. They are empty landscapes with no direct human intervention like cars or people walking, though the occasional house does figure in the background. To be fair, most of my genealogical/geographical waypoints have been in rural settings as they are related to waterways. Urban waterways are habitually underground.

I also try and shy away from direct self-representation in my photos. My rule is to not represent the figure, but to allow the trace of the artist through a stand-in: the growing “path-map” — the tracing of my passage on the Quebec landscape or the occasional glimpse of my bike in the panoramas. The bike is much like the artist’s knapsack in Long's photo A Night of Rain Sleeping Place An 8 Day Mountain Walk in Sobaeksan Korea Spring 1993. It is possible to completely erase the artist? Without this human impulse to leave a trace, would the artist be driven to create work? Is ego a necessary part of the creative process?

Where I do respond to Long’s work is the aspect of “discovery” of a space — not in a colonial fashion (claiming something as one’s own in conqueror mode), but more on an intimate level through simple movements in time and space. The act of searching and being uncertain of where I am going (both physically and conceptually) is a necessary part of my art practice. There is an element of risk in the unknown. The subject emerges through time.

Looking forward to the Sculpture as Time exhibit coming up in March.