Veins
- Truck Gallery, Calgary, January 2016
- Comox Valley Art Gallery, July 2017
- Oboro Gallery in Montreal, April 2018.
- Installation with sound kinetic objects and video projections
My recent installation, Veins is based on my ongoing concerns about the consequences of energy resource development processes on our natural landscape.
I was deeply motivated to make this work by my sense of unease, specifically related to the ongoing planning of the Keystone pipeline and the Trans Mountain Pipeline between Alberta and British Columbia in Canada. However, I want my work to examine the complexities and risks we face in our relationship with the natural environment more broadly.
Tender
Esker Foundation Project Room Calgary – Oh Canada Exhibition 2014
Installation with video –
Tender was a hospital for hot dogs that were physically or psychologically injured. After I had exhibited my installation, The Lion’s Share, where hot dogs were hunted and eaten in the diner. I was focusing on processes of industrial food production facilities that risk the quality of life of the animals being slaughtered. I wanted to offer an opportunity to imagine the possibility of hot dogs healing and being reconstituted into cows and then released back into the prairie to live a full life.
Alternator
- Oh Canada, MASSMOCA, May 2012
- Artcity Festival, Calgary 2009
- Art in the Street, SAAG, Lethbridge, May 2009
- Nuit Blanche, Toronto, 2008
The premise for the performance was that I am searching for oil under every oil leak and oil stain that I find in a parking lot. I erected miniature oilrigs on the stains that I found and tried to extract oil from them. In the back of my small car skeleton, I had an empty 45-gallon oil drum and attempted to fill it from the oil that had leaked out of cars.
I generated electricity to operate the oil pumps by using a hand-cranked generator that was built into the steering wheel of the car. When the steering wheel was turned, it generated electricity to operate the miniaturized oil pumps. The generator produced enough power to operate the DC motors on the oil pumps.
Technical assistance: Robyn Moody, Trevor Mercer.
“H”
- Faucet Media Arts Centre
- Mondo Monde New Media Festival
- Sackville, NB, July 2014
H was a fourteen-day performance work at the Faucet New Media Festival at Struts Gallery in Sackville, New Brunswick. Audio, video and kinetic objects accompanied the performance.
A temporary emergency hospital for outdated cell phones was open to the public in a storefront in Sackville, New Brunswick, for two weeks in 2014. Citizens of Sackville could call the hospital to request help for their cell phones. A squirrel that ran the hospital would go to the home to pick up the cell phone and transport it back to the hospital. Once the phones were settled in their hospital beds, tree care providers used audio therapy counselling, transfusions and rest to bring the phones through the various stages of recovery. The final test of their well-being will be when the squirrel tries to call the phone. The trees and the squirrel took it upon themselves to offer assistance by using their natural healing methods to try to revive the abandoned phones. The public was welcome to enter the hospital (very quietly of course) and visit their phone or just observe the recovery processes.
Long Haul
- 7a 11d Festival Toronto 2006
- Walter Philips Gallery Banff Informal Architecture Exhibition 2007
- Plug in ICA Winnipeg, Informal Architecture Exhibition 2008
Performance and installation with sound and kinetic objects.
Accompanied by a motorized tree, I combed downtown Toronto for fragments of natural material like leaves and branches found lying on the sidewalks or streets. These fragments were each tagged with a sound chip circuit and plugged into the dirt below the tree, allowing the voice of the fragment to be heard as it is transported back to the interior space. As the tree and I arrived at the gallery, all of the light and power switches and plugs responded by moving and talking to the leaves and branches. These fragments were grafted onto the walls using drywall gauze tape plugged into power, and they created a chaotic and uncontrolled chorus of overlapping voices. I then plugged the tree into its battery charger and embedded myself into the wall and regenerated for 40 minutes. I then left and repeated the entire process six more times. Long Haul re-imagined a relationship to nature within the context of the built environment. The project examined an architecture that attempted to supply the needs of its inhabitants and drew comparisons to the natural world’s effort to survive within the city.
Technical Assistance: Robyn Moody and Chris Alcock
