creative forces

Blog # 60…August, 2016

It seems to be time to think about marking anniversaries - 50 years since we first heard The Beach Boys, ABBA and The Monkees and visited the McMichael Gallery.  Next year, 50 years since EXPO 67 and 150 years since Canada’s confederation.  Many celebrations are in order, small and intimate, large and lavish, at home and abroad.

Getting in ahead of the curve, the Canada Council for the Arts has mounted Punctured Landscape, “a meditation on the Canadian social landscape of living memory”, a series of artworks from their ArtBank. that present an abridged history lesson.

Collectively, the seventeen works ask – How do we learn?  Who decides what merits remembrance?  What role does trauma play in Canada’s history?  They also suggest that we need more ways to interpret our past, more voices in discussion and more art.

The pieces are highly symbolic and thought provoking rather than directly representational, getting the viewer (well, me anyway) to work a bit to get it.

Shane (Mini) Davis’ piece shows a simple house with no windows, wondering - When does a house stop being a home and become a signal of confinement? – evoking the internment of Japanese citizens between 1941 and 1949.

Trevor Gould uses images of shoes to remind us of the horrendous treatment by the City of Halifax of the residents of Africville – representing the journey taken a century earlier by thousands of individuals (mostly on foot) to Nova Scotia to escape slavery in the southern US.

One of the treats of this show was that most of the artists were new discoveries for me…not so Rececca Belmore, who I saw first at the National Art Centre as part of Sakahan and who has become a favourite.  In this show, her piece (she always works large which suits her substantial themes) To Rest and To Dream,  references murdered and disappeared aboriginal women and girls.  A woman rests in bed covered in satin and fur, dreaming and expressing hope for a peaceful outcome to a dreadful situation that’s been ignored for far too long… but it is a restless dream.

The celebration of Canada’s sesquicentennial will no doubt bring its share of self congratulation, joy and expressions of gratitude for the luck we share in calling this country home. Punctured Landscape,  rather than raining on the parade, reminds us of the inequalities and injustices both past and present, balancing the picture  and subtly encouraging us to try and do a bit better in the future.

And coming up early in September, it’ll be 80 years since I was born (and Edward VIII was getting ready to abdicate).  I know, I know, how could that be… well, Elizabeth II is doing well so far - me too.