currents
Currents focuses specifically on the link between the metro area of the city of Edmonton, and the glacial headwaters of the North Saskatchewan, contrasting urban river spaces, industry, and policy making spaces. In both installations, imagery is clearly composed of fragments, individual moments, taken from disparate times and places which have been brought together. The grid structure here borrows from the dominant land feature imposed on the prairies: the square mile sections created by the Dominion Land Survey which informs much of today’s thinking about land ownership and use, as well as infrastructure.
Taken as a whole, the fragility of river becomes readily apparent. The translation from real landscape, to photograph, to negatives, and ultimately digital or cyanotype imagery loses information at each step. The images remind viewers that our glaciers and water systems are not infinite – each action is interconnected.
Together, these series of works speak to the current climate crisis, and how it impacts both at home and abroad from the heart of oil country, and how we have contributed and continue to impact our own immediate surroundings as well as downstream.
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Currents is being shown at the Art Gallery of St Albert. It is a combination of digital and cyanotype media, bringing new and old photography technology together.
Digital negatives were generated through a wide variety of photo sources along the North Saskatchewan which were edited extensively in Photoshop, and negative files prepared along with colour digital print files. The Cyanotype as shown here uses paper negatives, and looks back at very early photographic processes in the darkroom but experimenting to create a more sustainable studio footprint.
March 15, 2023
Showing at Art Gallery of St Albert from March 16 to April 27th
- Projects:
- currents
