Becoming Lithocene

×

Expand

Meghan Price, “Erratic,” 2015

enameled copper wire, pins and limestone, 27” x 16” (photo by Thomas Blanchard)

A central question at the exhibition Becoming Lithocene seems to be: What grounds us in space and time? So often we expect what’s underfoot to be solid, unchanging and steadfast.

But the show’s four artists subvert this expectation by exploring shifting relationships and blurred boundaries between what we perceive as the natural world and our manufactured realities.

The term lithocene is used to describe an imaginary geological epoch based on the lifespan of the lithic, or stone. The exhibition, on view at the Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff until June 14, encourages viewers to think about deep geological time – which we have no way to experience directly – and the various models we use to understand it.

For example, Toronto artist Meghan Price plays with scales of both size and time to create understandings of geological processes. In Erratic, small river rocks interrupt a delicate grid of wires.

Almost map-like, the piece represents the slow movement of large erratics through an icy landscape. Such rocks, along with the glaciers that deposited them, have shaped the land around us. By working in miniature, Price invites viewers to imagine the vastness of this process.

×

Expand

Hannah Rowan, “Flowscape,” 2018

welded steel, rubber bungee, ice screw, ice, meat hook, 3D printed gypsum, glass tank, electric fan, lights, aquarium pump, silicone pipe, digital prints on transparency film, acrylic trays, plaster fragments, salt crystals, G clamp, copper piping, extruded acrylic tubes, bricks, digital prints on polyester film, steel tube, sand in zip-lock bag, thread, copperized rock, alligator clips, dimensions variable (courtesy of the artist)

A similar theme runs though the work of British artist Hannah Rowan, whose installations resemble scientific experiments. Her work recreates geologic processes using a combination of natural and manufactured materials. It speaks about motion, change and time using the language of the lithic.

Rowan asks us to question linear narratives of progress and to consider the slow cycles of the natural world as a model for living. Thematically, the call to consider ourselves part of a much larger system is compelling, but the complexity of her work makes it difficult to access its nuances.

×

1 of 3

Expand

Flying a boulder kite at a 2018 workshop hosted by the Museum of the Flat Earth on Fogo Island, Nfld.

×

2 of 3

Expand

Making a boulder kite at a 2018 workshop hosted by the Museum of the Flat Earth on Fogo Island, Nfld.

×

3 of 3

Expand

Making a boulder kite at a 2018 workshop hosted by the Museum of the Flat Earth on Fogo Island, Nfld.

Prev

Next

Other works in the exhibition refer to the inconstancy of the ground beneath our feet. Overhead, kites made from rubbings of stones on paper are suspended from the ceiling. They were made by Price and Toronto artist and geologist Suzanne Nacha at the Museum of the Flat Earth, a quirky artistic experiment that explores the construction of knowledge and plays with boundaries between fact and fiction on Newfoundland’s Fogo Island.

Earlier versions of the kites were flown successfully outside the museum. Oddly enough, the patterns on the rubbings match the pattern on the ceiling’s tiles, reinforcing the conflation of ground and sky. The installation playfully asks viewers to reconsider the perceived stability of the lithic, referring to slow but steady processes that eventually upturn mountains and bring buried layers of stone to the surface.

×

Expand

Tsēmā Igharas,“Emergence 2,” 2016

backlit print (courtesy of the artist)

Work by Tsēmā Igharas, a member of the Tahltan First Nation in Northern British Columbia, draws attention to how humans intersect with the geologic. Her photographs show black and green obsidian, a brittle volcanic rock with incredibly sharp edges. Obsidian has been used for millennia as a cutting tool. The way Igharas depicts the stone is almost sculptural. It speaks to her respect and deep connection to the land and confirms human reliance upon it.

Becoming Lithocene asks us to reconsider our relationship not only with the natural world but also time and place. In many ways, it seeks to unground us from presumptions about the natural world and recognize our nature as ephemeral. Curator Diana Hiebert expresses a hope to destabilize anthropocentrism and help people partner with forces outside human experience.

Insofar as the show encourages us to consider the lithic as a temporal, changing and almost living force, it is effective. It prompted me to visit a nearby lake to listen to the melting ice creak, crunch and crash into the rocky shoreline. ■

Becoming Lithocene is on view at the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity from April 20 to June 14, 2019.