Redesigning Paradise
Artists use alternative photographic processes to investigate nature.
“Redesigning Paradise,” 2023
installation view at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff (photo by Joe Paris)
In recent years, the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in Banff, Alta., has focused on reconnecting visitors with nature. In so doing, the museum, which houses an extensive archive about the Canadian Rockies, is trying to position itself as engaging and relevant to both its community and the region’s many visitors, while also staying true to its historical roots.
The museum’s latest visual arts exhibition, Redesigning Paradise, on view until March 26, fits perfectly with this vision. The show features work by four photo-based contemporary artists who take the museum’s archive as inspiration for fresh perspectives on local flora, fauna, weather and geology. Their work blends historical technologies with contemporary sensibilities, a collision that yields a range of intriguing investigations.
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Mary Anne Barkhouse, "Bosquet," 2023
cyanotype on linen panel, installation view at Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff (collection of the artist, photo by Joe Paris)
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Mary Anne Barkhouse “Bison/Gate” (detail), 2021
poly/cotton, canvas and steel, 150" x 51" (collection of the artist)
Mary Anne Barkhouse, an Ontario-based artist who traces her maternal lineage to the Kwakiutl First Nation of Alert Bay, B.C., presents various cyanotypes – an early photographic medium – of trees and ferns on hanging linen panels. She also displays tapestries depicting animals such as bison and beavers in peaceful surroundings, designs based on archival records.
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Dianne Bos, “Lumière, Nasturtium leaf,” 2022
chlorophyll print (collection of the artist)
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Dianne Bos, “Exhalation/Transmissions, Passages Botaniques,” 2019-2021
chromatic prints from pinhole negatives with darkroom manipulations, installation view at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff (collection of the artist, photo by Josh Segeleski)
Calgary’s Dianne Bos rejects modern documentary photography in favour of slow, low-tech processes that mimic natural phenomena. Her series, Exhalation/Transmissions, Passages Botaniques, considers commonalities between plants and humans, highlighting the arbitrary quality of the boundaries we place between ourselves and other living beings.
Her technique blurs the lines between the mechanical and the organic. She often uses pinhole photography – in which light that passes through a tiny aperture alters photographic chemicals, a process that has parallels to the way sunlight triggers photosynthesis in plants. Her beautifully imperfect images are out of focus and peppered with bubbles. Although dreamlike, they feel more real than contemporary high-resolution digital photographs because they offer a sense of subjective experience. I felt like I had stared at the sun too long while lazing outdoors and was seeing spots in my field of vision.
Sarah Fuller, “Whitebark Pine Suit, Canadian Rockies No. 3,” 2022
inkjet print, 39" x 39" (collection of the artist)
Perhaps the most exciting work is by Sarah Fuller, known for work about human interventions in the environment. Her series of handsewn Lycra bodysuits, printed with photocollages showing moss, lichen and other natural elements, are first seen hung on gallery walls or draped over a shop-window mannequin.
Then the fun begins. In the next section, Fuller’s digital photographs show models wearing the suits in the same environments used for elements in the photocollages, effectively camouflaging them. The result is irresistibly interactive: like a child reading Where’s Waldo, you are pulled into each image for the satisfaction of finding the hidden figure.
Penelope Stewart, “Beaver Pond, Orbs,” 2013, digital photograph and hand-blown crystal glass orb created for use as a lens, 20" diameter (framed; edition of 3, 3/3; collection of the artist)
The final contributor, Penelope Stewart, a multidisciplinary artist born in Montreal, completes the show thematically with her series, Orbs. Each digital photograph shows her holding a hand-blown glass ball directly in front of the camera lens. An inverted landscape is projected in each, mimicking the process of a traditional camera obscura, another early imaging technology.■
Redesigning Paradise at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in Banff, Alta., from Jan. 20 to March 26, 2023. The exhibition is organized in conjunction with Exposure, an annual photography festival held in Alberta each February.
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Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies
111 Bear Street (PO Box 160), Banff, Alberta T1L 1A3
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Daily 10 am - 5 pm, closed Dec 25 and Jan 1.
