Saskatchewan's Maritime Museum
Todd Gronsdahl, “Saskatchewan Maritime Museum,” 2017
installation view at Kenderdine Art Gallery, University of Saskatchewan
A show called Saskatchewan Maritime Museum? It has to be a joke, right?
Well, Todd Gronsdahl is kidding – and he isn’t. Of course, landlocked Saskatchewan has no sea, but Gronsdahl has created three fanciful stories about misadventures on regional waterways for an exhibition that, in the words of curator Leah Taylor, challenges “truth, fiction and the construction of historical narratives.”
While plenty of recent shows have interrogated different aspects of archives and museological practices, Saskatchewan Maritime Museum, on view until Aug. 19 at the University of Saskatchewan's Kenderdine Gallery, extrapolates local lore using irony and absurdity.
With tongue-in-cheek humour worthy of a CBC comedy sketch, Gronsdahl confronts viewers with the story of a completely fictional personage, Charles Gaspar, reputed to have invented insulation made from cattails and a lip balm from sturgeon cartilage. It’s a play on a Prairie stereotype – the eccentric DIY entrepreneur, a character who seems to share some affinities with Gronsdahl himself.
“The more I make this stuff, the more I find I am willing to be that eccentric character myself,” says Gronsdahl, who grew up in Saskatoon. “In real life, there are social boundaries where you have to act like a sane person. But when I make art, I get to take this part of me that maybe is just sort of out there and I can express it through my work rather than just being an eccentric myself.”
Gronsdahl also created the Devil’s Dip Ski Launch, a.k.a. The Ballistic Missile Defence System, a riff on an actual ski jump created near the university on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River by the Saskatoon Ski Club around 1930. In Gronsdahl’s hands, this snippet of local history becomes a scheme to protect Saskatchewan waterways from enemy attack during the Second World War, complete with bombs that carried a payload of processed wheat.
Todd Gronsdahl, “Saskatchewan Maritime Museum,” 2017
installation view at Kenderdine Art Gallery, University of Saskatchewan
“These bombs, when employed on the enemy submarines, would release the refined proteinous gluten into the waters of the South Saskatchewan,” Gronsdahl writes in a mock didactic panel. “This chemical reaction would produce a thick gummy mess that rendered the enemy submarines immobile and ripe for capture.”
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Todd Gronsdahl, “Saskatchewan Maritime Museum,” 2017
installation view at Kenderdine Art Gallery, University of Saskatchewan
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Todd Gronsdahl, “Saskatchewan Maritime Museum,” 2017
installation view at Kenderdine Art Gallery, University of Saskatchewan
His third piece, Frankwin’s Expedition, exposes an “ill-conceived, ill-considered, ill-equipped” scheme to navigate the streams and sloughs of Saskatchewan with a whaling vessel.
Gronsdahl uses both actual artifacts and objects of his own constructions. For instance, he created an old-style diving helmet from foamcore, plastic and duct tape. It’s called the G.A.S.P.R. Helmet (gasp, air, get it?) and is also a play on scuba, which originally stood for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. One of Gronsdahl’s favorite “real” objects is the sumptuous robe of a Supreme Court justice, which became a prop for a fake portrait photo of Gaspar.
Todd Gronsdahl, “G.A.S.P.R. Helmet” (detail), 2017
mixed media, 18” x 16”
Taylor notes that Gronsdahl’s vernacular expresses a Prairie folk-art sentiment. “The conflation between the art objects, real archival materials and the invented artifacts, evokes a subtle interplay between truth and fiction. A thin veil of distrust and exaggerated conspiracy theory lingers throughout the 'museum,' ultimately problematizing the selectivity of written historical knowledge.”
Gronsdahl, 41, is mostly self-taught, although he studied art at the University of Saskatchewan and Emily Carr University in Vancouver for a few years. He has shown his work at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon, and is also known locally for the sushi restaurant he opened with his wife when he was in his early 20s.
The Kenderdine project grew out of a 2013 show at Dynamo, a Vancouver artist-run centre, in which Gronsdahl's maritime museum was a small shack with one exhibit. Taylor worked with him as he explored the university’s archives and did a residency at the gallery to develop a larger body of work.
Kenderdine Art Gallery
51 Campus Dr, 2nd level, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5A8
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