Supernatural: Art, Technology and the Forest

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Kelly Richardson, “The Erudition,” 2010

installation view (NGCA UK3 screen 48 x 9 HD video with sound, 20 min. loop; courtesy the artist and Birch Contemporary; photo by Colin Davison)

The earnest quality of Supernatural: Art, Technology and the Forest, on view at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, is suggested by the tail of its title. The juxtaposition of the words "technology" and "forest" makes one think of logging and, perhaps, dams, mines and other hinterland infrastructure. Human impositions on nature are indeed reflected in this show, but its focus is actually photo-based technologies and how the camera’s gaze has shaped human relationships with wooded terrain, particularly on the West Coast.

The title’s lead-in word "supernatural" is more enticing, despite its echo of British Columbia’s tourism branding, and is particularly reflected in one magnificent work, Kelly Richardson’s The Erudition, a floor-to-ceiling video installation. It shows an arid almost lunar landscape with little vegetation apart from holographic trees that flicker in an ethereal electric blue. They billow and sweep in the wind as stars pass overhead. 

Every so often, in a flash, a tree disappears or another appears like some kind of sci-fi apparition. There's audio of static and the technology seems jumpy, like it’s teetering on the edge of obsolescence. It’s easy to become mesmerized, the way one can in front of a large aquarium. I find myself thinking about manufactured landscapes, space travel,  futuristic nostalgia and a post-apocalyptic world. It’s obvious why Richardson, recently hired to teach at the University of Victoria, has drawn attention for her environmentally themed work.

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Leila Sujir, “Forest Breath,” 2018

stereographic 3D-video projection; 5 min., looped (cinematography by Christian Kroitor)

The show, on view until Sept. 3, asks viewers to slow to a forest’s leisurely pace, though annoyingly loud mechanical sounds sometimes spur a hasty retreat. Other  technology also seems to distance viewers. During my visit, despite instructions from the front desk greeter, no one else picked up the stereoscopic glasses required for two pieces. 

I started to watch Ayumi Goto's performance, filmed in stereoscopic video with overtone singing by Sandra Semchuk, and then was reminded by the didactic panel to use the glasses. It advises one to press the RHS button, small and nearly invisible in the dim gallery. I sought help from the front desk (it only now occurs to me that RHS probably stands for right-hand side, and I am, yet again, on the negative side of the cool quotient.) With the technology booted up, the image of Goto walking slowly through the woods, hands held as if to sense a cedar's energy, suddenly pops into 3-D space in front of the screen.

That first gallery also includes Semchuk’s colour photographs of forest scenes overlaid near the bottom with a line of printed text. For instance, the text on Cedar and Branches reads: “Somehow you have withstood the storm stripping your branches and continue the work of holding your world together.” Semchuk’s stated intent includes recognizing the dignity of trees and humanity’s reciprocal relationship with the environment.

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Trudi Lynn Smith, “Breath Camera – prototype 1,” 2015-ongoing

dark cloth and hand-built camera, dimensions variable (documentation of the camera being used in 2016 field research; courtesy of the artist)

I was intrigued by Victoria artist Trudi Lynn Smith's self-made “anti-capitalist" camera, which was shielded under a canopy of dark cloth. Her adaptation of early photographic technology via paper bellows, optical lenses and ground glass was poetic, as was her description of the subject matter, a "fugitive forest" of washed-up logs on Victoria’s beaches. 

No show of West Coast photography would be complete without a nod to Vancouver's photo-conceptual artists. They are represented here by Ian Wallace’s homage to civil disobedience, Clayoquot Protest (August 9, 1993), a well-known work with a formalist sensibility that brings together photographs of anti-logging demonstrators and wood-grain monoprints.

The show, curated by Haema Sivanesan, also includes work by Victoria artist Mike Andrew McLean, who documents the abandoned community of Jordan River, on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island. Rounding out the show is Vancouver artist Carol Sawyer’s digital video, Wood Work, which shows early West Coast loggers; Dan Siney’s anthropomorphic photographs of old stumps; and Leila Sujir’s Forest Breath, shot in the Walbran forest on Vancouver Island. ■

Supernatural: Art, Technology and the Forest is on view at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria from May 19 to Sept. 3, 2018.