Artist Beth Stuart with her new work, “Les Tendresses,” in the lobby of La Banque Nationale du Canada in Montreal (photo by Rick Leong)
Victoria, B.C. artist Beth Stuart’s newest sculpture, Les Tendresses, has been installed in the lobby of La Banque Nationale du Canada’s headquarters in Montreal.
The sculpture includes three adjacent columns made using scagliola, an ancient architectural plaster technique that imitates marble. Each column is distinct from the other: “one upright and elegant, one soft and flowing, one ornate and whimsical,” according to a news release.
“Les Tendresses represent a playful offshoot of a longer artistic passage through the history of the relationships between architecture, garment construction, modernist abstraction, queer embodiment and feminist practice,” said Stuart in the release.
The cost of the installation was close to $1 million.
Stuart, who is also a visual arts professor at the University of Victoria, works in a range of media including writing, painting, ceramics, textiles, performance and installation. She holds a graduate degree from the University of Guelph and has exhibited her work at the Power Plant in Toronto, the Esker Foundation in Calgary and others. ■
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