Russell Yuristy Show in Ottawa

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Russell Yuristy, "Elephant," 1972

Creative Playground Workshop, wood piles and logs, paint, 20' x 10' x 30' (former location Silton, SK, dates installed 1971-2005. image by Eberhard E. Otto / Artscanada, courtesy Dunlop Art Gallery)

Playground installations of a duck, moose, beaver and other animals made by former Saskatchewan artist Russell Yuristy are on view at the Ottawa Art Gallery until July 26.

The show, The Inside of Elephants and All Kinds of Things, features public art works that doubled as play structures made between 1970 and 1990.

One installation, an elephant with a children’s slide for a trunk, has been partially rebuilt inside the gallery and is ready for play. 

The installations no longer exist in situ due to tighter legal codes to keep children safe. 

Yuristy got the idea when he was driving near Regina and inexplicably saw a herd of elephants. The animals were with a travelling circus. Soon Yuristy's Creative Playground Workshop was born.

“About 1969-70, I was making some of my drawings of the inside of elephants; people doing all kinds of things," Yuristy said in 1981. "I began to get the feeling I could build a big thing like that.”

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Russell Yuristy

Born in 1936, and raised on a farm in Saskatchewan, Yuristy trained in art at the University of Wisconsin (Madison).

He embraced the subconscious, the absurd and everyday experiences in fantastical drawings and ceramics.

Yuristy, who now lives in Ottawa, contributed to the development of Regina Funk Art, a pop art movement in which artists used humour and mixed materials to create an anti-consumer commentary.

The exhibition is rounded out with other work, including drawings and sculptures in all sorts of mixed media.

For more, go to oaggao.ca.

Source: Ottawa Art Gallery, Artsfile