“The more these are and must be closed, the more intensely precious does the common or forest, safe for ever from inclosure (sic), become. It is not only the suburban common, it is the rural also which is of value to us as a people.”
– Octavia Hill, “The Future of Our Commons,” in Our Common Land (and Other Short Essays) (London: Macmillan, 1877).
Featured online and in the Factory Media Centre (FMC) window space, Public Works is a video series that explores modified environments and regional landscapes, asking how these spaces are assigned value and given meaning. Public Works references both the public nature of these works, viewed by those passing by FMC on James Street, and the municipal Public Works Departments that manage civic infrastructure and public parks. These departments are an integral component of the invisible labour that maintains these public spaces, while often contributing to the maintenance of regional spaces resting far outside of city centres.
The works in this series turn to these seemingly distant places, while considering the mediated, modified, and commodified nature of these landscapes. As Eva Hemmungs Wirtén notes in Terms of Use (2008), public parkland did not emerge in late-1800s England out of sheer state benevolence, but grew from shifting class relations as aristocracy could no longer afford the upkeep of vast swaths of land. This followed the repeal of legislation that had enforced the enclosure of common lands for centuries. Social groups like the Commons Preservation Society and activists like Octavia Hill (the Jane Jacobs of 19th century England) organized to make green-spaces available for the many, with calls for open spaces expanding the terrain of who counts as the public. Access to forests and the wilderness was not always a given within liberal societies—and continues to be limited by treaties and occupations that are at odds with Indigenous land claims—and state and market forces continue to influence our conception of these so-called natural spaces.
In her essay Our Common Land (1877), Hill asks: “Do you not know numbers of neighbourhoods where woods, and Commons, and fields used to be open to pedestrians, and now they must walk, even in the country, on straight roads between hedges?” It is remarkable to think of walking on straight roads as itself remarkable, which is framed here by Hill as a lesser way of travelling when compared to rambling through the bush or open fields. Public Works aims to bridge these two worlds, the urbal and the rural, by bringing these critical reflections on our forests and woods to the Hamilton downtown core, inviting those on James Street to ask what terrain they prefer, where they wander, and what is the nature of the common ground on which they travel.
This publication content was produced by interviews between Michael DiRisio and Public Works exhibiting artists: Jordyn Stewart, Mark Prier, Brad Issacs, Amanda White.
MICHAEL DIRISIO is a writer and visual artist. His recent work explores social histories and the construction of value, through photo, video, and installation-based projects. His writing has appeared in Art Papers, Afterimage, C Magazine, BlackFlash, and Public Journal, among others, with feature essays in upcoming issues of Esse Magazine and Espace Art Actuel. He was previously the Artistic Director of Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre and has participated in exhibitions at Rodman Hall Art Centre, Artcite, Museum London, and the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, with forthcoming exhibitions at Thames Art Gallery and the Workers’ Arts and Heritage Centre. He has participated in artist residencies in Castellvi de la Marca, Spain and Reykjavik, Iceland, and recently co-organized the Art & Social Strata conference and artist projects alongside frequent collaborator Teresa Carlesimo.
Landscape Technician
Jordyn Stewart
April 17 – May 17, 2020
Landscape Technician is a performance document that deftly uses Chroma keying technology to juxtapose the artificial and the real embedded within nature, place, and identity. My work takes a self-reflective approach in revisiting familiar sites that have informed my understanding of the regional landscape, revealing their human-made, maintained, and manicured qualities. In grappling with nature as a constructed experience, I acknowledge my skewed understanding of place.
Dressed in everyday studio attire and with tools in tow, I mount three panels of fabric similar to a backdrop in a photography studio. The physicality of the fabric is apparent as the landscape is ‘installed’ before our eyes, handled like an object that I have complete authority over. Engaging in dialogues around control and commodification, I actively situate myself within this constructed landscape: as the performance concludes, it becomes clear that the ‘natural’ site is only an illusion.
About the artist:
Jordyn Stewart is an emerging artist from the Niagara Region. Working predominately in video and performance, her most recent work explores nature, place, and identity through the juxtaposition of the artificial and the real.
Stewart holds a BA, Specialist in Art and Art History at the University of Toronto, joint program with Sheridan College. She is a recent MFA graduate from the University of Waterloo and was a recipient of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Master’s Scholarship. Stewart has exhibited in such galleries as Trinity Square Video, Hamilton Artists Inc., Gallery Stratford and Idea Exchange. She was an artist-in-residence at the University of Windsor’s Emerging Artist Research Residency, as well as with Hamilton Artists’ Inc.’s Cotton Factory Residency Program. Stewart is currently the co-curator of Art Spin Hamilton and works as the Interim Communications & Marketing Coordinator for Oakville Galleries.
S-U-R-V-I-V-A-L
Mark Prier
June 1 – 30, 2020
S-U-R-V-I-V-A-L (2005) juxtaposes video footage of ‘wilderness’ (with increasingly visible traces of the human presence) with found diagrams and illustrations. Survival technique is pitted against the outdoors excluding and including humans.
Artist Statement:
As an artist, I explore the interaction between culture and ecology. Working from diverse sources, such as botany, folklore, geology, and history, I rearticulate these explorations into new artworks. I have collaborated with environmental conservation workers, cast seed for urban birds, started restoring an acre of farmland to the documented pre-colonial forest, and created large-scale sculptures reimagining suburban fenceposts. My current research investigates agriculture, genetics, restoration, invasive species, endangered species, and extirpation/extinction issues.
About the artist:
Mark Prier’s exhibitions include shows in Canada, Mexico, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Newfoundland & Labrador Arts Council, and the Ontario Arts Council.
In 2008, he travelled to Gotland, Sweden for the Brucebo Summer Residency; and, in 2012, he travelled to Crowsnest Pass, Alberta for Trap/door Artist-Run Centre’s Gushul Studio & Collaboration Residency.
A 2004 graduate of University of Toronto’s Visual Studies program, Prier also took part in HotBox Riverwood’s mentorship program with Reinhard Reitzenstein in 2011.
As half of the electronic music duo hellothisisalex, Prier has played the MUTEK Festival in Montreal, done commissions for CBC Radio, and taken part in the National Film Board of Canada’s Minus 40 project.
Prier splits his time between Hopeville and Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
We Dug Through a Mountain of Gold to Find You
Amanda White & Brad Isaacs
July 1 – 31, 2020
We Dug Through a Mountain of Gold to Find You was developed during a residency at the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture in Dawson, YK in 2016. It features activity in the placer gold mines that are located throughout the territory, where small crews (sometimes families) dig open pits and use water to melt the permafrost layer and extract gold. A bi-product of the process is the unearthing of ice age mammal bones, also frozen in the permafrost. A particular plant, known as a mastodon flower, often grows in sites that were excavated, and it was believed that they grew from seeds preserved in a mastodon’s stomach
Artist Statement:
This work is part of a larger collaborative project that looks at representations of plants through both scientific dissemination as well as popular culture, towards imagining alternatives to common modes of species categorization and description. In doing so, we engage with the concept of the cryptid; an animal or plant whose existence has been described but has not been documented by the scientific community. With this in mind we ask; what does it means for a species to be ‘known’ to Western science? Is it possible to become unknown? Our guiding narrative is a mixture of fact and fiction based on fiction, science-fiction and vernacular stories as well as research and scientific documents.
About the Artists:
Brad Isaacs is an artist and independent curator currently based in Toronto, Ontario. He holds an MFA from the University of Western Ontario and has exhibited at galleries such as the McMaster Museum of Art, the Ottawa Art Gallery, and Hamilton Artists Inc. His work in photography, video and installation investigates the complex relationships between people and nature.
Amanda White is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of art, environment and culture. She has exhibited and published her work across disciplines with support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council, among others. She holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from Queen’s University, MFA from the University of Windsor and BFA from OCADU.
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