Circumference/Circumstance
Part A: Circumference
installation
six looped videos, carpet, tablecloth, cans and boxes of food—all
inserted into the historical galleries of the Art Gallery of Greater
Victoria, 2015
In the summer of 2015 the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria presented a
comprehensive exhibition of the work of Jock MacDonald from The Painters
Eleven. I was invited by curator Michelle Jacques to create work in
response. Jock MacDonald kept a diary starting in 1935 during an eighteen month
period while he and his family lived on Nootka Island. This diary became
the centre point in time for the creation of the installation.
Circumference, then, refers both to a kind of demarcation of time and place
centred on Jock MacDonald, the Mowachaht-Muchalaht who historically called
Nootka home (but now mostly only based in Yuquot) and the island itself.
The exhibition consists of five main elements. Six videos shot on Nootka are
accompanied by photos of details of Jock MacDonald’s paintings that relate
to the period: a Stewardship Map of Nootka reproduced as a carpet and
placed on the floor; an accompanying legend turned into a rubber ‘Welcome
Mat’ inside the door of the gallery; and Jock MacDonald’s diary reproduced on a
tablecloth that is draped over the table in the Kearly gallery. These are
accompanied by examples of drygoods that MacDonald listed in his diary that
were necessary for his stay on Nootka, placed in the glass cases in the
gallery where usually china plates and cups are displayed.
Circles of politics, history and artmaking are brought together by combining
these interventions with the dominant Victorian(ish) architecture of the rooms.
It is also the intent, however, to puncture the hermetic
state of the rooms and to allow through a living, changing understanding of
MacDonald’s experience of Nootka and the effect the island had on his
art practice.
Circumference/Circumstance
Part B: Circumstance, with Paƛšiʔaƛma (The Fire is Just Starting)
installation, with intervention by Emily Luce and Rodney Sayers
six looped videos, smokehouse constructed from Vancouver Island sourced
cedar and fir, steel, glass,
120 × 120 × 200 cm;
exhibited at the Art Gallery of Victoria, fall 2015;
feast dinner including numerous salmon dishes with walnut and cranberry cake
served in the exhibition, November 2015
Part B of this exhibition presented an additional set of videos on
the flat screen monitors. As well, the artists Emily Luce and Rodney Sayers
were invited to intervene in the exhibition. I invited some questions about
making cultural references (or not) in artworks across indigenous/non
indigenous lines; and relationships to the land and its representation (also
across indigenous/non indigenous lines). This started a conversation that is
ongoing. Luce and Sayers created Paƛšiʔaƛma (The Fire is Just
Starting) on their land in Port Alberni that was used to smoke salmon. It
was then dismantled and reassembled at the Art Gallery of
Greater Victoria.
“Paƛšiʔaƛma
(The Fire is Just Starting) works with two forces quietly present in
the diary of Jock MacDonald during his year on Nootka Island, when he made
the breakthrough in his work towards abstraction. The first is his wife,
Barbara Niece MacDonald, whose contribution to that year and that work
shouldn’t be understated. The second is the
Mowachaht / Muchalaht First Nation, who not only modeled how
to live off the land, but, present abstracted forms and concepts in their
visual language. These presences are subtly acknowledged alongside the
concepts of warmth and food security that the
sauna-smokehouse embodies.”
—Emily Luce and Rodney Sayer
The project culminated with a feast in the galleries of food made from the
smoked salmon from Paƛšiʔaƛma as well as ingredients brought
from Ontario. The food was presented on the tablecloth in the exhibition
that was printed with Jock MacDonald’s diary.