Tony Stallard’s New Breed experimented with the relationships between light and material. In creating his sculptures, he purposefully selected organic materials like moss, timber, feathers, and bones to contrast with industrial materials like neon, steel, ceramic and glass. The materials contained a dialogue between manufactured and natural: calling to what Stallard referred to as their “alchemical properties”. One wall in the gallery space was dedicated to poetically written stories conveying community members’ most surreal experiences with nature.

Though based in the UK, Tony Stallard has exhibited work internationally, and has 25 years experience making site-specific sculptures. He has studied in London at Chelsea School of Art, has an MA from Wimbledon School of Art, amongst others. Stallard’s current work involves mixed media with light for exhibitions, urban sculpture trails and sculptural commissions. All of which are site-specific light sculptures.

For more information about Stallard’s work, visit his website.

A Conversation Between Nature and Manufacture, Disturbed and Fractured // Lucas Glenn

There is a current dialogue growing between the natural and the synthetic. In the way that agricultural machines handle crops, and the way that telephone poles stand among trees, there are relationships that UK-based artist Tony Stallard simulates in his minimal, evocative, and unsettling exhibition, New Breed.

New Breed is composed of a series of sculptures featuring neon lights interacting with natural elements. Each sculpture is a micro-commentary, and as Stallard puts it, more of a warning than a statement. In Feed, red neon stretches along an assembly line of animal horns and metal piping, poignantly cautioning the increased use of genetic modification in meat industries. Similar in its thematic is Livestock, a work made up of tormented red neon formations that emerge from disheveled haystacks. The neon is reminiscent of fire, emitting ominous light. Stallard is no stranger to neon; his distinguished public works like Double Helix (1999), Titanic Kit (2009) and The Guardian (2010), are lit by it. He uses neon to create geometric, sequential, and iconic forms, and similar to artist Dan Flavin, subverts neon’s Parisian-barbershop and Las-Vegas-Strip history.

Stallard’s permanent public works embody the spirituality of place, reflect on the past, and contemplate the future of their locales. Many of them are neo-futuristic architectural beacons, abstracting light in the spirit of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, revealing geometries in the spirit of Donald Judd, and signifying hope in the spirit of, well, good spirits. However, the combination of natural and synthetic in New Breed disturbs positivity, and conjures up images of a dim, dystopic world where nature and technology have monstrous relationships. Frankenstein comes to mind.

His artworks Wound and New Breed are particularly haunting, each for different reasons. A horizontal red neon strip bordered by two feathered headdresses, Wound is intended to represent Canada’s most severing territorial issues. In my relationalist purview, the artwork’s feathers and neon poetically continue the negotiation between natural and artificial. In my social justice purview, however, context is everything. Though Stallard’s aim was not to reference indigenous issues or “indigeneity”, to the engaged Canadian viewer it likely will. Intentional or not, the work’s context imbues difficulty. Problems arise because A) historically, from the Royal Proclamation, to Confederation, and onward, the British Crown forcibly took as much land as they could from First Nations while violating peace treaties and claiming authority over first nation lands, B) the colonial legacy continued to manifest in massacres, wars, human rights abuses, relocations, and residential schools, among other atrocities, and C) the use of headdresses and war bonnets in mass media were and still are key in perpetuating racist stereotypes of first nations (see: “red face”) (see: homogenization). Not for a second do I question that Stallard has good intentions in bringing to light territorial disputes in Canada, but by god the alphabet does not end at C. His exhibition at the Alternator takes place on unceded Syilx territory, amplifying the artwork’s potency.

New Breed, horizontally presented in the window gallery, is composed of a long stretch of peat, piled a foot and a half high, with a red neon tube snaking through it. The visuals bring to mind an iconic Ed Burtynsky photograph called Nickle Tailings #34 (1996); it depicts a river of blood-red nickel tailings winding through dark, scorched Sudbury (Ontario) earth. Stallard’s piece resonates visually and conceptually as well with Werner Herzog’s footage of the Kuwait oil sands. All of these pieces depict a hellish earth, ravaged by industry. Stallard’s installation has a vestigial tone, honest to Canada, industry, and the ongoing dialogue between the natural and manufactured.

Let’s talk about it.

Troy Nickle’s Process, Place and Perception, was a site-specific installation using natural materials. Natural elements from Kelowna’s landscape became part of the gallery architecture, playing with expectations of environment and place.

As though it was a bird’s eye view of the natural world, a selection of dried plants emerged horizontally from the wall. Driftwood, both suspended from the ceiling and dynamically gathering on the walls, created a sense of movement reflective of floating down a river. Central to the exhibition was a sculptural homage to Constantin Brancusi’s Endless Column- with driftwood stacked columns and columns high. Each work within the exhibition aimed to address the relationship between culture and nature.

Troy Nickle is an environmental artist currently living in Lethbridge, Alberta. His practice encompasses a variety of ideas and processes that stem from working in relation to the landscape and in tandem with nature. His site-specific artworks incorporate natural materials like wood, moss, mud, stone and vegetation to form assemblages that enhance one's experience of place. Previously enrolled in the BFA Program at the University of Lethbridge, Troy has also studied at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, and is a member of the Field Notes Collective in Lethbridge, AB.

For more information about Nickle’s work, visit his website.

Process, Place, Perception // Nicole Ensing

Too often we define nature as a separate entity from humans, ignoring that we are a part of the natural world. In Process, Place, Perception, Troy Nickle’s thoughtful installations bring a fresh nuance to our understanding of natural processes and what we interpret as art.  Nickle challenges our connection with nature and culture, bridging the gaps in our relationships with the natural world.

Nickle’s body of work has an understanding of the ecosystem from which it was formed; he acknowledges environmental impact and future implications through his choice of materials. The many materials used in his pieces are not chosen on a whim, but are part of his artistic process. Nickle encounters the materials, like the plant species goldenrod, yarrow, or wild rose (some of the many species used in his installation) on walks and hikes while exploring Lethbridge or other parts of southern Alberta. He makes his selection, but waits until the individual plant has set its seed and dried and only then does he take a portion for his work.

Some of these plants are found in After the First Snow Fall, in which Nickle has situated twenty-six pieces (12 distinctive species) of dried plants such that they extrude from the wall as if reaching out to the viewer. Numerous shadows feather out from the lifeless plants in a spirited fashion, mimicking the life that once existed. This piece disrupts the usual interactions we have with plants, often looked down upon by us, but now facing us at eye level, inviting us in. By challenging our normal perception of the natural world, Nickle has highlighted our general disregard for those small plants and the value they hold.

Similarly, Goldenrod Doodle, reaches out from the wall, although the twisted goldenrod has taken on a new form. Due to a fly larva, an engorged gull is now a part of each plant, the plants are twisted and gnarly as if ignoring the shape and order imposed upon it on the wall. Nickle’s arrangement of the materials provides the viewer with a new way of seeing. By elevating and creating structure with the natural materials within the gallery, it challenges the viewer to change their perception of what art can be.

His piece, Endless, stands in the corner of the gallery as if a somber reminder of the past and of things to come. Endless pays homage to The Endless Column by Constantin Brâncuși, symbolizing "Infinite Sacrifice.” Reflecting Brâncuși in form, Endless is a tower of rhomboidal shapes, constructed with drift wood pieces. Nickle’s sculpture brings a material like wood to the forefront, a material that can break down, illuminating the ceaseless ephemeral processes of nature. The structure itself is reflective, possibly symbolizing a stupa (Buddhist shrine), or simply bestowing the gallery with a drift wood cairn. It is this uncertainty that context can impose, thus the viewer is encouraged to take from their own experience, and to think carefully about what the shape, structure, and materials mean to them.

In Process, Place, Perception, Troy Nickle’s installations echo a spiritual sense of understanding; each piece is contemplative and meditative, and open to interpretation. Nickle has put our interactions with nature at the fore, questioning our understanding of life, and our role within it. Nickle provides us with opportunity to look upon nature in an altered context, re-envisioning our relationship to the natural world.

Mitch Mitchell is a project-based artist exploring psychologies of labour and familial histories through the production of print-based practices. Through alteration of the mundane surface his sculptural and performance based works suggest notions of trauma and the frailty of the human psyche through the physical mass production of the multiple and/or transformation of historic objects. The constructions of his multiple bodies of works adopt materials of a democratic nature, rust, flour, water, newsprint and labour embedding the sculptural surfaces with notions of industry, time, alchemy and the impact of physical performance on the psyche.

For more information about Mitchell and his current work, visit his website.

Serge Oliver Rondeau & Charles-Antoine Blais Métivier are social archaeologists. Their ongoing project, After Faceb00k, chronicles, documents, and organizes Facebook activity worldwide. Taking on the roles of archivists, Rondeau & Blais Métivier categorize photos according to content and theme to discover trends among demographics and regions. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third highest in population, surpassed only by India and China; the social network has become a non-negligible part of our lives. Tailored for the Kelowna presentation, this large-scale photography installation collates social media images provided by the citizens of Kelowna, each image remaining in its original visual context including comments and activity.

Bridging disciplines and engaged in contemporary social contexts, Rondeau & Blais Métivier experimental approach melds ethnography, archaeology and art to form a region-specific ‘social media persona’ grounded in a methodological, scientific process. After Faceb00k revisions the traditional artist meme of archiving a demographic. In the spirit of August Sander, they examine the banal and simple everyday moments to compile a snapshot of culture and community as presented through modern technology. Despite being grounded in traditional artistic practice, After Faceb00k is not without its risks. In reappropriating images released by their creators into the public realm, Rondeau & Blais Métivier conduct a social experiment of unspoken voyeurism, leading us to question the willingness of the public to publish private information and the historical mark that will be left by social media in the coming years.

Charles-Antoine Blais Métivier is a multidisciplinary artist from the city of Sherbrooke, living and working mainly between Montreal and the internet. Like many, he was born in the 1980s. He holds a Masters in Visual and Media Arts from the University of Quebec in Montreal. Charles-Antoine's works have been presented in a range of solo and group exhibitions across Quebec, but also in Italy, France, Russia, across Canada, as well as in a more or less popular reality show on the Canal Evasion.
Fortunately for him, his works are also part of private and institutional collections.

For more information about Blais Métivier, visit his website.

Serge-Oliver Rondeau has a background in filmmaking and in sociology and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Ottawa's School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies. His practice-based research brings together media arts and experimental ethnography to follow human and other-than-human entities (animals, landscapes, machines, plants, and so on) in different types of assemblages. He has participated, among other things, in the Manif d'art 7 in Québec City (2014) with the group Épopée and in the Mois de la Photo à Montréal (2016) around the theme "the post-photographic condition" curated by Joan Fontcuberta. As part of this biennale, Rondeau presented at the McCord Museum a nine-channel video installation, “In loving memory <3”, with the collective After Faceb00k of which he is a cofounder.

For more information on Rondeau, visit his website.

Using a device known as zoetrope – a spinning cylinder that illustrates motion in a series of images – Ella Morton created a kinetic installation involving images of the Canadian and American landscape. The photos were on semi-transparent 4x5” inch film, so that when the zoetrope spun, the images blend together in animation. Through movement and imagery, Geotrope explored how we relate to time and place, and how we confront mystery and the unknown.

Extending into public space was the installation Roadside Majestic: Celebrating the (Un)Charm of North America, which explored the culture of highway travel. The interactive artwork was a large and vaguely drawn map of North America with humorous landmarks written all over it. Participants were invited to write comments on provided markers and place them on the map. Participants could contribute photos through the Roadside Majestic blog, which accompanied the installation and can still be found at http://roadsidemajestic.blogspot.ca.

Ella Morton is a Canadian visual artist and filmmaker living in Toronto, on the land of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenoshaunee and the Wendat peoples. Her expedition-based practice has brought her to residencies and projects across Canada, as well as in Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Finland. Working primarily with lens-based media, she uses experimental analogue processes to capture the sublime and fragile qualities of remote landscapes. Reflecting on how the medium of photography is changing in the digital age, she aims to uncover how photographs can show more than a straightforward depiction of reality, and how the alchemy of analogue techniques can be reinvented in the present day to tell deeper stories within images.

For more information about Morton and her work, visit her website.