Preview
THAT STILL PLACE… THAT PLACE STILL
Runs until April 5
Nickle Arts Museum (U of C)
How does a certain place or event become fixed in our memories? That’s the question explored by artists William MacDonnell, Landon MacKenzie, David McMillan and Eugene Ouchi in the exhibition That Still Place… That Place Still.
Each of these artists takes a different route to those places and events, but in the end they arrive at the same point: to confirm the notion that history matters and that it shapes our daily lives whether we are attuned to it or not.
"One of the more straightforward processes by which space becomes place is through events that have transpired there – so much so that the name of the place becomes synonymous with the event," says exhibition curator Christine Sowiak.
This is certainly true of the paintings and assemblages by Ouchi, which are titled Hiroshima Rain.
On August 6, 1945 the Second World War ended, for all intents and purposes, when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb – known as Little Boy – on Hiroshima, killing more than 140,000 people.
Ouchi, who currently chairs the department of design at Alberta College of Art and Design, travelled to Japan in the spring of 2002. Among the cities he visited was Hiroshima, where he talked to survivors of the bombing.
The works created by Ouchi following his trip are what one might expect – dark and immersed in fear and foreboding. One powerful yet simple piece, Black Rain, refers to the contaminated rain that fell on the city after the bomb was dropped. With thick blocks of black paint on the canvas and a border made of gleaming metal, it demands that viewers pay careful attention to the lessons imparted by past wars.
McMillan also draws our attention to nuclear devastation, although in this case the artist is dealing with the fallout from a disaster at the Chernobyl power plant.
In 1986, inside the former U.S.S.R. (now Ukraine), one of the four nuclear reactors at Chernobyl experienced a colossal failure. The resulting chain reaction and explosions ripped the plant apart and immediately killed 30 people and contaminated an area that covers a 30-kilometre radius – an area referred to euphemistically as "the Zone."
"In 1994, I read an article in Harper's magazine about the Chernobyl exclusion zone and how it once had 135,000 people and was now virtually empty," says McMillan. "The article described all the fallow fields and the large city of Pripyat that would never be lived in again. I decided it would be an interesting place to photograph if I could get permission."
Permission was granted –to date McMillan has traveled to the area eight times. His collection of colour photographs documenting abandoned schools and empty parks speaks to his intimate knowledge of this lonely place, which is forever connected to a manmade catastrophe.
"I never expected to go so many times, but kept finding new things to photograph," he says. "Now, it has become so overgrown, especially in the city of Pripyat, that in my mind it's becoming a kind of Garden of Eden – a place where nature is left alone and seemingly flourishing. I suppose I'll keep returning until I find I'm no longer able to get interesting photographs."
The exhibition also includes paintings by MacDonnell and MacKenzie. MacDonnell’s large canvases document sites often forgotten by time and ignored by history books, while MacKenzie’s works are part of a larger collection named Tracking Athabasca. This references documents dating back to the 1700s and the beginning of the Northwest fur trade in and around Lake Athabasca. |
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