“Life is more interesting when we experience conflict,” says Scott Rogers, group member of the Arbour Lake Sghool, a collective of artists operating out of a residence in the Calgary community of Arbour Lake. The collective is not afraid to break a few esthetic barriers to do just that.
They’ve received mixed press of late, mostly revolving around the annoyances their projects have caused their neighbours. Among the offending projects have been a cardboard mountain, a Second World War re-enactment and Harvest (2007). Harvest, the subject of the group’s most recent show, Grow Op, was the seeding and harvesting of a barley crop on their property.
Harvest started out as a statement about the replacement of agricultural land by suburban housing projects with their close-cropped lawns. When the esthetics of the community were called into question by the incongruous barley crop, the project rapidly morphed into something far different. Despite the group’s consistent attempts to engage, explain and educate their community about the purpose of their swaying barley crop, their agricultural activities were reported to bylaw authorities. The group narrowly escaped the city’s “harvest” deadline in the completion of the project. Rogers says all it takes is one dissatisfied resident in the community for bylaw enforcement to take up the case. Thus, what was exposed by the experiment was less the evolution of land use, than the ways that esthetic conformity is enforced within suburban communities.
These are the things you should be aware of when viewing the show. Grow Op presents an interpretation not only of the project and its evolution, but also the group and the way it functions creatively. The show is in the basement of the Art Gallery of Calgary, a good location for a rudimentary hydroponics barley grow-op. This is an appropriate comment on the part of the artists, as it seems the only way to grow a legal crop of barley in the suburbs is to take on the methods of illegal crop cultivation. Out of sight, out of mind.
Presented with the installation is a video documenting the harvest of the crop using vintage farm equipment and techniques. The activity is communal, good-natured and done not under the cover of darkness but in the middle of a sunny, summer afternoon. There is a great contrast between the hydroponics setup and the pastoral quality of the video documentation.
In the second room occupied by the show, the viewer is presented with a labyrinth of piled furniture and ephemera. The space is indicative of the average (legal) basement in the suburbs, a holding area for misfit items. At the back of the space, video documentation shows the breaking of the land, sowing and growing of the barley crop. As two alternative uses for the same space, the rooms dialogue with each other and create a connection with the accepted uses of land and space in the suburbs. However, this was not enough for the group.
As the viewer moves through the labyrinth it becomes apparent that small private spaces have been made in the chaos. Although they exist within chaos, this enables these places of thought and daydream to take root and inspire creativity. It becomes an analogy for the way the Arbour Lake Sghool works. Although this is intriguing on its own, it becomes a manifestation of the group’s defence of its way of occupying its space, in relation to the other residents of the community.
The gallery setting does the work of validating the group’s process without the need to include justifications, so the inclusion of hidden spaces is unnecessary to the main goal of Grow Op in presenting the project and its evolution. It’s a challenging and humorous look at the evolution of land use and dynamics of control over the esthetics of privately owned but publicly viewed property.
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