Hours are Wednesday - Saturday, 3pm - 5pm until November 2nd
Opening reception Saturday Sept 14, 2-5pm
Can you (we) save the world by looking?
The idea of wilderness - land uncultivated and uninhabited by human beings - raises questions about how much truly natural land is left in a world that values the production of goods over people and the land. Through collage and digital montage of our photographs of agriculture, land-management, resource extraction sites, utilities infrastructure, the aftermath of forest fires, icebergs, development sites, refuse, development, and destruction, we open up our individual practices to collective thought and authorship through creative play and collaboration used to create this new body of work.
The language of hope and despair is woven into this work through screen printed text and images. The camera is a tool of agency and the collaborative process a de-centering of individual artist authorship to prioritize our explorations and the invitation for slow looking.
Here, in Wyndham’s 3rd Floor Gallery, “The Landscape is Dead” reflects the intersection of the landscape and the built environment for contemplation, to illuminate the complex and troubling questions about human impacts on the natural world.
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Anna Gaby-Trotz (she/her) is a printmaker and photographer, who examines our present-day relationship to water and land. Anna received funding to travel through The North West Passage to document climate change. She was selected as an artist in residence on the Canada C3 Expedition with Student’s on Ice. Her recent work Baseline was exhibited at Open Studio in Toronto. Whether working from the side of a river-bank, or in a college or university, Anna believes in the transformative power of art. After completing her MFA in Printmaking from The University of Alberta, Anna worked in Edmonton at Boyle Street Community Services, building an inner city arts program. She has worked on projects such as Be Our Ally with Sheatre, working with rural youth on issues of homophobia. Most recently Anna created The Queer Print Club at The University of Guelph, teaching students to screenprint. As a queer artist, Anna believes in the importance of creating safe spaces for creative practice. From 2015-2021, Anna worked at Open Studio as Technical Director, where she developed a North/South Printmaking Residency with The West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative (WBEC) and Dorset Fine Arts, working with artists Tim Pitsiulak and Quviantuk Pudlat. She has recently printed collaborative print projects with Namara Projects and WBEC, working with artists Ningiukulu Teevee, Quvianaqtuk Pudlat, and Saimaiyu Akesuk. She is currently an Assistant Professor at The University of Guelph. |
| Richelle (she/her) is a process-based artist and photographer. Her practice is rooted in storytelling, fascination with the built environment, seeking beauty, and aleatory outputs. Her work employs digital strategies and analogue processes that investigate the possibilities of what photography can be, and drone photography to examine human activity on the landscape.
Through her work she explores themes of grief, resilience, power, exploration, and slow-looking to create and develop outputs that bring people together, prompt contemplation, and share stories. Forsey often works collaboratively from a multidisciplinary and experimental approach. Her ongoing film-based project Urban Remains, showcasing abandoned spaces of our cultural past was installed in Gallery Stratford’s, Art in the Trees. She was the artist and designer for Dawn Matheson’s participatory sound walks project HowToDrawATree.ca exploring mental health and pathways to wellness within the forests of The Arboretum, Guelph ON. Forsey’s drone studies and writing about Guelph’s man-made lake were included in Another Earth’s 2023 photographic survey What Makes a Lake? Tracing Movement. Her work has been shown in Canada, the U.S. and abroad, as well as collaboratively in the Contact Photography Festival, and Nuit Blanche (Toronto). She is a member of the urbex photography collective TLR Club and the Photography Technician for the College of Arts at the University of Guelph. |
They work together and independently through interventions in their interpretations of the landscape exploring the balance between hope and despair/art and climate change with the goal to invoke consideration for the post-modern landscape.
After this exhibition, these works will be incorporated into our collaborative Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener + Area (CAFKA) Biennale 2025 project.
Contact Anna & Richelle at thelandscapeisdead@gmail.com
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