A similar sociological imperative is found in the sculptural works by Lea Bucknell and Andrew Wright,
where the relationship between sight and cultural memory is foregrounded. While Bucknell’s sculptural
aluminum foil impressions from the facades of Dawson architecture remind us of the surveying power
of the lens in urban planning, they also speak to the interconnectedness of structure and sight, the
aesthetic forces that help us to envision and dream our constructed environment into being. Wright’s
Disused Portrait Camera Considers Wedgwood Vase, a silver plated Polaroid Studio Express camera
and ceramic vase, also evokes the “imprint” of camera technology. Here, the photo-sensitive qualities
of silver compounds literally overtake the objects; the chemical process of photo-representation at
once negates “the real” and reconstitutes it. Like the commemorative bronzing of baby shoes, this
work alludes to the somewhat baroque nature of memorialization itself, the strange values we put on
our photographs and aides-memoires. For both artists, the veneers of our world are intertwined with
our notions of sight and memory.
Dianne Bos, Ernie Kroger and Donald Lawrence find inspiration in the Janus-faced twin to rationality,
scientific positivism and Enlightenment philosophy: the irrational, mystical and fantastical strains
of modernism. Bos’ pinhole photographs of the abandoned Bear Creek gold mine, reveal ghostly
interiors frozen in time, an alternative universe of light and shadows that evokes a kind of magic
realism, something uncanny, super real. Her images at once capture and enact the psychological
subjectivity a viewer projects into images. Kroeger’s images and objects allude to Giambattista della
Porta – the polymath Renaissance philosopher, mathematician, occultist and astrologer – and his
science book Magia Naturalis (1558). The artist’s work reminds us of the alchemical, pseudo-scientific
roots of our scientific pursuits, reimagining ideas of progress where alternative technologies, and
ways of seeing, have been removed from the strictures of logic and reason. Lawrence’s drawings,
maquettes and objects similarly revel in the tinkering, inventive and profusely detailed imaginings that
developed from our regimes of observation and sight. His camera obscura designs and inventions
at once embrace a guided idea of purpose – to embody a different way of viewing our natural and
manufactured environments – while seeking to displace our received ideas of what these definitions
entail. His work transports our systems of vision into something narrative, fantastical and perceptually
discombobulating.
Dawson City, Yukon, Canada