Lakeshore: Renseigements Généraux
Work ID: 52750
Description: Lakeshore consists of an ongoing series of one hundred 50 x 75-cm colour photographs with short texts or images painted on them in oils. The photographs serve as supports for the painting, and depict landscape, architecture and a variety of other subjects. The texts are predominantly in either English or French (as well as in German and Latin), and all the photographs are taken in Canada, France, Germany or Kenya. The painted texts recall the traditional role that captions play in the interpretation of photographs, used traditionally to direct the viewer to a specific message conveyed by the photograph. In this work, we are attempting to upend, extend and imbricate some of the conventions in painting, photography and language.
For us, lakeshore refers to Ontario's myriad lakes in Ontario, and most immediately to Lake Ontario, the lake we both grew up beside. These lakes have served as motifs for important streams in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Canadian art; and, this is a backdrop to our work. Lakeshore also signifies an intermediary state, a space between two bodies, a space that has three possible reference points: a vanishing vista, a point of possible departure, a destination at the end of a voyage.
We have used the idea of lakeshore in a figurative and personal manner. Although some of the photographs do depict lakeshores, most have to do with our routine comings and goings, artistic and quotidian. The photographs are set in both rural and urban locations. We pointedly have not represented any lakes: this reinforces our metaphorical focus (and eases our task, as France has very few lakes). Our painted text passages are idiomatic and common expressions, maxims, and phrases from popular culture. The painted words do not serve as captions for the images, but rather further our exploration of the metaphorical idea of a lakeshore. The images painted on the photographs are of glasses, pails and basins of water, and offer the only explicit bodies of water in the artworks. The addition of the painted elements to the photographs creates a flicker effect between literal and figurative meaning, a semantic instability and indeterminacy.
By blue Ontario's shore,
As I mused of these warlike days and of peace return'd,
and the dead that return no more,
I listened to the Phantom by Ontario's shore,
I heard the voice arising demanding bards.
Underneath the lessons of things, spirits, Nature, governments, ownership,
I swear I perceive other lessons.
Walt Whitman, By Blue Ontario's Shore, 1856
Lakeshore has a second component: one hundred one- or two-paragraph texts on the theme of lakeshore that accompany an exhibition of the actual photographs in the form of a PowerPoint Show set on a continuous loop to be exhibited on a computer screen.
Lakeshore's exhibition schedule is as follows: L'Hôtel Galerie d'Art, Caen, France, March 2003; Truck, Calgary, November 2004; Platform, Winnipeg, January 2005; Robert Birch Gallery, Toronto, May 2005. This project is ongoing.
Measurements: 50.8 x 76.2 cm
Collection:
Date Made: 2002-04
Materials: oil paint on C-prints
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
