Ecotopia

2012–2014

Artists

BGL (Quebec City), David Brooks (London), Dagmara Genda (Saskatoon), Rodney Graham (Vancouver), Isabelle Hayer (Montreal), Tristram Lansdowne (Montreal), Maud Leonard-Contant (Montreal), Lynne Marsh (Berlin), Lisa Sanditz (New York), Jennifer Steinkamp (Los Angeles), T&T (Vancouver), Kate Wilson (Toronto)

This exhibition explored environmental conservation, destruction and the cacophonous blend of architecture and decay in our technological age. Ecotopian fiction is a subgenre of the utopian or dystopian, where a vision for a world is either ideal or a nightmare. An element of the science fiction or futurism can be found in some of the work represented in this exhibition, where artists are offering an alternative for postmodern living, where nature and technology can live more harmoniously, without wreaking great havoc on our environment. We live in abstract spaces and manufactured environments, where nature has become fabricated.

These artists point out the absurdities, excesses and the challenges to these situations, and the amnesiac response of our population to these new falsehoods. Through their work they suggest that whilst this world we live in may be topsy-turvy,the new and decaying structures that we have created possess a beauty of decay where objects, monuments, and sites that have been overtaken by weeds, graffiti, wildlife are in fact a new archaeology for a new generation.

Venues

Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery

Kitchener, ON, Canada

September 28, 2012–January 3, 2013

Southern Alberta Art Gallery

Lethbridge, AB, Canada

February 9–April 14, 2013

Nickle Galleries

University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

May 17–July 20, 2013

Kenderdine Art Gallery

University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada

January 24–May 7, 2014