UNMADE
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Deadline June 1st, 11:00 pm, 2019
https://www.propellerartgallery.ca/unmade-curated-show.html
As a white female settler of Welsh, Scottish, and Dutch German descent, I would like to begin by acknowledging I live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Wendat, the Anishnaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Métis, and the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation. Currently on a self-reflexive journey of what it means to consume, make and curate on Turtle Island. In this moment of deep ecological concern and human crisis, this call emerges from a desire to become more in relation with artists and practices that move outside of colonial capitalist systems that encourage the mass production, and therefore mass destruction, of environments that sustain us.
Amanda Boetzkes, within her book The Ethics of Earth Art, explains how ecology is “predicated on the principle that every creature is connected to every element that composes the environment, so that all living things depend on the balance of a complex system of growth and decay.” Outlining how relation with the earth and withdrawal from the elemental become ethical acts during the construction and performance of early and contemporary earth art and land art, what Boetzke doesn’t deliberate on is how all art and design, by virtue of their material nature and processes, are earth or land art, as it is from our landscapes we acquire materials and it is to our landscapes most often our works return.
UNMADE invites artists to examine “unmaking as a creative act” for an exhibition @ Propeller Art Gallery, June 26 — July 14, 2019. A nudge for artists to think about materiality in a deep ecological way where land becomes objects, objects become land and land becomes human. Participants are encouraged to push past the nostalgia of existing objects; work to the small, and embrace deconstructive methods to arrive at contractions, remnants, fragments, orations, actions or instructions that dismantle our notions of art, labour and Western ideals of representation and possession to make room for new understandings of material and what has value.
Jill Price, Curator
OCT ’07 MFA’ 17
