Business As Usual
Lynn Richardson

My newest images are built through an exploration of contemporary imagery and architectural representation. In my earlier work the expression of subject matter is strait-forward and bold. My recent work is elliptical and the expression of the subject is quieter. I am aware that the conflict between industrial and natural environment needs to enter the process forming my aesthetic. One could think about the heroine of Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Red Desert or the famous collection of Donald Judd’s work in Marfa Texas. I feel the urgency to respond to these conflicts from the position of an artist that belongs to a different generation. In this work the critical use of images of consumer icons, logos, and strip-mall architecture has been replaced by the forms resembling architectural American minimalism: reduction and repetition replace uniqueness and diversity.

My solo exhibition titled Inter-Glacial Free Trade Agency examined the relationship between governments and corporations through the guise of a trade show. Here I focused specifically on the end products being marketed to the public; fashionable survival gear in the event we are thrust back into an ice age resulting from global warming. All items were branded with the same logo informing the viewer that in the ‘new world’ there is only one choice. Rather then focusing my attention on the final products marketed and distributed through a governmental and corporate relationship I would like to further investigate the presence of this relationship and its physical effects left on our landscape.

Recently I have been intrigued with the Harper governments desire to enforce Canada’s sovereignty over the Arctic. While glaciers are melting faster then predicted new resources and minerals are becoming readily accessible. I question whether or not this military presence is indeed a territorial act or is it to protect US interests in oil, minerals and the fishing industry under the contractual agreement of NAFTA. Canada acknowledged an alliance with the United States when stating that it does not intend to meet the targets laid out by the Kyoto Agreement, to cut greenhouse gases, the suspected driving force contributing to global warming and perhaps this economically beneficial “deep thaw”.

Exhibition Date: February 28 to April 5, 2008

gallery    Jude Norris   Jennifer Pickering