In Nova Scotia and elsewhere people are grappling with the issue of what to do with monuments associated with a painful past, and are asking whether the action of tearing down statues like that of Edward Cornwallis in Halifax helps to redress a history of violence, or whether the removal simply hides or disguises what has happened. In thinking through the dilemma posed by this question, we are forced to consider when it is appropriate to remove a monument, what should happen to it when it is taken down, and what to do with the space left behind. I suggest that the artist and the counter-monument movement have a role in reconciling these issues.

Traditionally, monuments have been erected to glorify an event, person, or ideology. However, the intended meaning of a monument is never fixed but changes depending on the socio-political climate and our understanding of history. When we come to recognize the atrocity or violence of the past, the meaning of the monument changes. It is now a signifier of a painful past and its presence symbolizes pain.

Destroying or removing a monument is an act of distinguishing our contemporary values from offensive actions of the past. Removing a monument like the statue of Cornwallis and leaving the empty pedestal in place indicates an absence: one that is a symbol of decolonization and reconciliation. The empty pedestal represents the stories that have been omitted from the dominant discourse. The action of putting something in the statue’s place could continue to silence these missing stories. But is leaving the empty pedestal enough?

It is impossible to discuss memory and commemoration without looking at the work of James E. Young on Holocaust memorials and the idea of the monument and its role in public memory. He introduced the German concept of Gegendenkmal, which translates to “counter-monument.”

The counter-monument movement emerged in Germany following World War II, as the country was grappling with how to commemorate the atrocities of the Holocaust and its devastating loss. People began to reject traditional monuments and their implied values. They argued that public memorial art and monuments were being built as substitutes for remembering the events, and that the lack of engagement with the monument once built, was in actuality, a way to forget.

Counter-monuments are difficult to define, but, in general, they disrupt dominant narratives through action, performance, or installation in a way that critically draws on the principles of the traditional monument form and its language and values. Despite their connection to traditional monuments, counter-monuments do not always have monumental qualities, according to Young. Rather, he defines them as “brazen, painfully self-conscious memorial spaces conceived to challenge the very premises of their being.”^[1]

Academics, architects, and artists have been deeply engaged with questions regarding how to commemorate the absence of a people as happened in the Holocaust, and also, how such ideas about commemoration can be applied to other complex memorial spaces around the world. Contemporary approaches explore themes of inversion and absence. Prominent forms of these themes might include a focus on site-specificity, abstraction, transparency, reflectivity – often through the use of polished surfaces, the removal of pedestals to bring monuments closer to the ground or even into the ground, and the use of plaques. These contemporary memorial spaces and counter-monuments serve to engage and bring the viewer into the space where they have to make an effort to interpret the multiple meanings of the memorial.^[2]

A significant example of a counter-monument is Horst Hoheisel’s “Aschrott Fountain” in Kassel, Germany. In 1939, at the outbreak of WWII, a fountain designed for the city by architect Karl Roth in 1908 and funded by Jewish entrepreneur Sigmund Aschrott was demolished by local Nazis. In the years following, over 3000 Jews were deported from Kassel and killed. After the war, the fountain was temporarily filled with dirt and flowers planted. Locals called it “Aschrott’s Grave.” In 1984, the city of Kassel invited artists to restore the Aschrott Brunnen Fountain. Hoheisel disagreed with the city’s decision to restore the fountain. In his proposal, he stated that by reconstructing the Aschrott fountain, people in the city would forget why it had been destroyed in the first place, thereby erasing the awful violence. Already, people in Kassel assumed it had been destroyed by British air raids during the war. Instead of rebuilding the fountain, Hoheisel proposed a negative-form monument by inverting a hollow concrete structure of the original fountain’s form into the ground. Viewers engage with the monument by standing on the glass covering the void, looking down through their own reflection into the fountain’s internal structure as ground water runs through it. Young discusses the Aschrott Fountain in Memory and Counter-Memory, asking, “How does one commemorate an absence?” He answers his own question, “In this case, by reproducing it… Hoheisel has left nothing but the visitors themselves standing in remembrance, left to look inward for memory.”^[3]

The intention of the “Aschrott Fountain” is for viewers to engage with the memorial space and to encounter feelings of loss and displacement: to be reminded of the original destruction and devastating void of the Holocaust. This work provides great insight into how contemporary memorial spaces and counter-monuments can help communities decide when it is appropriate to remove a monument or, instead, when to invite artists to find alternative ways to engage viewers with memorial spaces, acknowledge outdated values, and disrupt the invisibility of omitted narratives from dominant discourses of the past.

In 2017, Grade 6-8 students at The Booker School in Port Williams, Nova Scotia, participated in an inquiry-based project surrounding the controversy of the Cornwallis statue. Their teacher, Ms Temma Frecker, was awarded the 2018 Governor General’s Award for Teaching Excellence in History for developing the interdisciplinary project.

The students are regularly encouraged to look at reconciliation issues in Canada. For this project, they learned about the complicated legacy of Edward Cornwallis. They recognized his contributions to history, while also acknowledging that Mi’kmaq peoples have been here for 14,000 years and have suffered directly from his scalping proclamation. A large portion of their work focused on understanding the relationships between Nova Scotia’s British and French settlers and the Mi’kmaq peoples.

Through a holistic approach, the students examined the socio-historical context of the statue by looking at multiple perspectives. This process led them to better understand the reasons why many contemporary groups wanted the statue removed. Though they agreed with this action, the students came up with their own proposal titled, “The Conversation.” The students proposed to remove the statue of Cornwallis from the pedestal and place it on the ground, standing among three additional statues who represent African Nova Scotians, Acadian, and Mi’kmaq histories.

The statues would be accompanied by plaques noting both positive and negative aspects of our history. They chose Grand Chief John Denny Jr. (1841-1918), Viola Desmond (1914-1965), and Noel and Marie Doiron with a child (1684-1758) to join Cornwallis – all facing one another in conversation. The students recognized that each of these figures have something to teach us about Nova Scotian values and important ideas. The interactive space and informational plaques would enable people to learn from and critically question the past and engage with the memorial space.

Projects like this provide an opportunity for real change through discussion and listening to multiple perspectives. In Counter-Memorial Aesthetics, Veronica Tello confirms that “[d]ifferential knowledge is what allows history and counter-memory to perform its critical work: to critique the notion of the singular monument born of a single origin.”^[4] Through critique, the Booker School students came to understand how, together, triumphs, failings, loss, and hardship shape our current realities. Their project and final proposal show how we can approach reconciliation (or reconcili-action) and decolonization through education by looking to counter-monuments as a way to commemorate and include diverse narratives of the past.

Given the removal of the Cornwallis statue and other monuments to Canada’s colonial heritage, we cannot ignore the interesting parallels between the decolonization of Canada and the decommunization of post-Soviet countries in Europe. The removal of monuments and iconography is a central pillar of change in both.

Post-Soviet countries have destroyed or removed statues of Stalin and Lenin and other Soviet iconography from public spaces. Streets, parks, and cultural buildings named after Lenin have been renamed. Thousands of empty pedestals where Lenin once stood are left in place, many with his name still etched in the stone. These monuments represent dependence on and oppression by the former Soviet Union, and their removal is an active symbol of independence through decommunization.

Similarly, the removal of the Cornwallis statue can be seen as a step towards healing, reconciliation, and most of all, action. The physical act of removing this figure shows that the municipality of Halifax recognizes and acknowledges its painful past. It is an action that included Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices together in the process of advancing Canadian reconciliation through decolonization. Across Canada, Indigenous names of place are being recognized and reclaimed. In both cases, though, in post-Soviet decommunization and Canadian decolonization, we must ensure that we are not left with only empty pedestals and debate and no action.

I believe that the counter-monument movement in Europe and the decommunization of post-Soviet countries can be analyzed and applied to our Canadian context. This approach can help us begin to reconcile monuments with a painful past and decide when it is appropriate to remove a statue or monument and what happens when it is taken down.

Rather than erasing Canada’s violent history, I propose that we place it within its historical context through counter-monuments and education. When decisions are made to build or remove monuments and memorial spaces, we need to critically examine their socio-historical context, the current context, what these actions symbolize, and what they may symbolize for future generations (given the ever-changing nature of monuments). When looking at whose history is being commemorated, we also need to recognize the voices of those whose history has been or is being omitted because of our actions.

Counter-monuments and their function as memorials are a site of constant struggle as their meaning and their socio-historic and aesthetic contexts are ever changing. This struggle to memorialize is often embodied in the temporal and ephemeral qualities of counter-monuments, their very temporality reflecting the fleeting nature of memory and the need for it to be continuously revisited.

As suggested by Sue-Anne Ware in Anti-Memorials and the Art of Forgetting, “In this way the design outcomes become physical catalysts for social change.”^[5] For this reason, I see real purpose in not only creating counter-monuments, but also building the components for recognition and reflection into our education system to be revisited over and over again.

Finally, it is important to remember that it is difficult to create a counter-monument without the context of the original. As is the case with the Cornwallis statue, once a monument is removed, the empty pedestal may become a vessel by which we can acknowledge the atrocities of our history.

However, this space must be available for artists and the community to explore. These colonial spaces provide opportunities for dialogue about our national history and how we can take action and move forward as a culture.

^[1] James E. Young, At Memory’s Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture. (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2000), 11.

^[2] Quentin Stevens and Karen A. Franck. Memorials As Spaces of Engagement: Design, Use and Meaning. (New York, London: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, 2016), 43.

^[3] Young, “Memory and Counter-Memory,” Harvard Design Magazine, Vol. 9, Constructions of Memory: on Monuments Old and New (February 1999, n.p.). (no page number).http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/9/memory-and-counter-memory (accessed 21 Feb. 2019).

^[4] Veronica Tello. Counter-Memorial Aesthetics: Refugee Histories and the Politics of Contemporary Art. (London, Oxford, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 15.

^[5] Sue-Anne Ware. Anti-Memorials and the Art of Forgetting: Critical Reflections on a Memorial Design Practice. Public History Review, No 1. (UTS ePress and the author, 2008), 75.

Teresa Hubbard/Alexander Birchler

Flora 2017, installation, detail. Courtesy: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York and Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin

Flora 2017, installation, detail. Courtesy: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York and Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin

Flora 2017, Installation view. Courtesy: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York and Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin. Photo Credit: Ugo Carmeni

Swiss-American artist couple Teresa Hubbard (MFA ’92) and Alexander Birchler (MFA ’92), in conjunction with Carol Bove, represent Switzerland this year in the Giardini, taking aim at the legacy of Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti. Their exhibition, Women of Venice, takes its name from a sculptural group called Femmes de Venise by Giacometti. Considering himself a transnational or international artist not to be limited to one nation, Giacometti refused to represent his native Switzerland during his lifetime and instead included Femmes de Venise as his contribution to the 1956 Biennale at the French Pavilion, his adopted country (Giacometti would later show his work in the International Pavilion at the 1962 Biennale).

The work at this year’s pavilion operates with a complete absence of Giacometti’s work.  Hubbard and Birchler’s main piece, a video installation called Flora, weaves together fictional and documentary material projected onto a double sided screen, showing two separate videos with a singular sound track and narration.  This work explores the love affair between American artist Flora Mayo and Giacometti in Paris in the 1920s.  Hubbard and Birchler reimagine Mayo’s life and move Mayo from the periphery of the history of Giacometti’s life to centre, reflecting on the capabilities of joint artistic practice—of which Hubbard and Birchler engage in themselves.  Mayo’s centrality to this work functions to destabilize the position of Giacometti as a canonical artist, presenting his life and work as one occurring within a vibrant constellation of relationships with others, all the while exploring the neglected work of Mayo herself.  The feminist implications of this work of art historical recovery should not be overlooked—This piece moves to recontextualize Mayo’s life and work away from Giacometti’s history into a position that is totally her own.

Lani Maestro

A post shared by Philippine Art Venice Biennale (@philartvenice) on Jul 25, 2017 at 4:04pm PDT

This year’s Philippine Pavilion in the Arsenale, includes work by Filipino-Canadian artist and former NSCAD professor Lani Maestro (MFA ’88).  The Spectre of Comparison, curated by Joselina Cruz, features Maestro, along with painter Manuel Ocampo, and draws from the novel Noli Me Tángere by Jose Rizal.  The Spectre of Comparison (“el demonio de las comparaciones” in the original Spanish) captures the experience of Rizal’s protagonist who has visions of Europe while gazing at the botanical gardens of Manila. This experience of being unable to gaze at the Philippines without seeing Europe, and vice versa, is taken as a starting point for an exploration of fragmented identities in the face of the nationalisms created by making comparisons.  Nationalisms of which are frequently still reckoning with their imperial or colonial pasts.

Maestro has three works included: No Pain Like this Body (2010/2017), these hands (2013/2017) and meronmeron (2017).  No Pain Like this Body is a text-based installation in ruby-red neon, these hands features glowing text in blue neon and meronmeron—which she created for the pavilion—is an installation of a series of benches, inviting the visitor to take part in a moment of reflection.  The neon works recall seedy downtowns and urban alienation. The human element represented by the works’ text in the synthetic and almost alien medium of neon lighting keeps the viewer at a distance, yet invites contemplation on the human lives kept from flourishing by circumstance and the broader movements of history.

Lou Sheppard

Bruce Barber

Detail of exhibition catalogue cover for “In This Place: Black Art in Nova Scotia”

The exhibition We are the Griots—curated by Jade Peek—may have opened to the biggest snowstorm all season this past February at the Anna Leonowens Gallery, but it still saw a lot of press coverage. Jade was on the cover of The Coast weekly paper. The article billed We are the Griots as the first exhibition of “solely Black Nova Scotian artists in Halifax since the 1990s.” I was stunned — Had there really not been another exhibition dedicated to Black Nova Scotian art since the 90’s?

So I went digging, looking up the late 90’s in the Visual Arts Nova Scotia archives, and low and behold, it was on the cover of the Spring 1998 issue, Volume 20 Number 1: In this Place: Black Art in Nova Scotia. The cover image is bold, graphic and visually striking. It features a painting of three figures in simple, but expressive white lines on a black thickly textured background. Inside, there’s an article by curator/artist Pamela Edmonds, stressing the historical importance of the exhibition. “In this Place: Black Art in Nova Scotia represents the first-ever attempt to represent and contextualize the tradition of Black Nova Scotian art making in the province,” she writes. In my research since, I have learned that David Woods—who co-curated the show with Harold Pearse—represents just one individual out of just a handful of Black curators who have been working in Halifax to this day, continuing the push for the self representation of Black Nova Scotians in visual art.

“A great void existed for me as an artist in Nova Scotia … of knowing that most people assume that no art of significance had been created by the Black community.” —David Woods

Volume 20 / Issue 1 / Spring 1998 / “In this Place” cover

Edmonds describes the exhibition as a “groundbreaking effort to provide a comprehensive overview of a sector of the art making community rarely shown or acknowledged.” She points to a history of exclusion and segregation in Nova Scotia. In the article she interviews the co-curators David Woods, a local artist and community organizer, and Dr. Harold Pearse, the academic dean at NSCAD, about their inspiration for the exhibit, their relationship and the project. As Woods explains, the title of the exhibition originates from his poem Abode, which references the experience of the early Black settlers and the land the government allotted them in Nova Scotia—described as
“barren, rocky soil or swampland.” For Pearse, MSVU Art Gallery’s 1983 show The Past in focus: a community album before 1918 : photographs from the Notman Studio served as his inspiration for the exhibition, as well as providing him with his first exposure to the depth of art created by Nova Scotia’s Black communities.

Pearse explains that even though many Black kids from the community spaces are very interested in visual art, their enrollment at NSCAD has always been very low. In the article, Pearse points to Woods, a self taught multi-disciplinary artist and an active community member, as the perfect link to try to bridge the two worlds of the Black art communities and the institutionalized White art world.

Installation view from the catalogue of “In This Place: Black Art in Nova Scotia” 

Pearse and Woods discuss how surprised they all were by the amount of Black Nova Scotian artists that they uncovered in their interview with Edmonds. When they began planning their exhibition, they were thinking about featuring only a few artists—but that all changed by the end of Wood’s research, which  consisted of his unorthodox, but essential curatorial method of driving to several rural Black communities around Nova Scotia and literally knocking on doors and asking questions. Woods brought back over 200 images of work, which they narrowed down to 100 pieces to show by 45 artists. As the exhibition grew, the curatorial team realized it deserved more than just a two-week show at the gallery. They decided to take the exhibition beyond Halifax, touring to three other galleries in the province.

In Halifax they planned several special events, connecting Black artists to the larger art community. These events included a panel discussion and performance event with guests including: Jim Shirley, one of the first Black artists to exhibit in Nova Scotia; Audrey Dear Hesson, the first Black graduate of NSCAD in 1951; local photographer and filmmaker Silvia Hamilton; and painter Crystal Clements. They also screened a film about celebrated African American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, gave youth workshops and tours of NSCAD, and provided a funding information session with the Canada Council and the Nova Scotia Arts Council (all made possible by $40 000 of grants obtained from the Nova Scotia Arts Council, Department of Canadian Heritage and the Canada Council for the Arts by Black Artist Network Nova Scotia (BANNS) and Peter Dykhuis, who was the director of the Anna Leonowens Gallery at the time). After the tour concluded, they were able to produce a full size catalogue from the NSCAD Press.

Installation view from the catalogue of “In This Place: Black Art In Nova Scotia”

Pearse’s curatorial statement in the catalogue includes well-researched tidbits of information about the experience of Black artists in Halifax, such as the fact that Hesson received the Lieutenant-Governor’s prize and “taught for the school’s Saturday morning children’s art classes, at the YMCA’s boys club and to an adult education group in Africville.” But he points out that due to a shortage of employment opportunities, Hessen could never obtain steady employment in the public school system. Pearse continues with a sparse, but steady history of Black exhibitions and artists in Halifax in the 80’s and 90’s, a time when NSCAD grads and Black artists like Donna James were showing black and white photographs (Eight Men in a Big House, 1989), Buseje Baily was making videos about the female black body (Body Politic, 1992) and Derril Robinson showed his pottery in a joint exhibition with Andrea Arbour (Facades, 1995).

Woods’ statement provides a much more sobering reflection on the presence of Black artists in Nova Scotia. He notes that “a great void existed for me as an artist in Nova Scotia …the void of knowing that there were no exhibitions of local Black artists featured in the provinces’ major galleries; of knowing that Black artists were unfamiliar with each other’s work; of knowing that most people assume that no art of significance had been created by the Black community.” He wanted to challenge himself to try and fill that void with an exhibition that could change the status quo.

 Beverly Bowden’s “Picking Strawberries” (1997), oil on canvas

When I spoke with Woods, I asked him what he thought, almost twenty years later, about the impact that In this Place had made. He talked a lot about an increase of visibility. “All of the establishment galleries offered shows to the NSCAD people for the next four or five years,” he pointed out. Woods himself has continued curating and one of his longest touring exhibitions has been The Secret Codes, which started touring 2012, where he featured narrative and pictorial quilts exhibited quilts made by African Nova Scotian quilt makers. These quilts are the result of a collaboration of Woods’ drawings and the talent of quilt makers like Myla Borden of the Vale Quilters, a group from New Glasgow, who have been working together since In this Place showed the pictorial quilt Passages. As well,  he recalled MSVU Art Gallery invited Shirley back to the Mount to have a retrospective called Jim Shirley Returns: The Art of James R. Shirley (2000). Woods himself also worked as an Associate Curator at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia from 2006-2007, where he helped to develop the AGNS’ African Canadian Art Initiative. During his short time there he helped to bring Mary Bendolph: Gees Bend Quilts and Beyond to the gallery in 2007 and worked on acquiring work by early Black Atlantic painter Edward Mitchel Banister. He confidently states after all of this work things can “no longer go back to the status quo.”

I’d like to believe that the status quo has changed in the 19 years since In this Place opened. Researching this historically seminal exhibition in Halifax’s art history has opened my eyes to the work and struggle of Black visual artists and curators in the very White dominated art world of Halifax. A staggering number of galleries in Canada still almost exclusively give solo shows to white artists (according to statistics from a 2015 Canadian Art study). We are the Griots represents one in just a small fraction of Black artists and curators living and working in our province. In this Place blew the door open in terms of self-representation for Black artists in Nova Scotia, but that door is still there and it’s primed to be blown away completely.

In the next two parts of this series, I will be looking closer at the history and context of Black exhibitions in Halifax previous to In this Place, and report the prolific work of the author of the VANS article that started me on this journey, writer, artists, art administrator and curator, Pamela Edmonds in the years following In this Place.

More: Looking Back: Our version of “women in the arts” in the 70s

More: Get to know our research intern

Graeme Patterson, “Player Piano Waltz,” 7ft H x 5ft W x 4ft L. Working player piano, wood, mixed materials, video/audio components.

Editor’s note: This article originally ran in the Summer 2014 Edition of Visual Arts News.  Graeme Patterson’s Secret Citadel is on view at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery February 14-April 12, 2015. 

Enter into the imaginary world of Graeme Patterson’s Secret Citadel where memory, invention, and fantasy collide to provoke a multifaceted narrative of childhood friendship, rights of passage and adult isolation. Conveying a much more personal psychology than the social resonance of his iconic Woodrow (2007)—a multimedia installation inspired by his family’s Saskatchewan homestead—Patterson’s Secret Citadel reveals the breadth of his creativity and the complexity of his imagination. It is an ambitious exhibition that integrates sculpture, animation, robotics, music and video projections with humour, insight and melancholy.

Patterson admits the subjective nature of this work as an incarnation of his memories and imaginings of a lost childhood friendship and male friendships in general; and he chooses two animal avatars, a sprightly blue bison as himself and an energetic orange cougar as his childhood friend Yuki to guide our way through his tale. The transmutable nature of these avatars invites the viewer to imagine or remember our own childhood adventures and turning points as we assume the role of one or the other of the characters.

Although natural enemies in the wild, this unlikely pair form the binding link between the four sculptures, which allude to four pivotal scenes in their relationship. The bison and cougar appear in various incarnations throughout, from lifeless costume hides suspended mid-air to bouncing animated video projections. These two characters begin as whimsical compatriots and end as somewhat maudlin loners; their transformation underscores the vagaries of a life and implies a rather pessimistic depiction of growing up and becoming an adult.

Patterson’s trademark model making skills are as fastidious in their detail as his earlier work, but there is a noticeable difference in their materiality and tone. Almost a boyish creativity is evident in paperclip hinges, toothpick furniture and blanket fort mountains, which evoke childhood and adolescent pastimes. Except for in his Player Piano Waltz (2013), which retains a detached coolness and finesse. Not surprisingly, Player Piano Waltz references the last scene, where the bison and cougar are solitary adults wandering aimlessly through the rooms of a fading gentleman’s club.

Once again as in Woodrow, the model is meticulously constructed and void of any three dimensional characters within the space itself. Instead the set integrates the narrative through looped animated projections viewed through the external windowed walls of the club. The viewer is held at bay, unless a coin is dropped into the pay box to initiate the musical score of the player piano, which serves as the base for the sculpture. Patterson also wrote the lilting music reminiscent of early Tom Waits.

In the three other sculptures, Patterson moves away from the self-contained voyeuristic miniature style of Woodrow towards a more openly inviting physicality of space. Grudge Match (2013) allows viewers to choose a team and sit on their side of wooden gymnasium bleachers to watch the animated high school wrestling match projected onto the wall. Patterson’s style of stop-motion animation integrates detailed homemade puppets and sets with sophisticated digital projections to create a quirky hybrid throw back to 1960s cartoons like Davey and Goliath or the Thunderbirds.

The gymnasium stage for the animated wrestling match sits under and behind the bleachers, and includes two drawer-like attachments of a locker room and washroom alongside a weight room and coach’s office. It almost feels like a giant Barbie palace for boys that could be folded up and set up in your bedroom. Despite the playful elements, competition is the focus of this high school match, where potential alpha status is declared and clique alignments develop. Grudge Match severs the common bond of imaginative play and adventure evident in The Mountain (2013) and Camp Wakonda (2013).

Camp Wakonda (2013) is a haunting installation featuring two charred bunk beds as the platform for a reconstructed summer camp and vehicular accident. It links the structured independence of camp with the freedom of a driver’s license as complex rites of passage. Each rite carries its own inherent danger, but is an essential step in personal character development. Manly adult skills such as archery and wood chopping are practiced and tested in projected animations onto the top bunks’ replicas of the open framed camp buildings—while the lower bunks’ projections find our protagonists locked in a battle within, as the civilized avatar fights off its wild counterpart. It is a layered and complicated narrative that culminates in the final collision between childhood and adolescence portrayed in the flaming accident between school bus and family sedan.

Graeme Patterson, “Camp Wakonda” 6ft H x 10ft W x 7ft L. Wood fabric, mixed material, video/audio components.

The story begins, however, with The Mountain (2012), a massive sculptural installation with a white blanket covered mountain cloaking the ideal artist’s studio within. Two suburban family homes straddle either side of mountain linked by telephone poles that stretch over the top of the mountain and a secret passage tunnel that runs underneath the dining room table base. One house has its furniture neatly stacked outside indicating either a move in or out of the neighbourhood, simultaneously bringing the friends together and tearing them apart. The mountain’s physical inference to a blanket fort with imagined secret passageways connects the imaginative play of childhood to the imaginative play of an artist. It’s possible to envision the young buffalo and cougar running over to share their latest comics and practice their super hero moves.

Patterson seamlessly relates these childhood pastimes to his secret artist’s studio deep within the mountain, which evidently refers to Superman’s “Secret Citadel”—the earliest comic book version of his “Fortress of Solitude”—where Superman would go to contemplate and rejuvenate after saving the world. Of all the sculptural works, The Mountain is the most joyful, perhaps because it reflects the artist’s studio practice. A practice that is connected to the creative abandon of childhood rather than the dismal boredom of a gentleman’s club.

Interspersed between these four works are wall projections that fill out the narrative of the bison and cougar. Patterson includes an array of technical styles. Some are live action models dressed in the bison or cougar costumes, and others involve his puppetry. All are relatively short loops that can be caught between viewing the sculptures to add another layer of insight and detail. But one must not miss the Secret Citadel (2013), a thirty-minute stop motion animation that tells the unabridged story of bison and cougar, and showcases Patterson’s considerable animation skills. It’s a visual and aural delight. Patterson is an artist with a substantial range of technical accomplishment, but he seems to hold animation with a particular affection.

After watching Secret Citadel, the rest of the exhibition shifted context. Initially, the sculptures stood independently as sculptures, yet afterwards they evolved into elaborate sets for the animation. Not that one category holds more value; rather one reveals a lingering childhood fascination with Saturday mornings.

One day, in the spring of 1995 in some innocuous field in rural Prince Edward Island, David Askevold—already established as “one of the world’s most important contributors to the development and pedagogy of conceptual art”— was retracing his steps, searching for his glasses.

Terry Graff, then curator of contemporary art at Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, had grown accustomed to such incidents. The pair had been driving around the Island, snapping photographs for what would become Askevold’s exhibition Cultural Geographies.