Boundary|Time|Surface by Sydney Lancaster
Last month, Edmonton artist Sydney Lancaster was Artist-In-Residence
as part of Gros Morne National Park’s Art in the Park program. As part of the
residency, Lancaster created a sculptural
installation entitled Boundary|Time|Surface on the
shore and sea at Green Point, Newfoundland. It was assembled the morning of
June 22nd, and naturally disassembled
within one tide cycle. In early July, AE caught up with Lancaster to
learn more about the experiences she, and others, had creating the large-scale,
ephemeral piece.
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| Artist Sydney Lancaster |
How did your life as an artist begin?
SL: It took a long while
before I was able to commit most of my time to my practice; I began dividing my
time between waged work and the studio in 2005, including a stint as
Administrative Officer at Latitude 53 Artist-Run Centre in Edmonton. The real
'leap of faith' came in late 2011, when I was given a year-long residency at
Harcourt House Artist-Run Centre. I spent from October 2011 to October 2012
developing a large body of work, working essentially full-time in the studio.
I've continued to refine work from that residency, and have exhibited it
several times since the initial post-residency show. I've been working pretty
constantly in the studio since then, developing several projects, and I've been
fortunate to get some grant support for some of that. I'm also involved with a
number of visual art organizations, and I help when I can; I volunteer on
occasion at Latitude 53 and Harcourt House, and I also sit on the board
of Visual Arts Alberta-CARFAC, as Advocacy Director.
What inspired Boundary|Time|Surface?
SL: My practice is concerned
with the relationship between place, objects, meaning, and identity. I've
always been fascinated by the way people attach meaning to things and places:
how that really informs their sense of who they are and their way of being
in the world. There are always competing narratives feeding that process, and
individual stories get re-written and edited all the time. Boundary|Time|Surface provided
an opportunity to explore some of these ideas on a much larger scale -
literally and metaphorically. In this work, I set out to explore the human
inclination to create what are essentially arbitrary divisions of all types,
but especially as tools to manage and understand expanses of space and time.
How did you come up with the logistics of Boundary|Time|Surface?
SL: Boundary|Time|Surface was
created at Green Point in Gros Morne National Park. This spot was chosen
because it is the location of the internationally-recognized stratotype for the
boundary between the Cambrian and Ordovician periods in the geological time
scale. There were several locations around the world which could have been
selected, but after much discussion, research, and debate, Green Point was
chosen. I found the entire history and process by which this spot on the map
was chosen to represent a defining point in geoscience quite fascinating; there
are social, political, and scientific stories intricately woven into the whole
process. The place itself is visually stunning too - there are thousands of
layers of rock exposed in the cliff face and on the shore below, all of which
are eroded by the tide - so the locale presents a tremendous physical
manifestation of time's passage on any number of scales.
On a personal level, I had been looking for a project
for a while that I could work on that would include some input from my partner
- he's a structural geologist who teaches at the University of Alberta - I
wanted to find something that would incorporate our respective disciplines in a
very concrete way. When John showed me Green Point for the first time in 2013,
I was immediately excited by the location, and I spent some time that summer
working through some preliminary ideas, and in the fall, we set to work pulling
together a proposal for the juried selection for the residency.
The final installation date was chosen through a
combination of practical concerns: the first consideration was when the tide
cycle offered the longest window of daylight time to create the work, but
weather conditions were also a big part of it. I had hoped to install the
sculpture on June 21st - the longest day of the year, another 'boundary'
of sorts - but wind and rain prevented that. So in the end, the work was
created on June 22 2014. One day past solstice, but the reward was a
beautiful day of near perfect conditions, so it was well worth it!
Creating the installation with a community of
volunteers - did that leave a profound effect on you?
SL: Absolutely. It was a
tremendous experience to work with such a fantastic group of people, all of
whom were really supportive of the project and the ideas behind it. This was my
first experience making work in community, and I feel so very
grateful for that support and for the generosity of spirit that everyone
brought to the project. I'm still quite overwhelmed by it!
What was it like to observe the installation as the
tide came in?
SL: There was a stillness the
work seemed to hold; watching the work come apart was actually quite
meditative. I think in large part this was due to the calm sea that night; the
tide was rising in gentle increments, so the posts came down quite slowly, and
then floated around as the water rose (and some were even left at the end of
the day when we lost the light and had to head off the rocks). I think the
gradual, gentle dissolution of the work by the tide was perhaps more effective
in communicating ideas of transience and arbitrariness than if there had been
wind and breakers crashing in.
What did you discover/or what surprised you about Boundary|Time|Surface
that you hadn't expected before it was installed?
SL: The first thing that struck
me was how much 'presence' the work had. John commented that it seemed more
'solid' than he's expected it to feel, and I felt the same. Part of that may have
been our awareness that we had constructed the work to be ephemeral. The scale
of the piece had an unexpected impact on me too - it made its role as a human
intervention in the landscape really evident, but at the same time, there was
no question that the land and sea were still dominant, and were the most
crucial elements in the end. I had wondered at the start if I'd feel some sense
of loss watching the work come apart; I didn't. It felt really
liberating.
What are you up to now or what are some future plans?
SL: I am just starting my last
week of this residency at Gros Morne, and I'm hoping to do some more small
installations on the shore the beginning of this week. Then, I'll be off to
Nova Scotia for a bit! I'm really excited to be participating in another
residency - I'll be participating in The Red Rabbit Intensives series from July
15 - 20. This is a five-day intensive workshop led by Thomas Young, in which
the participants will be creating ephemeral work on the shore and intertidal
zone on the Bay of Fundy. From there, it's back home to Edmonton and the
studio ... I've got thousands of images and hours of video to sort through,
just for starters! I think it will take a while to "digest"
everything that will come of my time in Newfoundland - but the goal is to
develop a body of work from the documentation of the installation of
Boundary|Time|Surface. I have some other work to finish off too, in preparation
for an exhibition in January 2015, and I'm also hoping to hear back about some
of the exhibition proposals that went out in the first half of the year
for YORK, which is a collaborative series of works that I created
with another Edmonton artist, Marian Switzer. So ... no shortage of
things coming up.
Is there anything you would like to add?
SL: I wanted to take this
opportunity to thank the people who helped make Boundary|Time|Surface a
reality: Anne Marceau, Michael Burzynski, Renee Martin, Lisa Liu, Shawna
White, and Ryan Lacombe were my installation-team-extraordinaire! And my
partner John Waldron, who was a huge help to me in planning, logistics, and in
assisting in the pre-install work of lugging 52 driftwood logs around the cove
to Green Point, and in helping me place the 52 piles of rocks we needed to keep
them upright!
I'd highly recommend the "Art in the Park"
Residency Program at Gros Morne - the folks at Parks Canada are great to
work with - and the people of Woody Point and Rocky Harbour have been so
welcoming and helpful. It's been a fantastic experience.
There will be more images and some video from Boundary|Time|Surface posted
to my website in the next few weeks: www.sydneylancaster.ca
