Artists respond to a trans-Pacific sea journey

    1 of 1 2 of 1

      23 Days at Sea
      At Access Gallery until July 16

      A small cabin aboard a freighter sailing across the Pacific. A dream gig? A jail sentence? A floating hiatus filled with creative possibilities? Where are we? What are we doing here? And what time is it, anyway?

      The artworks in Access Gallery’s exhibition 23 Days at Sea are both focused and expansive, as is the concept behind the show. In partnership with the Burrard Arts Foundation and the Contemporary Art Gallery, Access developed the idea of planting selected artists as passengers aboard container ships sailing between Vancouver and Shanghai (a voyage that takes, yes, 23 days). As director-curator Kimberly Phillips writes in her beautifully considered exhibition essay, this unusual residency speaks somewhat humourously to Vancouver’s ludicrously high real-estate prices: providing studio space for artists’ residencies is too costly for a small, publicly funded gallery. More importantly, it considers our Pacific Rim trade connections and the impacts of container shipping within the globalized economy. Consequences include the disappearance of historic ports, the relative inaccessibility and invisibility of container terminals, and our urban disconnect from the ocean. “By embedding artists within the system of global sea-borne freight, and offering them the opportunity to consider and respond to it,” Phillips writes, “we proposed a compelling means through which to render that system—and its spaces—visible.”

      The responses of the residency’s four inaugural artists, who made their voyages separately in 2015 and early 2016, are fascinating and diverse. Among the works produced by Nour Bishouty, a Jordanian-born artist based in Beirut and Toronto, is a two-channel video, mostly focused on conversations with a second officer named Johannes Elmar Streicher. Streicher’s subjects range from the differences between home-cooked and shipboard meals to the inadequacies of weather data collected by satellites. Bishouty’s work spotlights the importance of storytelling within the culture of the ship, while posing an individual’s prosaic experience against enduring myths about life at sea. It also suggests how much we want our lives to matter.

      Montreal artist Christopher Boyne has created a tabletop tableau of 23 wooden models that represent, in miniature, different perceptions of the container ship on which he travelled. Made retrospectively, these odd little forms suggest the impossibility of seeing the entire immense vessel while on it. They also address the episodic nature of memory—and the challenge of articulating a whole and comprehensible experience from the sum of its many parts.

      Italian-born, Vancouver-based Elisa Ferrari has created an installation that incorporates audio recordings, photographs of a small factory, and an array of curious wax models (used in casting metal scaffolding parts). Phillips writes that Ferrari’s project is one of “retrieval”: it considers the shifting demographics of labour while attempting to tie her voyage to her earlier, unresolved business trip to China. The most impressive aspect of her installation is the sound, which mixes telephone conversations and museum-guide instructions with shipboard noises such as deep, mechanical thrumming and prolonged alarm bells. The bass notes cause the gallery’s floorboards—and our diaphragms—to vibrate, so that we are in a way transported by ship, too. It’s a powerful experience.

      Among the interrelated works created by Sri Lankan–Australian artist Amaara Raheem was a subtle and meditative performance piece, Presence now/here, staged last week at the Burrard Field House. In the gallery, Raheem installed a brilliantly simple wall text, ostensibly reflecting on her preparations for the residency. It lists everything Raheem brought on her voyage, from toiletries to clothing to digital devices—and where each was produced. Goods are categorized by their countries of manufacture, which run alphabetically across the wall, from Australia to Vietnam. Without any explanation, this graphlike work highlights the truly global network of production and shipping that serves our everyday consumerism—and our travel. There’s something weirdly paradoxical about hauling things across the vast ocean they’ve already crossed.

      Comments