SALTBOX 2020
Grenfell Art Gallery presented the third iteration of Saltbox: Contemporary Arts Festival featuring artist-in-residence Lou Sheppard and writer Lisa Moore. Join us for an exciting schedule of in person and remote events co-curated by D’Arcy Wilson and Matthew Hills, including Biscuit Box Cabaret a virtual performance-art-open-mic event, a writing workshop, and a new score by Lou Sheppard premiering in Margaret Bowater Park.
SCHEDULE
Wed 25 Nov, 7:30 pm: Launch Artist Talk: Lou Sheppard
Lou Sheppard is an interdisciplinary artist working in audio, performance and installation based practice. They have exhibited in Canada and internationally, notably in the Toronto Biennial, the Antarctic Biennale and the Antarctic Pavilion in Venice. Sheppard received the Emerging Atlantic Artist Award in 2017, and has twice been longlisted for the Sobey Art Award (2018, 2020) receiving an international residency award in 2018. Sheppard’s artistic research reflects their background in critical theory and social activism. They are interested in languages, both as systems of notation and communication, as well as systems that structure and enact power. By looking to authoritative texts like taxonomies, environmental data, diagnostic criteria, and government policy, their work attempts to make these systems and structures of power legible. Using processes of metaphor, translation, semiotic shift, and close reading, their work is evidenced through written, graphic and visual scores. The performance of these scores often leads them to collaborate with communities and with other artists, including musicians, visual artists and performing artists. Sheppard lives on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’Kmaq, Mi’kmaki/Nova Scotia.
Thurs 26 Nov, 8 pm: Biscuit Box Cabaret!
Biscuit Box Cabaret was a virtual performance-art-open-mic event, transcending the thresholds of biscuit boxes everywhere! It was open mic for performance and experimental artists to share what they have been working on with a live audience. Anyone was welcome to participate, and the performances were limited to approximately 5 minutes in length.
Fri 27 Nov, 2-5 pm: Art Writing Workshop with Lisa Moore (Program Postponed, due to changes in public health measures)
Lisa Moore is a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland where she teaches literature and conducts writing workshops. A bestselling author, her books Alligator (2005), Caught (2013) and her collection Open (2002) were nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her novel February (2009) was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize (one of Britain's most prestigious awards) and won the CBC Canada Reads competition in 2013. She also won the Writer's Trust Engel Findley Award in the category " fiction 'and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in the Canadian and Caribbean literature category. She has written articles for major magazines such as Canadian Art , Walrus and Elle , as well as for major dailies such as the Globe and Mail , the National Post and the Guardian.
Sat 28 Nov, 5:05 pm, Margaret Bowater Park: Colour Guard, Atlantic Flyway
As the culmination of Saltbox award-winning artist Lou Sheppard debuted Colour Guard, Atlantic Flyway, a live performance at dusk in Margaret Bowater Park.
This score has been developed site responsively, in conceiving of the performance Lou writes:
Zugunruhe, or migratory restlessness, is an 19th century ornithological term describing a strange phenomenon found in caged birds. During spring and fall birds would flutter against the bars of their cages in their migratory directions, proving to researchers that the urge to migrate is innate, not circumstantial, and that birds possess an internal navigation system similar to a compass.
We are at the precipice of the next mass extinction event, heralded by the loss of migratory bird populations along the Atlantic Flyway. The fluttering of zugunruhe echoes the lost populations of birds missing from their annual migrations, those preserved in museums, those who have gone extinct. How might we remember these lost birds? How do we mourn our current climate crisis? From within a capitalist industrialized present how do we hold a militarized, colonial history to account? When the rituals and memorials of this history are re-membered and re-performed can we see what future has been irrevocably changed and lost?
Traditionally a colour guard is a prestigious unit within a state military charged with protection of powerful symbols such as flags and regimental colours. Members of a military colour guard wave brightly coloured flags, throwing and twirling sparkling batons to signal the army's presence and give hope to lost soldiers in the battlefield. A wing fluttering against a cage, a baton twirling restlessly at dusk. Colour Guard, Atlantic Flyway is a performance and installation at Margaret Bowater Park, honouring these species that have been lost, and signalling to those still left.