Grenfell Art Gallery presents
A multi-media and VR exhibition by Graeme Patterson
Strange Birds
THE WATER IS RISING
Graeme Patterson’s Strange Birds, uses sculpture, robotics, virtual reality, stop-motion animation, music, and costume, to create an immersive, dream-like experience that invites the audience to enter and explore a vision of the Bay of Fundy in the onset and aftermath of a catastrophic flood brought on by climate change that immerses most of the region in sea water. The flooded ruins of the Bay are populated by two anthropomorphic birds, the Starling, an invasive settler who struggles to understand and adapt to his circumstances, and the Heron, a bird native to the region who understands what it happening to its home and how it must survive.
Combining installations, sculpture, scale models, stop-motion animation, robotics and music, Graeme Patterson’s work plunges us into a world that is as moving as it is playful. The product of a slow and meticulous creative process, his work entices us into an emotionally-charged parallel universe inhabited by dreams, games, memory, and nostalgia.
A finalist for the 2014 Sobey Art Award, Graeme Patterson is a native of Saskatoon and currently lives in Sackville, New Brunswick.
He was nominated for a Juno award in 2011 and received the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton award for media arts from the Canada Council for the Arts in 2012.
He has exhibited his work at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (Fredericton, NB), the Mendel Art Gallery (Saskatoon, SK), the Rodman Hall Art Centre (St. Catharines, ON), the Art Gallery of Hamilton (ON), the Trépanier Baer Gallery (Calgary, AB), the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Centre Des Arts d’Enghien-Les-Bains (Enghien-les-Bains, France), MASS MoCA (Massachusetts, USA), the Galerie de l’UQAM (Montreal), the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge, AB), and the Surrey Art Gallery (Surrey, BC).