Ecotopia : Group Exhibition, Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery, Kitchener, Canada - toured to Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, Canada (2013), Nickle Galleries, Calgary (2013), Kenderdine Art Gallery, Saskatchewan, Canada (2014)

Abstract

Artists: BGL, David Brooks, Dagmara Genda, Rodney Graham, Isabelle Hayeur,Tristram Lansdowne, Maude Leonard-Contant, Lynne Marsh, Lisa Sanditz, Jennifer Steinkamp, T & T and Kate Wilson Guest curated by Amanda Cachia This exhibition explores environmental conservation, destruction and the cacophonous blend of architecture and decay in our technological age. Ecotopian fiction is a subgenre of the utopian or dystopian, where a vision for a world is either ideal or a nightmare. An element of the scifi or futurism can be found in some of the work represented in this exhibition, where artists are offering an alternative for postmodern living, where nature and technology can live more harmoniously, without wreaking great havoc on our environment. We live in abstract spaces and manufactured environments, where nature has become fabricated. These artists point out the absurdities, excesses and the challenges to these situations, and the amnesiac response of our population to these new falsehoods. Through their work they suggest that whilst this world we live in may be topsy-turvy,the new and decaying structures that we have created possess a beauty of decay where objects, monuments, and sites that have been overtaken by weeds, graffiti, wildlife are in fact a new archaeology for a new generation.