Cameron Forbes Observation Survey Drawings

ARTIST RESIDENCY: 
May 1 - May 25, 2018
Exhibition runs: 
May 25 - August 31, 2018 

Leah Taylor, curator

ARTIST TALK:
Thursday, July 12 at 12 noon in the Kenderdine Art Gallery
PUBLIC RECEPTION: 
Friday, July 13, 2018 

Cameron Forbes paints as an act of engagement with both space and people. Existing architecture, human delineations of the environment, differential access to space, and the persistent drive for climate control are continuing themes in Forbes’ work. Cameron Forbes: Observation Survey Drawings expands upon these thematics through an interrogation of the architectural and spatial features of the University of Saskatchewan’s Agriculture Building. 

During a three-week artist residency with the Kenderdine Art Gallery, Forbes constructed and mobilized a portable studio structure inspired by the building’s pyramid-shaped portico. Moving the studio to a new location each day – inside and outside the building – Forbes painted from within the portico-inspired structure, activating multiple sites in the creation of new work. 

The moving structure and drawings observe and document the building’s different spatial manifestations. The performative and process drive nature of her studio-in-flux points to Forbes’ interest in the institutional critique of purpose built architectural environments. By inserting herself into this public arena, she tampers with the notion of public versus private within the space. Through the gestural act of plein air painting – a seemingly subtle disruption – Forbes makes visible the process of the survey; a process related to both Western map-making and Canada’s tradition of landscape painting. This visibility points to the painted gesture’s ability to simultaneously reinforce, subvert, and reimagine spatial realities.

Her archive of survey drawings and paintings produced during the residency, as well as the portable studio, comprise a solo exhibition elegant in its deconstruction of public architecture; poised in its unveiling of the power-laden, socially constraining realities of built form.