Nature Factory - 2 Rooms Contemporary Art Projects

        Yesterday, foggy, misty and cool for a Newfoundland Saturday in July, I wrapped up in a several layers of brooding, black layers and threw on my Blundstones with some thick socks, for I was off to see  the opening of the newest exhibition at the 2 Rooms contemporary art projects platform. To preface, I've lived in the surrounding area of Duntara for my whole 18 years before moving to St. John's and this was my first time seeing this wonderful and intriguing space. Like I just sort of described, 2 Rooms functions to showcase temporary exhibitions, events, and installations. A lot of the art, but not all of it has ties to Newfoundland in some way so I was enthusiastic to see what had been growing on this scene. The actual building was built in 1881 and is built in the saltbox-style that was so popular in early Newfoundland. Save for the bottom two rooms (which still only have very minimal restorations) the house remains unfinished, with layers of old garish paint interspersed with flakes of old wallpaper and newspaper. The place isn't even insulated, and very much feels skeleton-like. 

         The first few pictures I have here are just random snippets of features of the house itself and tiny portraits of other pieces of art that I saw pinned in tiny corners that weren't part of the feature exhibitions. 

          Here is a link to 2 Room's official website that explains the current exhibit in full: Nature Factory. It'd be tedious to repeat the whole background of each feature here since I can't really say it as succinctly as the artists themselves could describe it. I'd rather just write about my personal impressions and other tidbits I picked up from their talks.

         So these three collages thus far are shots I took of the upstairs interior of the house known as the 'museum' portion. A lot of the work done by the director of 2 Rooms focuses on collected and salvaged pieces, hence the old tools pinned to the wall, random illustrations and collected photography and typography pieces I saw pinned around. She primarily works in watercolour and oils, and those above beetle portraits are hers. I really wanted to buy one, but alas I am poor and they were already purchased.  The overall exhibition had a nature focus and I think she was intending to tie in her table-top collection and other museum pieces to that. Which I think fits really well. From what I understood, she rotates out a variety of collection-style exhibits in the upstairs portion of the house, all centered around a different theme, and I sorely wish I had known about this place sooner so I could have come and seen them.

          The table top collection (or I should say door-top, as it was a salvaged door, I believe) was flora and fauna from Newfoundland, mostly aquatic and nautical themed, like shells, sea pebbles, animal bones, mosses, driftwood, empty crab shells, bird feathers and eggs, dried starfish and more. As someone with a penchant for beach-combing I was fascinated by the sheer amount of each thing she had collected. I have always had a very visceral and emotional affinity to the ocean so all of this really spoke to me and had me having bursts of childhood memories collecting the same things from the beaches around my house.

table top details 1.

table top details 2.  // arranged bones in the stairwell

            Seeing the bones on the shelf, precariously perched above visitors heads in the stairs immediately reminded me of Hannibal, and the recurring stags horns motif. 

seaweed bouquet series

Susan Wood 1. 

Susan Wood 2.

            I really loved Susan Wood's stuff; a collection of 40 stunning ink and watercolour pieces known as 'Specimen'. She collects various insect, animal and flowers and suspends them in her studio to draw in their deceased form. Some (specifically the frog and moth ones) were done by actually inking the specimens themselves onto Washi paper, which is what all the pieces were done on. And, they were layered such that each piece had a lovely waxy, textured appearance to it. Combined with a lovely muted browns, greens and yellows, and the thin line-art reminiscent of Victorian botanical illustrations, I was totally sold. But alas, again I could not afford.

              Probably my favourite series was Thaddeus Holownia's, 'The Terra Nova Suite'. You have to know that most photography of Newfoundland that is on the popular market pretty much looks the same. Over the top, poorly composed HDR friggin' shots of the ocean and trees that do nothing (for me at least) to capture the immensity, the wideness and the quiet splendor that is the natural side of Newfoundland. Within seconds of walking into the lower room and see Thaddeus' pieces, I honestly coudln't stop looking at them. Sadly, I forgot to charge my Canon before coming and was being jostled a bit so the phone shots I got don't do his pictures justice at all.
             He shot these (and a lot of his other series) exclusively on a banquet camera. As the name may suggest, this was a camera type invented to take group pictures of people at banquets. His use of it to shoot landscapes however, does the scale of his subjects total justice. The camera's negative are the same size as the actual photography, 7'x'17 (12'x20' is another version but I don't think he uses that). Regardless, to see them in person really does perfectly capture the quiet and isolated infinity of some Newfoundland spaces. I'm really going on ad nauseam on this point, but one more time: if I had the money, his stuff would be on my wall.

             We were lucky enough after, that Thaddeus trotted out his camera and took a group shot. You have to stand pretty much perfectly still and at one point while he was setting up the group all inexplicably went quiet in unison. For that moment it was just the wind and faint roar of the ocean in our ears. I don't think many people can boast being shot by one of these anymore, but then again I'm not up the news in the photography field so perhaps its more commonly used than I'm aware. Regardless, I liked this shot I quickly managed before he took his own picture. 

            This was my favourite from Sara Angelucci's "Aviary" series. She was the only artist who was unable to make it to the opening, which was a shame because I had a bunch of questions for her. The photographs are made by combining anonymous Victorian "cart-de-visite' portraits she buys off e-Bay with extinct North American birds, via photo manipulation. Her summation of the series is creatures transitioning to ghosts. I thought them whimsical at first but the more I stood and looked at them, the eerier they became. For all of them, the only truly human aspect left to the faces were the eyes and I found their stare unsettling. But I liked them very much nonetheless. 

final few shots of Deb Wickwire's work and other random spots about the house

            I found Deb Wickwire's work to be okay; the image of the codfish as it relates to Newfoundland is a tired one for me, at least in this form. Like great okay, you hung some clay codfish, that's okay as an image but doesn't really speak to the cultural/political ties they have had historically if that's just all you do? I get that it's an intensive process to make them but I still found them merely okay at the end of the day. The fact that each one could pay for a semester's tuition for me also didn't do much to engender any enthusiasm towards them. That came off as expensive for the sake of being expensive to me.

That's pretty much it on this front - phew, what a long, image-heavy post. Hopefully you vicariously enjoyed my experience with 2 Rooms as much as I did.

xx
r.