ACADFA NEWSLETTER 2015 Fall

the issues because you are, after all, interested in challenging viewers with your work.

R. I don’t think the work is about one thing distracting from another, but about all these things happening simultaneously and the playfulness I think has some people rolling their eyes but I’m ok with that, because that’s who I am and that’s how I see the world and how I think. I like seeing the serious issues through those eyes. It’s the power of the imagination that instills hope and possibility of, not utopia, but social change.

B. It’s optimism.

R. Yes, it’s optimism and that’s a place where I see it and I can embody it, through that playfulness.

B. Yes, it’s a lovely outlook to have, because when you are focusing on these ideas in your work it could bog you down, it could get really depressing, so creating positive proposals as ways of thinking about the future maintains your belief system.

R. tender is good example of this—It is a hospital that takes care of hot dogs. If they are injured in a buffet, on a plate or whatever, you don’t abandon them. They are in a position of vulnerability and harm and suffering, so you rescue them and heal them… and you heal them back as far as their original source (the cow), and you go back to that ideal for healing and you put them back there. So tender is the best example of that utopia, and where that playfulness can lead you.

B. “H” has the same sense of feeling and care.

R. Yes, but different and interesting about “H” …is the incredible care the squirrel took of the cell phones. The hours and hours of sitting by the bed, stroking the pillow and the blanket. That belief that the cell phone deserves that kind of attention and care—the dedication to it was there, whereas tender was more of a proposal, but “H” was a performance and therefore embodied.

B. Was the performance in “H” an on-off switch as well?

R. No, just a performance, the gallery was only open if I was performing…the same as for Outskirts, and Alternator B. Your recent pieces tender, “H”, Lion’s Share, Wilderment, and Alternator all seem to be connected to an Alberta psyche, social, political, economic and I know your earlier work of the 80’s and early 90’s was much more feminist focused and about violence against women, or women’s issues, and there has been a shift in these newer pieces—maybe it happened before these, but these are the 5 I’ve been thinking about…

R. Outskirts and Long Haul are two others after the feminist focus.

B. I don’t think the work really leaves feminism…

R. No, I would say I’m always working from a feminist perspective and I always will.

B. Of course, but there seem to be a change to this Alberta psyche. When did you move to Alberta?

R. January of 2007, almost 9 years ago B. All these pieces have been made since being here?

R. Yes, all of these pieces have been influenced by being here, I did Wilderment first—specific to Calgary, Alternator from driving around Alberta, Lion’s Share from coming upon the feedlots, “H” done in New Brunswick (less focused in Alberta), and tender was about Alberta—motivated by the industrialized agriculture here.