Into the Wild: It’s in our Nature
Holly King Roseate 1999 Courtesy of the artist
From Pissarro’s biblical landscapes in the Grand Palais to the great Canadian wilderness in Tom Thomson’s Jack Pine to the transformation of Great Salt Lake in Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, nature has been both a perennial favourite and an unruly scion of art. The Greek philosopher Artistotle once proclaimed that “art completes what nature cannot bring to finish.” Now, the exhibition “Into the Wild” promises to explore this and other longstanding tensions between art and nature. Drawn from Art Gallery of Nova Scotia’s permanent collection by curator David Diviney, the exhibition features works from a range of artists. The late David Askevold’s digital works transform the seabed of Halifax Harbour into surreal vistas, while Edward Burtynsky’s photographs feature sites where humans meet nature. Holly King’s haunting seascapes made of clay, twigs and cellophane join Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby’s ironic paeans to the natural world. In Germaine Koh’s Fair-weather forces: wind speed, natural elements enter the gallery through art, suggesting spaces where public and private overlap. Applying an expanded notion of nature and variant modes, the artists in this exhibition attempt to reimagine the natural world—potentially delivering, in Aristotle’s words, “knowledge of nature’s unrealized ends.” (341 Main St, Yarmouth NS)
David Askevold Harbour Ghosts, Halifax 1999
Edward Burtynsky St. Catharines, Ontario 1995 Courtesy of the artist
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