Quest Art's 2020 TD Thor Wealth Management Juried Exhibition: Quest for the Environment

100 word Artist Statement about the work: The starting point of my work is often a photo of clouds or waves. Outlines, tracings, maps and diagrams are layered over these images in a way analogous to how we interpret and analyze our environment. The work reflects a world where nothing is solid or permanent. It’s our act of perception that brings elements into being and dissolves them again. What we see in the world is a projection of ideas that we've formed or learned. It may be impossible to see the world as it truly is, but it's easy to fool yourself into thinking that you can.

Dimensions: 100 x 100 x 1

100 word Artist Statement about the work: The starting point of my work is often a photo of clouds or waves. Outlines, tracings, maps and diagrams are layered over these images in a way analogous to how we interpret and analyze our environment. The work reflects a world where nothing is solid or permanent. It’s our act of perception that brings elements into being and dissolves them again. What we see in the world is a projection of ideas that we've formed or learned. It may be impossible to see the world as it truly is, but it's easy to fool yourself into thinking that you can.

Dimensions: 100 x 100 x 1

100 word Artist Statement about the work: "Bloom" consists of 42 overlapping plexiglass plates carrying about 1400 intricate porcelain sculptures of algae, based on sampling from coastal seawaters. The installation depicts the bloom of a species that is both toxic and bioluminescent, as becomes apparent under UV light. "Blue Fin Tuna" consists of hundreds of ceramic plankton sculptures and pieces of plastic garbage. Hung from fishing wire, "Blue Fin Tuna" speaks about the plastic contamination in our food and waters and the near extinction of the species due to overfishing and climate changed induced shifts of species at the bottom of its food chain.

Dimensions: 131 x 267 x 8

100 word Artist Statement about the work: "Bloom" consists of 42 overlapping plexiglass plates carrying about 1400 intricate porcelain sculptures of algae, based on sampling from coastal seawaters. The installation depicts the bloom of a species that is both toxic and bioluminescent, as becomes apparent under UV light. "Blue Fin Tuna" consists of hundreds of ceramic plankton sculptures and pieces of plastic garbage. Hung from fishing wire, "Blue Fin Tuna" speaks about the plastic contamination in our food and waters and the near extinction of the species due to overfishing and climate changed induced shifts of species at the bottom of its food chain.

Dimensions: 76 x 366 x 17

100 word Artist Statement about the work: As an artist, I translate concepts into materials, while not being literal in my interpretation. In an anti-anthropocentric approach, I project digitally manipulated images onto a hooked paper surface. The hooked surface receives the image and alters it, but is untouched and undisturbed by it. The light creates illusions on the surface that play hide and seek with the viewer, hiding and revealing details, information, a story. Having a minimal impact on the space that we occupy has been a source of inspiration for these images.

Dimensions: 114 x 173 x 5

100 word Artist Statement about the work: Experimentation is fundamental to my practice. Recent work includes using cold and hot patination techniques on copper to colour and etch the surface, processes requiring vigilance as the piece rapidly changes. I’ve learned to embrace Wabi-sabi, the beauty of imperfection to enjoy the transitional process, the journey on the way to becoming. The examination of contemporary environmental and social issues is a recurring theme in my art. Most of the world’s populace resides in urban centres, without any direct relationship with the natural world. Using art to maintain visibility and dialogue on Anthropocene issues is a critical contribution.

Dimensions: 43 x 43 x 2

100 word Artist Statement about the work: Climate change has presented humanity with the most profound and urgent challenge ever faced. Reflecting upon my understanding of the rising environmental issues occurring globally, my work addresses how we interact and perceive the natural world. I use my practice to combine art with research to contextualize imagery from my own experiences as well as what is presented to us through the media. My work comments and reflects on the ways in which exploitative human activities and a growing mentality towards capitalistic values have dominated the natural environment, rapidly accelerating the pace of climate change.

Dimensions: 24 x 39.5 x 2

100 word Artist Statement about the work: The ugly truth of today is that we are killing our planet in pursuit of the falsehoods of mass consumption. Magical realism is a way of conveying an alternative, happier reality through the means of whimsy and joy. Magical Zoo series, created of up-cycled materials, uses a prism of playfulness of the natural world to represent an animal whose habitat was destroyed, an animal that went extinct, or an animal who could be next. The element of magic makes it easier to cope with the fact that the life on our planet is dying, and that it is our fault.

Dimensions: 100 x 100 x 12

100 word Artist Statement about the work: Kim Brett’s art examines our shared experiences of form and colour in relation to consumable objects that we use and dispose of. She sees printmaking as a unique medium whereby many steps of the creative process are extensively recorded along the way. The concept behind the works submitted are based on the idea of a Process Run, which incorporates the many printed proofs and flawed pulls that are created in the making of a final print. Instead of discarding these recordings of the art making journey and banishing them to the landfill, Kim has kept them alive as a complement to her iconography and a reflection on the mass-distributed modality of home, health, and material waste.

Dimensions: 96 x 71

100 word Artist Statement about the work: Kim Brett’s art examines our shared experiences of form and colour in relation to consumable objects that we use and dispose of. She sees printmaking as a unique medium whereby many steps of the creative process are extensively recorded along the way. The concept behind the works submitted are based on the idea of a Process Run, which incorporates the many printed proofs and flawed pulls that are created in the making of a final print. Instead of discarding these recordings of the art making journey and banishing them to the landfill, Kim has kept them alive as a complement to her iconography and a reflection on the mass-distributed modality of home, health, and material waste.

Dimensions: 95 x 190

100 word Artist Statement about the work: The boreal forest has been described as the lungs of our planet- it wraps around the globe, cleaning the air we breathe and influencing our global climate. It stands as an ancient sentinel: we chip away at its borders, pushing through it with our machines and limitless appetite for the raw materials of modern life. The boreal forest seems too remote to influence daily life yet without the forest that life would be impossible. The artists’s role to is to move the human heart with the beauty of these vital wild places. By appreciating their beauty we recognize their importance in keeping our world healthy.

Dimensions: 24 x 36 x 1.5

Dimensions: 81 x 120 x 6

100 word Artist Statement about the work: “Pave Paradise” harkens back to early warnings about the permanent harm we are doing to our environment. Native plants have become one of the emblems of our attempts to retrofit the land with the most basic requirements for our survival as a human race: Pollinators for our food. “Pave Paradise” shows a parking lot rejuvenated to a native meadow or, is it a meadow paved for another parking lot. Ultimately, what will we choose?

Dimensions: 30 x 40 x 1.5

100 word Artist Statement about the work: Finding ourselves in this new epoch, the importance of documenting our natural environment in its unchanged hidden corners, is top of mind. Looking at nature from the perspective of having already lost it, ‘A Linear History’ is passing on a view of what we once had, filtered through memory and emotion, with details lost in translation through oral history, time, and available material lacking in natural origins. The painting challenges the adage “history always repeats itself”, and begs a call to action in the present by delivering the final bookend image of humans grasping to remember.

Dimensions: 152 x 152 x 5

100 word Artist Statement about the work: I grew up with the value “waste not, want not”, and to this day, I hate to throw anything out. Since discovering mosaics, this value has translated into upcycling unusual items that would otherwise be discarded, into my art. I let the material guide me and support the message I am trying to convey. My process involves searching lakeshores, sidewalks, and the floors and driveways of metal recycling centres, ceramic studios, and my family’s sign company. If an object speaks to me, and can be glued down, it’s fair game!

Dimensions: 36.5 x 36.5 x 5

100 word Artist Statement about the work: I grew up with the value “waste not, want not”, and to this day, I hate to throw anything out. Since discovering mosaics, this value has translated into upcycling unusual items that would otherwise be discarded, into my art. I let the material guide me and support the message I am trying to convey. My process involves searching lakeshores, sidewalks, and the floors and driveways of metal recycling centres, ceramic studios, and my family’s sign company. If an object speaks to me, and can be glued down, it’s fair game!

Dimensions: 30.5 x 30.5 x 4

100 word Artist Statement about the work: Bark is part of a larger body of work, in which the act of photographing is used as an acknowledgement of the beauty that exists in the details of our natural environment, while pointing to the impact of the artist’s presence, as the mode of representation itself becomes a part of the work. The Polaroid process plays an important role because it allows for the instantaneous production of a physical representation of the object photographed.

Dimensions: 24 x 16

100 word Artist Statement about the work: Bark is part of a larger body of work, in which the act of photographing is used as an acknowledgement of the beauty that exists in the details of our natural environment, while pointing to the impact of the artist’s presence, as the mode of representation itself becomes a part of the work. The Polaroid process plays an important role because it allows for the instantaneous production of a physical representation of the object photographed.

Dimensions: 24 x 16

100 word Artist Statement about the work: Man’s impact on the planet is seen everywhere. My ongoing series, “Discarded Objects”, is a direct response to this phenomenon. ‘From the Sea’ was created from a piece of styrofoam dock found floating in the ocean in front of my studio, while ‘Seated Man on a pedestal’ was created by laminating plywood forms found in a bin on a local construction site. With this series I explore the raw beauty in repurposing something that was once a blight on the environment and transforming it into a piece of art.

Dimensions: 46 x 46 x 46

100 word Artist Statement about the work: I enjoy painting strong birch trees, often with bleak backgrounds reflecting both the durability of the forest and the fragility of the environment.

Dimensions: 48 x 24 x 1.5