December 2016
#140

Focussing on the non material elements of sound and light, this issue of Border Crossings presents these components in a compelling recombinant mix.

Legendary American artist Meredith Monk is a primary exemplar—as a composer, singer, choreographer, filmmaker, installation artist and creator of opera and music-theatre works. The interview with her in this issue is a pleasure and an important history lesson.

Stephen Waddell is a Vancouver-based photographer. His colour photographs have a distinctive painterly quality; his newest body of work, stunning, almost over-whelming black and white photographs of underground caves and natural grottos are at once awe-some and stifling. Looking at his significant body of colour works, viewers have a sense of both an earlier familiarity and Waddell’s pursuit of the perfectly composed and reference-rich image. That the richness is also rife with difficulty is a condition Waddell finds pleasurable.

Aïda Ruilova is a young New York-based filmmaker whose work is edgy, dark and erotic. An installation last year at Marlborough Gallery in Chelsea was apprehended aurally first—an unavoidable, unidentifiable but alarmingly animate mix of sounds and images. Someone is being hurt; someone is experiencing pleasure. Fear and beauty curl around one another. Seduction hangs in the air. The interview in this issue explains some of it. A complete picture is neither sought nor necessary.

To continue with sound and light—there is an engaging article on the recent work of Allora + Calzadilla, collaborators living and working in Puerto Rico. The piece looks closely at their installation at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton—their first exhibition in Canada. Based on their research in the fossil beds of the Burgess Shale and the Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller they brought the past into the present through installations that combine sound, video and artifact installations.

Further to the issue of light and representation, we present you with “A Brief History” which includes James Turrell, Drake, Christian Giroux and** Daniel Young**, Ian Carr-Harris, Jessica Eaton and the ground-breaking 19th and early 20th century architect and light seer, Percy Nobbs, as well as an opportunity to set sail on Oliver Husain’s filmic voyage to Isla Santa Maria, in three dimensions. His film is a journey in search of utopia where colonialism is a constant companion. The article invites us to ask if our vision is necessarily clearer where the presentation is in three dimensions.

The review section is broad ranging and includes: painter Wanda Koop, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, new video work by Annie MacDonell, a look at Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles; Willy Le Maitre, Jen Aitken, SITElines 2016 at Site Santa Fe, Olafur Eliason, Public Studio at AGYU, Liz Magor, Bas Jan Ader, sculptor Nadia Belerique, and The State at Plug In ICA.

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