City Atrium Gallery
July 8 – September 8, 2014
Artist Talk: Tuesday, July 15, 12:15 – 12:45pm
Please join Ilze Bebris as she discusses the inspiration and process behind her work.
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Archipelago is based on the language and codes of mapping. In this work, Ilze explores the conventions of cartography; the abstract language of map making, the codes, and marks. She is interested in maps as drawings and as sites where line, colour and, code meet to represent topography in abstract.
A number of years ago, Ilze was given a massive tome: the Atlas of Canada 1957. Compiled by the Geographical Survey of Canada, it is a collection of maps that consider and document Canada as it was known in mid-century. The atlas speaks of a time and perspective when this country was known primarily for its natural resources; a raw, undeveloped territory. Since then much has changed. The North is reconfiguring as the ice shelves of the arctic shift and melt. Archipelago then, is a reflection of movement and change rather than of a fixed territory.
Ilze is also interested in the process of reading maps, a process that seems to be partly an exercise in visual metaphors, and partly one of direct decoding. The installation considers the vocabulary of marks and symbols used in map making and how we as readers understand and read this complex code. Archipelago alludes to the codes of cartography, but absent a key, and employing an unusual perspective, it becomes untethered from meaning, hovering on the edge of abstraction.
In this installation, the artist deconstructs and reconstructs the process of mapping. She is interested in reversing the flattening effect of maps, and freeing the language of cartography from its two dimensionality. The installation a bas-relief, a recreation of the imagined 2-d space in 3 dimensions.
Archipelago: 84”x 156” x 2”, installation (paper, vinyl, string, pins, tacks, elastic)
Please call us at 604-988-6844 for more information about this event.
