Salt: The Distillation of Matter
Deborah Thompson's Show Explores the Impermanence of Nature
Mar 20, 2009
Nelson BC's Touchstones Museum is hosting a special exhibition of ephemeral or impermanent art based upon the mineral salt.
Deborah Thompson, Guest Curator
The basis of Thompson's exhibition evolved from a body covered in a layer of salt, a theme which emerged during her residency at the Banff Centre, as she explored Egyptian themes of death and renewal and their roles in embalming processes. She was inspired to impart this ancient wisdom through archetypal, mental imagery--the imagination--into solid, visual works.
Through this medium, she examined the divine feminine in her dark aspect: Persephone in Hades, Lot's wife, the role of Mary in the triune state, which brought her to the alchemical mythology of western Hermeticism, where the triune elements are sulphur, mercury and salt. Her explorations distilled into that constituent mineral of life, salt.
"As the project proceeded," Thompson wrote in her curatorial statement, "it became apparent to me that the question being explored in the work had to do with the relationship between matter and impermanence. Specifically, in the role matter plays in the death-renewal cycle and how is it we seek to understand this expression of immortality."
From this, she called upon artists to submit proposals for a group show, and was drawn to three in particular, all of them known for the ephemeral quality of, or impermanence featured within their work.
Nicole Dextras
The ephemeral sculptures of Nicole Dextras, an environmental artist, have a distinct quality:
- She grows root-bound grass sculptures in letter moulds to form words which reflect on culture and art.
- Once mature, the sculptures are transplanted into outdoor settings, usually where the words mark a strong contrast or draw attention to a feature of the landscape.
- In time, the sculptures either die off or are incorporated into the surrounding ecosystem.
For Salt, Dextras chose to sprout wheat grass in a cursive writing of the word "Poem." Presently, the sculpture is coming to maturity under grow-lights at the Touchstones gallery. Eventually, it will be inverted so that it isn't the grass, but its tangled, interwoven roots which are exposed.
Haruko Okano
- Four columns of moulded salt crystals, bones and teeth rise from a square of salt on the floor of the gallery, an allusion to the Biblical story of Lot's Wife, Irit, from the Old Testament, Haruko Okano's installation.
- The tops of the pillars are shaped into curves that culminate in open mouths, gaping upward, lips with no other human features. The columns resemble vast throats, their muscles seeming to ripple from the act of swallowing.
- From the ceiling, four stainless steel serving spoons are suspended by transparent threads, their handles ornamented with a line of teeth.
- From the bell of each spoon "pours" a strip of cotton dyed bright red, like blood, into the mouths of the columns, as though they are entities formed from the raw matter of salt, bones, and teeth by the alchemy of blood and liquid.
- At the centre of the installation is a heart fashioned from salt in which teeth have been embedded.
Thompson describes Okano's piece, "Salt of the Earth", thusly: "a descent into the alchemical bath of the unconscious where all of matter is undifferientated, in Solutio, to re-merge from this primal sea in a new form."
Julie Castonguay
A photographer who trains her lens on the natural wilderness of the Kootenay area, Castonguay captured a special series of natural images: She focused on forest life as it transformed over the course of a year in nature. This included forest fires. It was the reduction of living matter to ash through these fires, which Castonguay wanted to share.
Thompson expressed her view that this association with salt were its parallels with ash, not only as a composite element of life, but one to which the body may eventually be reduced. A motion sensor detects movement from viewers on the gallery floor, causing scenes within the photos to be blurred, and create this sense of motion and activity. Castonguay has managed to capture with a lens and motion sensor what Emily Carr used oil paints and impressionism to create.
The slideshow was chosen as a temporary backdrop for the performance of contemporary choreographer and dancer, Thomas Loh’s “The Last Hour”:
- Before the images, which were screened against a white wall, a pool of water was constructed on the floor of the gallery, lined with rocks.
- Above the pool, many candle lanterns were suspended in a single line at the same height on long wires from the ceiling. Each candle provided a single point of flame.
- A wooden bench was erected in front of the changing images.
- Thomas Loh and Hiromoto Ida, two contemporary dancers from the Nelson area, performed in and behind the pool: Loh swinging the candles so that the movement of their flames was reflected in the ripples of the water; Ida lying transfixed behind, like something germinal, until unfurling into life, activity (with Loh), struggle and eventually death, signified by slipping down into the pool of water and floating.
- They were accompanied by live percussionists who performed with natural instruments, like wooden marimbas, clay and skin drums, glass jars, metal implements, torn paper and fabric.
- After the dance, the candles were removed, and the piece returned to a slide show, much like a forest returns in relative stillness after the activity of fire.
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