The Wild so Close presents photographic and video works by Tacita Dean, Leslie Grant and Al Bersch, Jason Hendrickson, David Horvitz, and Donald Lawrence.

The sites of leisure culture and recreation—within the construct of ‘nature’—are worthy of rigorous investigation. This exhibition brings together varying photographic and video works that investigate concepts of natural leisure environments and resources. In all cases, there is an underlying component of travel—the artist making a journey as part of the work’s production, and of that distant place becoming the subject. These leisure sites are often situated in opposition to other types of spaces; to the spaces of labour, the spaces of the domestic; some spaces showing the demarcations of gender and class constructions. In an interlocking manner, the works contain elements that trouble notions of the ‘natural’ that make up representations of such sites. The exhibition raises important questions surrounding the spaces of recreation and tourism in the wake of Vancouver’s Olympic venture. What is at stake is an opportunity to reconsider the economies of their use in both real and ideal terms.

The works, in turn, question specific values assigned to the category of leisure. Solitude, tranquility, masculinity and prosperity are just a few such qualities brought together in order to invoke a self-reflexive thematic that questions the motivations of recreational preoccupations. Looking more closely at the ideological implications of the province’s reputation, we see intersecting projections upon the sites of the so-called ‘wilderness’, evidencing different fantasies of space. Certain landscapes are hidden so that others might be highlighted. Through these spatial economies, we view complex and shifting, continually contested landscapes of leisure.

This exhibition is curated by Jennifer Cane, a candidate to the Masters Degree in Critical Curatorial Studies at The University of British Columbia, with support from the Killy Foundation, the Alvin Balkind Fund for Student Curatorial Initiatives, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, and the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at The University of British Columbia.

DAVID HORVITZ’S LOST PHOTOGRAPHS: http://www.orgallery.org/david-horvitz-lost