Tarpaulin

Exhibited at Patel Projects in Toronto, the series uses the physical similarities between tarpaulin and painting as a way of critiquing the role of landscape painting in Canadian art. The work takes a commonplace object — a piece of camouflage tarp, with its woven structure and abstracted depiction of nature — and insists on its value as comparable to a landscape painting by a member of the Group of Seven. Throughout the exhibition, the sculptures and collages shifted and evolved, exploring different facets of the project. Although the works were never fully resolved, that unrest illustrates how our approaches to depicting the Canadian landscape continue to change, and proposes a reassessment of our visual vocabulary going forward.