ARTICLE | The Chilliwack Progress
Double Vision
Artists Alex Turner and Mike Edwards raise important questions with their new show
By Jennifer Fienberg
October 4, 2002
The elaborate artwork of two intriguing Harrison artist will dominate almost all the available gallery in Chilliwack for the month of October.
The composite photographs of Alex Turner and the sculpture in mixed-media creations of Mike Edwards raise some interesting questions about the urban/rural dichotomy, the price of development, and even the nature of good and evil. There’s a charming vain of whimsy and wonder threaded through many of the works as well.
Alex Turner grew up in Harrison, attended high school in Agassiz and graduated from Vancouver School of Art. This show features his latest body of work, mainly photo images that he’s titled Lots and Lots. He says the long, panoramic shots were snapped consecutively while turning a full 180 degrees. He focuses the lens on a rather tired shopping mall, parking lot, a subdivision under construction and a highway overpass teaming with cars.
“Some of the urban manifestations I find completely surreal,“ he says. “If someone came down from outer space, what on earth would they think about our civilization? It’s clear we’ve sacrificed a lot for automobile culture.“
Some of the almost frenzied, urban images are replete with an endless ribbon of blacktop, and they contrast starkly with a cooler, misty tributes to the natural glory that is the village of Harrison Hot Springs. He picks a few lovely, dewy nature scenes to showcase a waterfall, Harrison Lake and the famed Hot Springs source.
“Nature sets a very high standard for the village,“ he says. “But urban development has gotten completely out of hand, it seems to me.
“By focusing on it this way, maybe we can see it for what it really is,“ he says, adding that it is own quiet way, he considers himself to be an activist.
Turner obtained a post secondary degree in art education, worked in a design studio and then moved to Toronto, where he taught design, video and photography.
The influence on his graphic design expertise is apparent in the surreal melding of the images (cars appearing out of nowhere, heading nowhere) and belies his love for the work of Andy Warhol. “Warhol was one of the first artists to recognize pop-culture as a subject worthy of an artist attention,” he offers.
Turner’s work has been shown in Toronto, Vancouver and Harrison, and he splits his time between living in Toronto and Harrison.
Mike Edwards, the other artist in the joint show, grew up north of Toronto, and studied art in high school, as well as in college and university.
“But I didn’t want to stand around and talk about art. I wanted to make it. I’ve always wanted to make neat stuff (like a delicate toothpick boat) and always had an interest in making interesting objects for myself, much the same way people plan to make a good meal.
“It’s a wanderlust for the natural world, physics, learning anything really. Physics holds a fascination for me and how interesting the world could be.
“It blows your mind. The world is way more fascinating and complicated than you think,“ he continues.
One of the subtler details of the joint exhibit is the fact that Edwards was actually a student of Turner’s, back when Turner was teaching at Central Technical in Toronto.
Edwards and his partner, Rosa Quintana-Lillo now live in Harrison and help run the Ranger Station Art Gallery.
For about a decade, Edwards says he was more involved in helping other people make art, rather than making his own. He cast bronze and cement and carved totem pole and other works for other artists. He even got to work alongside prominent B.C. carvers like Bill Reed on the famed Jade Canoe carving at the Vancouver Airport.
A few years ago, he decided he was ready to get back into creating his own work.
“I often start out, not knowing what these pieces mean. That’s the mystery of art and it leads to the next piece in the series,” he says.
“Take the wave series. They started from observations of nature. I was fishing off the north end of the Queen Charlotte Islands, while working for a totem pole carver and met a guy who wanted to take me out fishing. Finally, we got out on the water, put out our fishing lines and waited for the tide to change. In the meantime, I was noticing these big, huge swells, about a meter high. Old waves rolling in from the northwest. I thought they were beautiful. But on top of that there were of these other waves, moving at 45-degree angles to each other, traveling through each other. The waves were traveling in different directions, but they were coexisting, not blending into each other. It made me think this is an incredible metaphor for humanity. If we could only learn to coexist peacefully. That kicked off my research interest into wave action.“
Some pieces that went up in the Art Gallery at City Hall are, like some of Turner‘s work, a reaction to urban development.
“Scientific study is really about trying to nail down specific facts, and art can do the same thing, but the meaning is somehow more accessible through art,“ Edwards says, adding that several pieces will be about finding complex beauty and art and drawing the metaphors.
On the one wall in the gallery at the Art Center, there is a series of a recurring cone shape.
“The cone thing looks at the nature of good and evil in the world. What if a cone could follow many paths in its life, some might take the path towards evil and end up as a missile tip or a Klu Kkux Clan hat. It’s an accident where we end up in life. Or maybe they’ll be a force of good as in the case of the spinning top, or something useful like a funnel or teepee“
On the Arts Centre gallery floor, a tall, thin wood, carving depicts an intricately-carved Chrysler Building being transported by ocean freighter.
“That piece came out of discussion with a farmer about how the price of grain has stayed the same since the 1970s. I called it ‘Who’s Making All the Bread?’ because the people who actually produce what we eat, or not benefiting.”
Edwards is concerned with making art that’s accessible to the casual viewer, not just artists, so he’s prepared text to accompany some of his work.
“I’m half tempted not to provide any text. But there’s 70 channels on TV competing for everyone’s attention, so it helps to tell the story,“ he says.
The artwork of Alex Turner, and Mike Edwards is on display at the Arts Centre from Oct. 5-29, and at the Art Gallery at City Hall from Oct. 10 to Nov. 5. The artist reception for both shows is on Oct. 17 at City Hall.