Calgary, Alberta, Canada
TRUCK Contemporary Art in Calgary
A small, one-room structure built from salvaged wood filled the center of the gallery at TRUCK. Apparently an office, it contained a desk, a recycling bin, a fake plant, and a clock, whose minute and hour hands never moved. The desk was neatly arranged with papers and files, just like any regular office desk. The walls were decorated with photographs of oil derricks, their mechanisms caught mid-movement, bobbing toward the ground to source the black gold that made Alberta rich. This sculptural installation-cumworkspace– an Orphan Well Adoption Agency (OWAA)–formed the centerpiece of Alana Bartol’s exhibition “In Blood and Bone.” After the collapse of the Alberta oil industry over the last few years, many wells, which for decades had been sourcing one of the province’s most lucrative exports, were abandoned and left standing as ghostly relics of a short-sighted economic enterprise…see the entire review in the print version of July/August’s Sculpture magazine.
