Alana Bartol: Orphan Well Adoption Agency

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Alana Bartol, "Orphan Well Adoption Agency," 2018

Opening reception for members and guests // Friday December 14, 7 pm

Water-witching workshop with the artist // Saturday December 15, 1 pm Registration required (limited to 20 people)

Alana Bartol will lead an exploration of the use and tools of dowsing, aka. water-witching. Drawing on her family's history and traditions of divining, Bartol explores dowsing as creative methods in her art practice.

Water-witching is a form of divination used to locate ground water, ores, oil, and information. While there is no scientific evidence that dowsing is accurate, a fascination with this practice persists.

During the workshop, participants will be introduced to the tools and techniques of dowsing. Dowsing tools will be provided, and participants are also welcome to bring their own. All are welcome, even the skeptics.

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Latitude 53 is delighted to present a solo exhibition by Alana Bartol, an artist who creates direct relationships between the personal sphere and the wider landscape in this moment of environmental precarity. While indelibly linked to the contemporary realities of living in the oil-driven province of Alberta and its cyclical economy, Bartol's practice is also imbued with humour. In a re-imagining of industrial remediation, the Orphan Well Adoption Agency (OWAA), operating as a non-profit organization since 2017, finds caretakers for the orphaned oil and gas wells in Alberta that have been abandoned by industry.

In Orphan Well Adoption Agency, Bartol imagines dowsing as an alternative method for environmental remediation in both new and previously-exhibited work. The film TOTAL FIELD presents dowsing as a central technique of the Orphan Well Adoption Agency, and the toolkit of the dowser and the waterways they trace are interwoven throughout the installation. At the core of the exhibition is the OWAA office, where a representative from the organization will be onsite conducting adoption interviews each week.

Since the first round of adoptions in 2017 at TRUCK Contemporary Art in Calgary, Orphan Well Adoption Agency has been a conduit for poetic correspondences from the wells themselves to adopters. These texts, as well as new portraits of the well sites, will be shown at Latitude 53 for the first time, along with recently completed video work. These elements centre communication with the materials and sites of oil exploration, and the discovery of alternative relationships to natural resources and the leftovers of industry.

The Orphan Well Adoption Agency invites members of the public to adopt an orphan well at their offsite office at Latitude 53 from December 7–January 26. Forms will be available during regular gallery hours, and an OWAA representative will be onsite conducting adoption interviews each Saturday during this period from 12–5 pm.