Jonathan Green: Make or Break
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Alberta Printmakers Gallery and Studio 4025 4 Street SE, PO Box 6821 Station D, Calgary, Alberta T2P 2E7
Jonathan Green, "One to Lose: Formwork Mt. Robson," 2017
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Make or Break / Jonathan Green
Opening Reception: March 1 from 7-9pm
"My research is focused on wilderness survival, and ecological change. Particularly temporary and propositional sites – such as camps – where humanity and architecture meet nature.
Charlie Hailey’s 2008 book, Campsite: Architectures of Duration and Place expands metaphorically and literally on the Western conception of camping and campsites. For Hailey, the idea of making, breaking, and clearing a campsite can be useful for providing us with insight about the way we view the ‘wilderness’ as a liminal and separate ‘place’ in our collective conscious. The temporal and semi-permanent architectures of the campsite, or cabin, act as transitional sites – as spaces between the environment and culture. Camps create spaces that are permeable, not just ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ spaces.
I combine my own documentation of the so-called ‘wilderness’ with appropriated images from survival books, and online images of wild landscapes, then merge them with pictures of cabins, construction sites, and modernist, experimental, ‘hippie’ architecture like domes. In these ‘camp’ spaces, our built human environments have the potential to work with or against the reality of nature. These campsites, and their accompanying landscapes, have become a “site of contest” between humanity and nature.”
Jonathan S. Green is of Mi’kmaq and Inuit, and Settler heritage from Labrador City, Newfoundland and Labrador. Green earned an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Alberta, and a BFA from Memorial University of Newfoundland. He has been a recipient of grants from the Canada Council, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Edmonton Arts Council. Green has been an artist in residence at the University of Alaska Anchorage, SNAP Printshop (Edmonton, Alberta), and St. Michael’s Printshop (St. John’s, Newfoundland). He currently resides in Anchorage, Alaska.