Lucy Skaer & Nashashibi/Skaer: Farness, the more near

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Nashashibi/Skaer, "Lamb," 2019

16mm film transferred to HD video, courtesy of the artists.

Lucy Skaer & Nashashibi/Skaer: Farness, the more near 

Opening Reception September 25 at 7 PM

Anne Carson’s essay "Decreation" notes the compound term le Loingprès coined by Christian mystic Marguerite Porete (1250-1310) to describe God's unseen presence. Le Loingprès meaning “the FarNear” was used by Porete in describing a connection with a Being whose absence fills the world.

Inside her own telling Marguerite Porete sets up a little ripple of disbelief—a sort of distortion in the glass—as if to remind us that this dream of distance is after all just a dream. At the end of her book she returns to the concept one last time, saying simply: Farness is the more Near. —"Decreation," Anne Carson, p.176

Lucy Skaer’s practice calls others to converse across great distances, generations, and species in a manner reminiscent of the FarNear. The inherent qualities of materials found in her works of wood, paper, or ceramic, reveal narratives of similarity across those distances. For example, she notes that the line of granite along the Southern Alberta landscape has the same mineral fragments as the beds of granite penetrating the Scottish mountains near her studio. Geological processes are universal and yet, hardly detectable.

Skaer replicates the material qualities of bodies, animals, and architectural objects so that we might recognize these elements in another context, however far apart they might seem. Skaer visited geographic sites across the Alberta badlands, reflecting on Southern Alberta’s extractive clay industry, land use, and boundaries. Once dug up, clay is refashioned into settler goods and infrastructure like water pipes which once again return to the ground. Skaer’s newest series of ceramic animal pelts draws a connection between the colonial domestication of land with the taming of animals.

Like the idea of the FarNear, the perceived rift between the subjectivities of humans and animals might also just be a dream. The presence of animals, enclosures, and markers of land in Skaer’s exhibition recall the colonial process of domestication, of taming land and its inhabitants for material gain. The film Lamb (2015) and its new companion piece Bear (2021) compresses the perceived distance between species by turning the camera towards the domestic relationships of sheep. Lamb was shot over the course of several mornings in a farmer’s lambing shed near Skaer’s house in the Outer Hebrides archipelago. Ewes are seen giving birth and tending to their lambs, reflecting upon the omnipresence of matrilineal ties.

In the Upper Gallery, the film Why Are You Angry? (2017) is just one work featured from Skaer's ongoing collaborative practice with Rosalind Nashashibi. Since 2005, Nashashibi/Skaer have produced collaborative films that respond to their exchanges between artistic practices as painter and sculptor. These films emphasize familial ties and connections among the animals and plants that inhabit our immediate surroundings.

Why Are You Angry? is named after Paul Gaugin's painting No te aha oe riri (Why Are You Angry?) of 1896. Skaer and Nashashibi retrace the French painter's journey to Tahiti over a century later. Originally premiering at documenta 14 in Athens, the film reclaims representations of exoticised women and reveals the connectedness of the colonial project with the art historical cannon.

Curated by Adam Whitford and Kristy Trinier.

Production assistance provided by the Calgary Zoo.

Lucy Skaer was born in Cambridge, UK, and currently lives and works in Glasgow. She is primarily a sculptor who works across various mediums, including print, film and drawing. Skaer's works often depicts relationships between abstraction and the direct material nature of objects. Many of her works are drawn from historical references which are translated and re-contextualized in new mediums and places. In 2009, Skaer was shortlisted for the Turner Prize, and in 2007, she represented Scotland at the 52nd Venice Biennale.

Rosalind Nashashibi lives and works in London, where she is also a Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths University. She won the Beck’s Futures prize in 2003, represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2017. That same year, she also participated in documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel. She has recently exhibited at the CAAC, Seville (2019), Secession, Vienna (2018) and Witte de With, Rotterdam (2018).

Nashashibi/Skaer is the joint practice of Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer. They have exhibited at Tate, St. Ives (2018), Musée Matisse, Le Cateau Cambrésis (2013), Musée du Château des ducs de Wurtemberg, Montbéliard (2012) and Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid (2012). Their films have been screened at documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2017), Tate Modern, London (2017) and Tate, St. Ives (2016).

This exhibition was made possible with funding assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the City of Lethbridge. Production support provided by the Calgary Zoo.