Graham Landin
A drifting tide of materials makes landfall.
Graham Landin, “Triangle Beach,” 2022, installation view at Pale Fire, Vancouver (photo by NK Photo)
At first, I notice the smell of freshly cut cedar. Then I see Fuchsia Flipflop, a crudely carved sandal casually dropped on the floor. Triangle Beach, on view at Vancouver’s Pale Fire Gallery until Nov. 26, features 13 collages and sculptures by Graham Landin. He lives outside Vancouver on a rural property next to the Fraser River and his show, comprised of artifacts that have washed up on shore, prompts reflection and admiration. He calls his pieces inlets “in that they let in all the stuff I’ve been collecting.”
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Graham Landin, “Drift Seeds” (detail), 2022
red cedar and coconuts, 10” x 82” x 8” (photo by NK Photo)
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Graham Landin, “Drift Seeds,” 2022
red cedar and coconuts, 10” x 82” x 8” (photo by NK Photo)
Fraser River Flotsam, for instance, features footwear, glassware, driftwood and timber fragments embedded in plaster. Boom Boards refers to identification tags affixed to log booms while Plowland contains boom boards and more glassware – whatever prevailing currents have brought to shore. This flow of materials from other places and cultures is a recurring theme perhaps best exemplified by Drift Seeds, a rough-hewn shelf containing 13 coconuts, some of which may have floated in from Polynesia.
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Graham Landin, “Intertidal Topography,” 2021
driftwood, beach glass, foam, hardware and polymer-modified plaster, 57” x 45” x 2” (photo by NK Photo)
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Graham Landin, “Intertidal Topography” (detail), 2021
driftwood, beach glass, foam, hardware and polymer-modified plaster, 57” x 45” x 2” (photo by NK Photo)
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Graham Landin, “Intertidal Topography” (detail), 2021
driftwood, beach glass, foam, hardware and polymer-modified plaster, 57” x 45” x 2” (photo by NK Photo)
His pieces are fun and relatable, and while it would be easy to dismiss Triangle Beach as folk art, Landin is dealing with serious topics, albeit in an unconventional way, and crafts his pieces with care and deliberation. There’s nothing random about Intertidal Topography, a collage of driftwood, off-cuts and found objects. Horizontal and vertical planes are perfectly balanced and arranged. A chunk of green glass interrupts the grey and brown palette.
Graham Landin, “Labyrinth,” 2021
red cedar and enamel paint, 48” x 35” x 2” (photo by NK Photo)
Landin, a graduate of Emily Carr University of Art and Design, says he likes building things and uses a variety of tools and techniques. Labyrinth, for instance, is a single piece of wood made to look like a series of interwoven, interlapping planes. It was carved with a chainsaw.
Ah, the chainsaw. I admit I associate that tool with kitschy tourist art. But for me, it consolidates Landin’s love of nature, history and architecture.
His true passion, he has said, is grafting cacti – adding parts of other plants to create “something greater than the individual.” Organic sculptures, if you will.
Graham Landin, “Precarious Scenario,” 2021
red cedar, 49” x 12” x 12” inches (photo by NK Photo)
The work came together when he moved to the country and rediscovered his love of nature and carpentry. He likes the chainsaw for its immediacy and the rough-hewn forms it yields. Once he had mastered the tool, he built a series of structures. The first was a greenhouse for his cacti. That, in turn, led to making art, starting with representational wooden cactus sculptures and moving on to conceptual pieces like Precarious Scenario. Crafted from a single block of wood, it looks like a delicately balanced pile of cement blocks that could collapse at any moment. It’s a statement on fragility.
“A lot of things we regard as solid and forever are often more precarious than we think,” says Landin.
Graham Landin, “Troglodyte Tower,” 2022
red cedar, 66” x 15” x 16” inches (photo by NK Photo)
Troglodyte Tower, also crafted from a single piece of cedar, is more refined, the result of turning the blade horizontally to shave the surface rather than gouging it. Dark creosote stains that run down its length betray its former life as a wharf piling.
History is but one of the themes running through Triangle Beach. Context is important, however, and I would have liked a more prominent display of the wonderful broadsheet backgrounder that ties Landin and his art to the land. ■
Graham Landin, Triangle Beach, at the Pale Fire Gallery in Vancouver from Sept. 8 to Nov. 26, 2022.
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Pale Fire Gallery
866 East Broadway, Vancouver, British Columbia V5T 1Y1
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