SHOVE: FILL

Description:

A thematic residency and exhibition project organized by the ODDGallery and KIAC’s Artist in Residence program, The Natural & The Manufactured 2007 presented site-specific exhibitions by Canadian artist Jefferson Campbell-Cooper and American artist Carin Mincemoyer. 

Through annual exhibitions, artist’s talks and outreach activities, The Natural & The Manufactured presents contemporary site-specific and land based art practices to Yukon and visiting audiences. The project as a whole is intended to stimulate and engage people in a re-examination of the various cultural and economic values imposed on the environment, while exploring alternative political, social, economic and aesthetic agendas and strategies towards a re-interpretation of the regional landscape and social infrastructure. 

During a 6-week residency, Campbell-Cooper has produced Shove:  Fill, 2007, consisting of multiple site-specific outdoor sculpture installations. The structures are reminiscent of heavy construction equipment buckets and dredge scoops, that are constructed out of only locally found materials. The pieces are life-sized and as accurate and detailed as possible, providing the potential that they could be fastened to the equipment again. 

The exhibition incorporates materials from the community and surrounding environment. Campbell-Cooper’s use of various materials/debris found at outdoor sites develops an interplay and juxtaposition between consumption & use, and re-use & disposal, all within a larger context that addresses and explores the complexities and contradictions in our relationship to the land and in the activities that signify it. [1]

Campbell-Cooper has sculpted three large tool forms using spruce, willow and driftwood. Shove: Fill I represents seven small dredge buckets shaped like those used in gold mining, and in Shove: Fill II Campbell-Cooper has made a functional front-end loader arm and bucket out of the hard white driftwood found along the river, mostly joined with wooden pins. Shove: Fill III, set up by Dawson City’s ferry docks, depicts a life-size front bulldozer scoop, pieced together of spruce bark discarded by the saw mill, and sewn with fine willow branches. Shove: Fill asks what it means to collect, and considers how these tools are analogs to our bodies, cupped hands, our two-boned forearms, our hinged elbows. The smooth inner bark inside the scoop emulates the scratched-clean inner surface of such a tool, with its lumpy welds, rust and mud on the outside. [2]

References:

[1]      “In the ODD Gallery: The Natural & The Manufactured 2007.” KLONDIKE INSTITUTE OF ART & CULTURE, January 14, 2020. https://kiac.ca/2007/08/16/in-the-odd-gallery-the-natural-the-manufactured-2007/.

[2]    Bauberger, Nicole. “CARIN MINCEMOYER AND JEFFERSON CAMPBELL-COOPER, ‘The Natural and the Manufactured," Aug 16 – Sept 7, 2007, ODD Gallery, Dawson City.” Galleries West, August 31, 2007. https://www.gallerieswest.ca/

Additional information:

“The Natural & The Manufactured.” KLONDIKE INSTITUTE OF ART & CULTURE. Accessed June 29, 2021. https://kiac.ca/odd-gallery/projects/the-natural-the-manufactured/.

Chalykoff, Leighann. “Styrofoam Mountains Rise in Northern Town.” Yukon News. Yukon News, August 16, 2007. https://www.yukon-news.com/news/styrofoam-mountains-rise-in-northern-town/.

“Jefferson Campbell-Cooper Artist Info.” Artist Jefferson Campbell-Cooper Artist Info. Accessed June 29, 2021. http://jeffersonsculpture.com/artistinfo.html.

“Jefferson Campbell-Cooper Shove: Fill 2007.” Upcoming, Jefferson Campbell-Cooper Shove: Fill 2007. Accessed June 29, 2021. http://jeffersonsculpture.com/environmentalart/shovefill2007.html.

Activism, Art, City, Collaborative, Completed Projects, Exhibit, exhibition organization, Gallery, Museum, Partnership, Private, Sculpture, Temporary, Territory, YT, YUK, Yukon, Yukon Territory