Alternate Landscape

The SBC Gallery continues its investigation into the concept of ‘landscape’ with the second part of its series OIKOS / Habitacles, presenting artists Laëtitia Bourget, Valérie Jouve, and Anne Zahalka.

SBC-LBourget

The 17 minute film Biotope by Bourget documents the intimate daily rituals of an old woman living in a small apartment in a nondescript council estate. Her small interior environment is neat but somewhat claustrophobic. We follow her as she shuffles from room to room, cooking fish, adjusting her hearing aid, waxing her moustache. Contrasting with these scenes of domestic urban life are exterior shots of the estate, accompanied by a soundtrack of vivid birdsong. It is sunny, beetles scurry across the walls of the apartment block, dogs sniff the grass, weeds wrestle their way through the pavement. While both worlds – the interior and the exterior – contrast fundamentally, their deliberate, slow pace harmonizes throughout the film until they seem to be completely in sync.
By the way, the SBC Gallery is the re-incarnation of the now defunct Liane & Danny Taran Gallery at the Saidye Bronfman Centre. To find out more about this new gallery, check out this article.

SBC Gallery
space 507
Laëtitia Bourget | Valérie Jouve | Anne Zahalka
OIKOS / Habitacles
exhibition period: April 26 – May 24, 2008
www.sbcgallery.ca