1985 to 2005
Works by Donald Lawrence from the 1980s through to the early 2000s bring together a myriad of interests in the conventions of museum display, surveying techniques, early photographic forms, journaling, DIY (do-it-yourself) construction and the meeting place of art and “wilderness.” The research trajectories from this time period emerge through multiple elements where ephemeral research, journals, surveys of sites, photographs, drawings and large-scale sculptures comprise each project. Lawrence’s recognition that history, technology and methods of display provide a context for understanding objects and sites can be traced to his childhood, as evidenced in his family’s Drumheller Albertosaurus artifact.
The works made during this time period share an underlying interest in the intersection of what Lawrence refers to as urban and “wilderness” cultures, highlighting Lawrence’s personal interest in the outdoors and his critical examination of our relationship with nature. Lawrence’s presence is evident within each work; he positions himself as researcher, explorer and inventor through the performative activity of surveying or photographing the landscape and by embedding highly personal experiences through his outdoor adventurer and innovator persona. His work embodies the romanticism of the independent pioneer central to mythologies of conquering the wild while being self-reflexively aware of the history of the colonization of North America and the tensions implicit in this type of exploration.
Lawrence’s sculptures and technological apparatus are often made from found materials and their form and function is invented anew. The hand of the artist and the process of making are revealed in each work. In The Sled (1995) Lawrence takes on the persona of a frontiersman, adapting his habitat for survival; in Fiddle Reef Remembered (2006) Lawrence imagines the potential return of an historical lighthouse and in Torhamvan/Ferryland (2005) he recalls 19th century technology in reconstructing a shipwreck site as as a theatrical set and optical illusion. With the Underwater Pinhole Photography Project Lawrence adapts industrialized materials into one-of-a-kind objects. These early conceptual and formal proposals provide a tension between criticality and romanticism. Lawrence’s interest in the natural world, our place in it and our representation of it, provoke timely questions about our impact on the environment in relation to historical and contemporary continuums.
The Beach
1985
mixed media installation
The Beach, an installation in the apartment of a friend, Calvin Whyte, a project from the final year of my BFA studies, is a precursor to several later bodies of work. The installation, an elaborate tableau constructed in Calvin’s apartment, was based upon a specific camp and shelter that myself and a couple of friends (re)constructed during each of four years near Bamfield, on Vancouver Island’s west coast. Calvin lived for several months in the installation prior to adapting its components to better serve his needs.
Romantic Commodities
1991-1993
mixed media installation
This body of work explores urban experience and commodity culture in relation to notions of “wilderness.” The subject is rooted in Donald Lawrence’s enduring interest in museum display in relation to cultural objects and experiences, as well as his personal interest in sea-kayaking. At the time of the first exhibition of Romantic Commodities in 1993, Lawrence was outfitting a folding Klepper kayak for a trip to Scotland’s Outer Hebrides and this body of work came out of his critical inquiry into the manner in which we provision ourselves to go into the “wilderness”. This body of work includes photographs of museum and outfitting company displays along with photographic tableaus created like 19th Century, urban and frontier-town studio photographs, outdoor merchandise (such as a rack or Gore-Tex® clothing) and sculptural works, including Storm Kit.
The Sled
1995
mixed media installation
Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery Acquisition Fund
The Sled was constructed during a residency at the Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta and is derived from the image on the face of a small survival Storm Kit which features a figure crouched beside a fire and inside a makeshift shelter. In relation to survival, The Sled offers relative luxury. The fire depicted on the Storm Kit is replaced here by a Coleman lantern, Coleman heater, Whisperlite stove and an Outback Oven, all carefully stowed in The Sled’s framework. The Sled’s cave-like interior was designed and built around these items.
Drumheller Albertosaurus
2005
family artifacts
In 1966, when Donald Lawrence’s oldest brother Hamish was 12 years old, he excavated the fossilized femur of an Albertosaurus near Drumheller, Alberta. The artifact has remained in Lawrence’s family ever since and has been moved back and forth across the country several times, encased in its original bed of plaster and crate. In addition to the bone, other artifacts and numerous documents accompany the object, speaking to its prominence in the family: photographs; newspaper columns written by Lawrence’s brother Iain; a map of the site drawn by his father Raymond; and a video of Lawrence’s father explaining its origins as well as the bone’s appearance on a quilt created by Lawrence’s siblings and extended family for his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary in 2003.
Torhamvan/Ferryland
2005
installation, on-site survey drawings and ephemera, preliminary model
An abbreviation of the place names along the ship’s original route between Toronto, Hamilton, and Vancouver, this installation records the present-day site of the 1926 shipwreck of the S.S. Torhamvan at Ferryland, Newfoundland. Two of the ship’s Scotch boilers, artifacts of late 19th Century industrial and maritime culture, rest on the rocks of Coldeast Point, Newfoundland along with other debris that is mostly covered by the sea at high tide.
Lighthouse Kit – Fiddle Reef Remembered
2006
mixed media, interactive installation
Fiddle Reef Remembered was created in 2006 during a residency with Thompson Rivers University (TRU) colleague Will Garrett-Petts in The Lab at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria as part of Witness Marks: Exploring the Exotic Close to Home. The project explored small islands located in Victoria’s Oak Bay including Fiddle Reef, a low-lying islet about a mile off Willows Beach that covers up at high tide except for a cylindrical navigational beacon and its stonework base.