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.
The stonework base represented in Lawrence’s model is the site of the former Fiddle Reef Light Station, which was operational from 1898 to 1978. Lawrence had been fascinated with the lighthouse structure when he saw it from the beach shortly after his family moved to Victoria in 1975. Fiddle Reef Remembered and Portable Lighthouse imagine a portable, kayak-towable lighthouse and its potential return to Fiddle Reef and are presented by Lawrence as a conceptual “kit,” like much of his DIY (do-it-yourself) work. Through this nostalgic re-creation Lawrence embeds romanticism within a conceptual proposal.
The work includes the model and drawings, derived from precise on-site mapping of the reef’s topography at different tide levels, that re-imagine the lighthouse returned to Fiddle Reef as a façade-like construction. The model was assembled with items Lawrence collected from thrift stores and garage sales during his six-week residency. Visitors to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria were invited to share their own stories of these islands and the surrounding area, including drawings, photographs and maps of the area, which were exhibited alongside Lawrence’s work and Garrett-Petts’ work (a recollection of a nearby island and an accompanying super 8mm film from the 1970s), offering collective remembering through diverse characterizations of the islands.
Fiddle Reef Remembered details Lawrence’s enduring interest in mapping and public engagement, which have manifested in the several interdisciplinary research projects he has undertaken with the English, Geography, and Sociology programs at TRU in collaboration with colleagues and students. This project marks the first time Lawrence integrated this collaborative, interdisciplinary research into his artistic production in a significant way.
