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.
Like The Sled, made two years after this work, Storm Kit draws on the form and content of a small, tin can survival kit common in outdoor supply stores at the time. With this sculpture, Lawrence has enlarged the can to a massive scale, shifting its everyday use value to that of monumental sculptural object and survival shelter. The core of Storm Kit is an expandable wooden structure that collapses for shipping. When set up, this becomes an accordion-like three-dimensional frame for the sculpture’s canvas cover made from a painted truck tarp. The tarp trails off the main body of Storm Kit as a cover for a stockpile of bottled water, a resource that has increasingly become an important Canadian commodity. The interior of the enlarged tin can converts into a collapsible shelter. The figure on the front shown crouching beside a fire and seated inside a makeshift shelter resembles a 19th Century engraving, and was the starting point for this body of work and the construction of The Sled. Through the re-creation of this consumer object meant for survival as both a sculpture and shelter in the gallery context, Lawrence reveals a tension between historical romantic associations with the lone figure in the wilderness “roughing it” and actual life and death survival.
Photo: SITE Photography
