Nicolas Fleming and Stephen Fisher at Eastern Edge

I had been looking forward to this show for quite some time, not only due to my interest in landscape in visual art, but also because of the project Nicolas Fleming has planned for when he visits sometime later in May.

Fleming, from Montreal, is put into a canvas bag, while wearing a canvas suit with no eye-holes, and brought into a non-urban enviroment. By which I mean a park, the woods, whatever. Fleming crawls around on the ground, attempting to get a feel for the landscape only through what he can touch and hear and smell. As you can imagine, the video documentation of this performance is hilarious, as we watch Fleming (who just looks like a canvas coloured blob on screen) sort of roll around on the grass while people look on. Fleming then takes what information he has gathered through this performance and attempts to make an accurate depiction of the landscape in a painting.

On display right now at Eastern Edge is the documentation and paintings from two previous performances Fleming did as a sort of teaser for when he actually arrives in St. John's.

Paired with Fleming is Stephen Fisher from Halifax, whose bright dynamic abstract paintings are just wonderful to look at and are just as interesting conceptually. What Fisher has done is to take data related to a particular location: weather patterns, animal migration routes, geological events etcetera and translates this data into visual elements.

When I see work that deals with landscape in this way it makes all of the traditional stuff that dominates Newfoundland art production seem that much more tedious. It runs until June 17th.