Beyond the Stone Angel: artists reflect on the death of their parents
MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, Saskatchewan, October 2021- February 2022
Mortsaf for My Father: Sanctuary, 102" x 73", acrylic on birch panels, 2021.
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Boulders and stones are memory markers for the deep bond that was formed between Montreal artist Deborah Carruthers and her father at their family cabin at Lac Rainbow-en-haut in the Laurentian Mountains. In Mortsaf for My Father: Safe Passage, the skeleton of an antique cedar canoe cradles a pile of rocks from the lake that is equal to her father’s weight.Invented in the nineteenth century, mortsafes were iron cages weighted with stones to prevent the exhumation of bodies for medical research. Carruthers adopts this forgotten apparatus as a metaphor for post-mortem care that expresses the tension between protecting memories and allowing them to travel and transform.
Emanating from the canoe is a new music piece, created in collaboration with Terri Hron and Norm Adams, that uses the trajectory of the creek leading to the lake as the basis for the score. Large paintings of massive granite boulders continue the journey by recalling significant stopping points for father and daughter on the trail around the lake.
Emanating from the canoe is a new music piece, created in collaboration with Terri Hron and Norm Adams, that uses the trajectory of the creek leading to the lake as the basis for the score. Large paintings of massive granite boulders continue the journey by recalling significant stopping points for father and daughter on the trail around the lake.
Timothy Long, Curator
