By Samuel Roberts
After lying mostly dormant for over 40 years, LeBreton Flats is finally set for major redevelopment.
Local graphic design artist Lorraine Gilbert has created a surprising new exhibition documenting the state of the area before building work goes ahead. Entitled LeBreton Flats – Fauna and Fauna, her new work is now showing at the Karsh-Masson Gallery.
Gilbert says she created the work, which comes at a significant time in the history of the area, simply because she likes to make art of the world around her.
“I live here and I believe in making art of one’s everyday life,” she says.
Gilbert became interested in the fauna growing on LeBreton Flats and also by the debris left behind at a site used by graffiti artists. She created digital collages of these two aspects, which she split into the two halves of her exhibition — Fieldworks and The Messengers.
“Fieldworks is like a document or an old fashioned botanical study of a vacant lot,” says Gilbert.
Rather than pressing and drying the plants in a traditional fashion, Gilbert digitally scanned individual plant cuttings she found before virtually assembling them together on screen.
The end result is a large, realistic, high-resolution print now on display at the gallery. This main piece is accompanied by smaller prints of individual flowers.
Gilbert says her idea was to create something unexpected from the natural plants that she scanned.
“It’s very manipulated,” she says. “I use new technologies a lot. Photography should show the world around people in a fresh way and through different eyes.”
Daniel Sharp, a resident who lives near LeBreton Flats, went to see the exhibition and was surprised by what he saw.
“I found the fauna frankly astonishing,” says Sharp. “She had virtually collaged and assembled them into a huge panorama. The detail of each plant was amazing.”
Sharp says Gilbert’s exhibition changed the way he now looks at LeBreton Flats.
“After I saw her show, I was walking and decided to walk through those fields and was able to see the whole neighbourhood differently,” he says. “Really good art has the ability to change the way you see things.”
Signe Jeppeson, the gallery assistant at Karsh-Masson, says the technique Gilbert used to create the prints has been a point of interest among visitors to the exhibition.
“They’re interested in how she’s done it because you don’t usually see images of plants presented in this way,” says Jeppeson. “It’s amazing how she’s managed to do that with the clarity and really good colours as well.”
The second part of Gilbert’s exhibition, entitled The Messengers, reconstructs a graffiti site Gilbert found near a historic water mill on LeBreton Flats. She mapped out and created digital collages of the ground, full of spray cans and rubbish, that graffiti artists had left behind.
Gilbert says her aim was to convey the reflection that the scene made of society at large, rather than to examine the work of the graffiti artists.
“I’m not glorifying their work as artists,” she says. “The garbage I found from the time they had spent there each night is a mirror of our society and the society they criticize.”
Gilbert says the graffiti artists have messages the rest of society needs to listen to. “We are not respectful of our environment.”
Sharp says he thinks the exhibition comes at a poignant time in the history of LeBreton Flats.
“It’s significant because the area is going to change,” he says. “There is so much history, sociology and politics related to that site. This exhibition is about exploring and seeing LeBreton Flats carefully before it is developed.”
Gilbert says she also thinks the area should be appreciated in its current state before it is developed.
“It’s about looking at where we live and our environment,” she says. “There are other values in land other than development.”
LeBreton Flats – Fauna and Fauna will be showing at the Karsh-Masson Gallery until Jan 7.