Artist Laura St. Pierre combines installation, sculpture, and photography to generate a narrative around the history of plants, living reminders of places and ecosystems threatened by human development. Originally from Saskatoon, where every year forest fires transform the region\u2019s boreal forests, St. Pierre bears witness to humanity\u2019s disembodied relationship with nature and the devastating consequences of extractive policies on the environment and our future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Spectral Garden<\/em>, a photographic series developed over the past decade, St. Pierre highlights a kind of \u201carchaeology of the future.\u201d Comprising plants and herbs gathered in Saskatoon and immersed in isopropyl alcohol to maintain their form and stop them from withering, Spectral Garden<\/em>ensures the preservation of an emerging past. The various plant specimens (common \u2014 at least until now), kept in everyday containers (pots, bottles, and jars), were photographed and enlarged in super resolution, and then printed on velvet paper. Skilfully lit in intimate Caravaggio-style chiaroscuro, the landscapes form eerie compositions whose gloomy aesthetic and philosophical allegories borrow from the pictorial genre of still-life painting. As tacit and resilient witnesses to the climatic tragedy playing out around and<\/em> within it, this community of plants, gathered and removed from the mutability of time, assumes the form of a memento mori to the uncertain future of nature and humanity. St. Pierre\u2019s latest photographic series, The Sowers,<\/em>explores this reciprocity more specifically through a series of urban gardens resembling small makeshift greenhouses. Set in derelict buildings or asphalted courtyards, these ephemeral installations suggest a symbiosis, a mutual cross contamination, between the artificial and the natural. Examining the domestication of plants inherent in gardens, the artist proposes adopting a benevolent attitude toward the vegetal world. Metaphors for this embodied commitment to plant care<\/em>, St. Pierre\u2019s gardens are a force of political resistance, evidence of a possible and necessary alliance between humans and nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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$\"Laura$
Laura St. Pierre
<\/strong>Boreal 6 (Spectral Garden)<\/em>, 2018.
Photos : courtesy of the artist & VivianeArt, Calgary<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Laura$
Laura St. Pierre
<\/strong>Boreal 1 (Spectral Garden)<\/em>, 2016.
Photos : courtesy of the artist & VivianeArt, Calgary<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Laura$
Laura St. Pierre
<\/strong>Poolside Garden (The Sowers)<\/em>, detail, 2018.
Photos : courtesy of the artist & VivianeArt, Calgary<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Laura$
Laura St. Pierre
<\/strong>Berm near Tracks (The Sowers)<\/em>, 2019.
Photos : courtesy of the artist & VivianeArt, Calgary<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Laura St. Pierre
<\/strong>Hothouse (The Sowers)<\/em>, 2019.
Photo : courtesy of the artist & VivianeArt, Calgary<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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