Marlene Creates

She lives up to her name. I am simply entranced by the description of one work. You get the feel of it.

Text from the Signs of Our Times exhibition catalogue, 2005. The exhibition was a retrospective traveling show of Marlene Creates's work.

My project is a photo-installation inspired by the geography and diversity of current land use around the edge of St. John's Harbour.

[...] Around St. John's harbour the range of human activity is quite remarkable. Some the features represented in the photographs include: the generating station; the fish plant; the fuel storage tanks; the dockyard; the downtown; the fishing village with its domestic architecture and fishing stages; and, overlooking the entrance to the harbour, the headland which is now a national historic park.

[...] Each pair of photographs is mounted on a plexiglass panel the size of a door and lit from behind. The seven panels stand in the shipping container leaning against the walls, three on each long side and one at the end. A map of St. John's Harbour, with the surrounding land and sea, is centred on the floor, oriented to the photographs. The order of the photographs around the shipping container coincides with the contour of the harbour so that the visitor standing in the container is presented with a coherent portrait of many natural and human features that encircle St. John's Harbour.

Around the Water's Edge, St. John's Harbour, Newfoundland 1995 for Container 96 - Art Across Oceans, Copenhagen, Cultural Capital of Europe, 1996.

What is entrancing (enticing?) is the use of the shipping container and the panorama display with the map orientations. The quotidian landscape is given a scaled dimension which for me is a source of enchantment. It is a testament to the clarity of the description. I haven't seen the piece in person.

And so for day 373
22.12.2007