Public Art Projects
JAMES COOPER MANSION
Toronto, Ontario
The multi-sited sculptural work, INVERSION is a comment about our current, local relationship with the age old Canadian and particularly urban interaction with nature. Simply put, nature has now been turned on its head. The threat has gone, the desire is not to fortify our existence against the wilderness which has been tamed to disappearance, but rather, it is now a nostalgic desire to embrace what no longer exists. Our current longing is to return a sense of nature to our environment, not to build walls against its presence, but rather to embrace nature.
The stainless steel supports on which the animals of INVERSION stand are direct references to the soaring condo tower beside which they are sited. Although turned 90 degrees from the horizontal the male deer remains regal, the noble stag a metaphor for strength and the majestic beauty of nature, a reference to a world ordered on stability and strength.
The deer, the wolf, the fox, the animals represented in this public sculpture are ones which would in James Cooper’s time have roamed, if not freely, at least were present in the area. Here represented as realistic sculptural renderings they are intended to invoke a pastoral past, inverted. Presented in this site on their stainless steel bases they are meant to invoke without nostalgia and romanticism a historical past.
The two wolves, the one upright, the other inverted and mirrored, elevated on their stainless steel tower simultaneously guard and welcome. They invoke the notion of guard dogs and the conditions of an era where the protected garrison enclosure was a necessary factor of everyday survival and itself a protection from wolves.
The female deer, the doe, the only one of the animals represented sited at ground level, on a flat stainless steel plate, calmly, peacefully invokes an idealized past and an comfortable presence. The doe on the grass under the protection of trees, half hidden, speaks of harmony and a comfortable presence both inside the enclosure of the Tridel development complex and the streets of the area.
Inversion presents an overall sculptural installation which is at once entertaining, visually striking and disconcerting. The work asks the viewer to question why these animal representations are presented in this unusual manner. Through questioning the viewer cannot help but think of a past which has long ago been replaced by the fenced enclosure, by the benign comfortable garrison.
Animal sculptures are life-size bronzes. Sizes include sculptural supports:
Buck: 18' high
Doe: 6.75' high
Wolf: 13.5' high
Fox: 5' high
All supports: 48" wide x 6" thick