Crumpled beer cans, rusting pieces of metal, planks of wood and jagged icebergs of Styrofoam: these disparate objects all come from Tin Can Beach on Saint John’s south peninsula and will become the backbone of a project by local artist KC Wilcox.
“Shedding” is an exploration of the ways in which domestic and natural space intersect and our relationship with the consumer products that often inhabit those spaces at various points of their life span.
“When we purchase an object we are sheltering it in our homes and we hang onto them because they are desirable, they are useful, they are functional, and as soon as one of those three things changes then an object will become un-sheltered and will become ambiguously categorized as trash,” Wilcox said.
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Once collected Wilcox takes the objects and applies rubber latex that, when removed, creates a mould of the object. Wilcox says the process often leaves behind physical remains of the object being cast.
“I work primarily in rubber latex and that is process I really enjoy because when it’s applied to the object it takes a very accurate cast of the form of the object, and also it pulls out some information like dirt, inks, residues, so the cast has a really direct connection, physical connection to the site,” she said.
Each of the items collected come from Tin Can Beach, which Wilcox chose because it’s the only natural space left on the south peninsula that hasn’t been entirely supplanted by industrial uses. Yet the impact of the activity of the working port is still present, making it a perfect point to explore the connection between the man-made and the natural.
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“Part of the reason of what interests me in Tin Can Beach is the intersection between the man made and the natural,” she said.
“As someone who lives in Saint John I’m often confronted with spaces that are both occupied by industry and natural landscape and often quite contrasting each other and I thought Tin Can Beach would be a place that really embodies that idea.”
Wilcox is part way through a week-long residency with Third Space, an artist run centre in Saint John, and her work will be exhibited during Third Shift, a Nuit Blanche-style festival that runs from August 15-17.
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Program coordinator for Third Space, Christiana Myers says part of the mission of the centre is to support emerging New Brunswick artists like Wilcox.
The centre pays all of its artists CARFAC fees which are a sort of wage guide for professional artists.
“We pay the local artists the same amount that we pay somebody that we bring in from Europe or the united States. Established or emerging, everybody gets the same,” Myers said.
“We really want to foster the people who are here to be at that caliber, because they truly are, the work being produced here is amazing. If we can give a platform to that and get them good documentation and good payment and give them a good experience, then they’ll keep their careers going and stay around.”
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