Two installations of work that explore water, fluidity and transformation as evidence of the cyclical nature of time. Miner’s visual propositions avoid a didactic opinion on water, instead posing questions about the disruption of its cycles by climate change as witnessed in our age. Two of Miner’s images reference an exposed “eye” of blue ice photographed on the Columbia Icefield during an artists’ residency at the Banff Centre in 2012. When Miner revisited in late 2014, looking for the site he was struck with dramatic change—the terrain had shifted. The ice was blackened with a soot-like substance, perhaps a by-product of nearby forest fires. That day, rain and lack of light prevented a second photograph. It was back in the studio that the artist decided to recompose the original image through an “inversion” of colour. Miner’s juxtaposition of the two images, the two “eyes” facing one another, shows a transition from dark to light telling a troubling story of how rapidly nature and water can and do shift. Inherent in the layering of imagery in a third image is the phenomenon of the residual light “shadow” on the viewer’s retina—the highlights in the photograph burn white. Perching on the frame, the artist has attached a sprue (a bronze casting by product taken from the conduit to the mold in the foundry process) to which he clips a card with a geometric shape and an excision of white frail paper acting as a visual key to an absent neon work. In this complex manifestation, the artist raises the paradox of presence and absence in art. The artist reminds us that water has a liquid intelligence that offers a potentiality—it is only when objects emerge, becoming separate from water, that they acquire the limitations of time.
Research project consisting of residency (Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, 2013); exhibitions at Rodman Hall (St. Catherines, 2014) & Art Gallery of Windsor (2018/19); and book publication with essay contributions. PDF
Installation views. HD video, neons, C-print, colour photogram, photographic backdrop paper, corkboard, push-pins, paint, wax, and dye.
