Water Conversations – Alberta, 2015

Locations: Lake Miniwanka, Banff National Park ( 51°50’0” N, 115°55’00” W) and Lafarge Exshaw cement factory ( 51°3’39”N, 115°10’19”W) outside Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada.

Water Conversations – Alberta was a performative walk with sculpture devised to call attention to the complex contradictions that exist in the beautiful wilderness of Western Canada, where fossil fuel extraction impacts local water bodies and global climate change. Macleod carried a portable sculpture from recycled rubber and aluminium as a counter-monument through troubled landscapes.

Video documentation of the performative walk was in collaboration with film-maker, David Bickerstaff atomictv.com

OH Alberta: Bewildered in Banff is a series of photographs of an embroidered banner taken for a walk through the town of Banff in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The banner was a site of protest and a mobile memorial to the removed indigenous peoples whose former summer hunting grounds were in the Bow River Valley. The land was cleared of people to make way for tourism to Banff hot springs and the ‘wilderness’ of the Canadian Rocky Mountains.

Excluded from Banff National Park between 1890 and 1920, the first nations of the Nakoda peoples reservation is located east of Banff National Park and is the third largest Indian reserve in Canada. Known as Stoney 142, 143 and 144, the reserve was badly damaged by a flood in 2013 with hundreds of residents evacuated from their homes.

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FIELDWORK DOCUMENTS

Image credits (from top)

Black and white photographs, Alex Bishop-Thorpe alexbishopthorpe.com
OH Alberta: Bewildered in Banff photograph, Nicole Lattuca

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EXHIBITION

Water Conversation – Alberta, exhibition view
Anna Macleod: Water Conversations, A survey of Works, 2007-2015, The Dock, 2015
Exhibition photo: Peter Young

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ARTIST
Anna Macleod