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BELINDA HARROW (Regina, SK) | GIANT BINGO
D’Arcy Wilson (Halifax) and Belinda Harrow (Regina) use animal stereotypes to explore our desire for connection. Through video, sculpture, drawing and performance, their work considers how clichés frequently form the starting point for our interactions with wild animals – and with each other.
Harrow looks to animals’ mating habits and playfully, yet poetically, explores questions about human rituals of seduction. “Giant Bingo” is a progression of drawings and soft sculptures that combine Bingo cards and beavers.
Beavers are monogamous and mate for life, while humans act out an impressive range of complicated actions when it comes to finding, seducing and keeping a mate. Harrow transfers the gamble and excitement of playing Bingo to the process of internet dating, and conflates them into drawn and sewn beavers.
Wilson also looks to animal behaviour, literally capturing a record of animal actions on camera. “Fleshold” is a series of videos from an installation, or collaboration, she did with animals at a wildlife rescue centre in New Brunswick. She hand-stitched “comforting” quilts for nine wild animals in rehabilitation and stood back to let the animals chew, shred and paw the fabric to fits their own needs. She documented their interactions on camera.
“The wild animal has become a constructed being. I am subsequently interested in the absence of wildlife in its original form for this culture, and the psychological consequences for the human victim,” says Wilson.
Exhibition Brochure by Meg Walker