Signs of Life is a two-person exhibition consisting of videos, sculptures, and drawings that involve the artists’ interactions with remote landscapes and objects that more typically exist in the periphery of consciousness. From Brett’s short video segments creating make-shift architectural movie sets out of obsolete, modified farming implements, panoramic prairie crop land, bleak Icelandic landscapes, and construction site materials, to Reid’s videos of the shadows cast over and by a set of six broken and discarded objects she found while in Dawson City in 2010, their work attempts to breathe new life into abandoned, neglected, and overlooked objects and scenery.
BIOGRAPHIES
Tyler Brett and Kerri Reid are visual artists originally from BC, who studied art at Emily Carr in Vancouver. In 2010, Brett invited Reid to the small rural town of Bruno, Saskatchewan, to be the first artist-in-residence in the old bank building he had recently purchased. They ended up getting married and co-directing the Bruno Arts Bank as a thriving arts centre – artist residency/music venue/coffee shop/gallery/mini-museum/record and bookshop/etc – for the next three years. Brett and Reid recently sold the Arts Bank and have relocated back to BC to Sointula, a small fishing village on Malcolm Island that was originally settled by Finnish socialist utopians. (‘Sointula’ means ‘place of harmony’ in Finnish.) They are in the process of starting up a new small arts centre that will include an artist residency, venue, and a shop in a shed: The Sointula Art Shed. Brett and Reid also perform Tyler’s music as The Department, with recent performances in Reykjavik, in San Francisco at SFMOMA, and in Bruno, Saskatchewan at the Seniors’ Friendship Centre for Seniors’ Appreciation Day.
The artists wish to acknowledge the support provided by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Saskatchewan Arts Board in the production of this exhibition.