Visitors to a new display at Richmond Art Gallery (RAG) will have the opportunity to feel how strange it is to stroll through a forest.
Landscape paintings by Derek Liddington, titled ‘The Trees Weep,’ ‘The Mountain Still,’ and ‘The Bodies Rust,’ provide an immersive experience with a fresh perspective on the genre.
Visitors will be challenged to reconsider how they perceive and interact with the natural surroundings through a series of “dense as the forest” paintings that lack directional visual clues.
According to curator Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre, “the outcome is an experience that is simultaneously unsettling and interesting, as the viewer seeks to locate themselves spatially and chronologically.”
During his 2019 residency at Grey Church in Vancouver, Liddington first found inspiration in the trees of British Columbia and started experimenting with landscape painting. Since then, he has kept looking for new methods to incorporate the immediacy of live movement in woods as well as the vastness of space and distance into his paintings.
The Musée D’Art de Joliette in Québec initially displayed The trees weep. The Richmond version will have fresh artwork, such as a painting that makes use of RAG’s special location.
According to the press release, “Visitors will alternatively witness the curves of a huge body and the horizon of low-lying hills as they wander through the gallery to observe the mural.”
Between November 19, 2022, and January 15, 2023, ‘The Bodies Rust’, ‘The Mountain Is Silent’, and “The Trees Weep’ will be exhibited.
On Saturday, November 19, Liddington and St-Jean Aubre will host a free drop-in exhibition tour and talk. A collage party motivated by Liddington’s exhibition is planned for January the following year.