Somewhere between his trip to Svalbard, Norway, where he sailed around the glaciers of the Arctic circle with 30 other artists, and the start of his new exhibit at the recently threatened Harcourt House, Julian Forrest had the chance to sit down and chat about his new work. The exhibit is called Collapse (Into Now) — it features 12 oil-on-board paintings and is free for public viewing until September 9.
During his trip to Svalbard, he says his fellow artists, who were a scramble of different creatives from all over the world, were always asking and sharing about the places from which they all came. Forrest says he has become increasingly interested in the idea of place and looks to make it a major focus in some upcoming work, but similar to the glaciers he sailed around, the place where his art is displayed — and where he’s painted for 15 years — is also under threat of collapse.
Ever since the province said it wouldn’t renew its lease in 2022, the future of Harcourt House, which houses artists’ studios and galleries, has been uncertain. Where Edmonton Community Artists Network, the group that operates the space, is raising money to acquire the building and recently celebrated a donation of over $100,000. But it needs more time, and the province is still revising WECAN’s request for a three-year extension.
Located just one floor beneath the gallery where his new work is being shown is Forrest’s studio — littered with dozens of canvases, a barebones desk, an Epiphone acoustic guitar, and a turntable spinning Radiohead’s In Rainbows. In the corner is another little canvas and painting area for Forrest’s young daughter.
“It’s nice to have a show here in the building that I’m working in,” he says, sipping a cup of black coffee brewed fresh from the pot he keeps in his studio. “I can literally paint until the last minute and then bring it upstairs.”
This was exactly the case with Collapse (Into Now). He says one work called “I Celebrate Myself” was still dripping wet when he carried it up the stairs. This is the largest canvas in the entire studio and is like a heavy crescendo in the buildup of the exhibit’s paintings. It looks like a mountain of rubble against a stormy clouded sky. Fire, wreckage, and nature can all be seen in various degrees throughout the whole exhibit, but this piece feels like the most violent and destructive synergy.
In fact, the whole exhibit builds up to this piece, starting in nature with several more romantic landscape pieces. Two in particular, “Dock II” and “White Cabin,” stick out because their fiery colour palettes are so reminiscent of the tinge of orange forest-fire smoke. It reminds me of attempted getaways during a twisted summer of extreme heat and dreadful forest fires.
Forrest says, “Fire can be something we warm ourselves around; it can be a beacon that calls to us in distress. It can be obviously something that’s gone wrong; it can be in nature intervening. It can be that we as humans tend to burn things down.”
The theme is evident through almost all of his work here and recognizable in the similar rising plumes of smoke and fire that rise from wreckage, bunkers and space objects alike.
By space objects, I mean items like the lunar landers seen in “Major Tom,” an image that looks like it could be from an Edmonton Journal newspaper clipping circa 1970, with the black and white suburban setting. But then there is a Pepto Bismol-pink sky in the background and a lunar lander in the forefront, bleeding a cloud of fire out from its head.
Forrest says during the pandemic, “I started thinking about bunkers, and you know, closed-in capsules like lunar landers, and how do you react to these things when you’re closing in, and things are collapsing around you?”
While the province has made numerous cuts to the University of Alberta, where Forrest teaches (at Augustana Campus), and while it also threatens Harcourt House, where Forrest paints, he continues to focus on his art — even as his art world might collapse around him.
Collapse into Julian Forrest’s new exhibit at Harcourt House Until September 9.
