Addressing Climate Change Through Art
Ceramist Emilie Grace Lavoie examines the beauty and ugliness of nature in her sculptures.
On January 18th, a new exhibition opened at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery that featured Lavoie’s work called Environment.
Lavoie’s latest body of work is inspired from her growing awareness of the current environmental crisis. The sculptures are all hand built with textures and shapes that reflect parts of underwater ecology.
“We were thinking of ecology in terms of the natural environment as well as the gallery environment. The gallery environment has so many different rules and different ways where you have to restrain your body, restrain the way you use your voice which makes you see art work differently,” says Outreach Coordinator Christina Thomson, who Co-Curated the exhibition along with Johnny Leroux.
Lavoie uses textures and colours to address many climate changes issues such as human impact on the environment and our health.
Speiciosa is one of the many sculptures featured in the Environment exhibition.
The figure stands on two feet, which are the only recognizable human anatomy part of the piece.
From there, it slowly grows up and gets covered by masses of leafy and geological formations that could represent that human health is deeply impacted by environmental changes.
The sculpture that stands at around 5’7’’ has been displayed nationally and internationally. In 2017, it won a silver medal at the Jeux de le Francaphonie in the Ivory Coast where Lavoie represented New Brunswick, Canada.
In addition, Lavoie has sculpted pieces in response to many of the works in the gallery. One of her pieces called Azur is featured next to the Lucille Pillow Porcelain collection which dates back several hundred years in England. The collection has been a part of the gallery since its opening. Azur is a heart-shaped sculpture that resembles coral reef textures and is blue, like the Lucille Pillow Porcelain collection.
“Lavoie is looking at the economic system of porcelain, looking at the environmental impact of creating porcelain by mining and digging up the clays and looking at the connections from and China and all around the world where this comes from,” says Thomson.
The Environment exhibition is on now until July 5th at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery.