Public Artwork
Think of England
Artwork creator(s):
Knowles, Rachelle Viader
Text author(s):
Knowles, Rachelle Viader
Installation year:
2008
Remarks on location:
Located across from the Dunlop Art Gallery
Description:
The sun never sets refers both to Regina's status as "The Queen City", named after Queen Victoria Regina, and the brilliant prairie sunshine that bathes its streets and parks. The name of Victoria Park connects it to colonial England, and places it in several contexts; a local context as the main downtown square and a global context as a member of a worldwide "club" of Victoria Parks. Similarly, the architecture that surrounds the park is influenced by international styles and trends of the last 100 years, with often regional characteristics that allow the buildings to co-exist and form the spatial edge of the park. New works by Rachelle Viader Knowles and Don Gill explored Victoria Park today: as a concept and a place, juxtaposed with a history of Victoria Park and the buildings which rose around it. Rachelle Viader Knowles' work included a video installation/link-up with her niece in Victoria Park, Cardiff, Wales, and an intervention in Regina's Park. The words "Think of England" were inscribed on the ground cover. Don Gill created a photo-based "archive" of the neighbourhoods he traverses, in and around Victoria Park, including the buildings examined in the exhibition.
Text of the artwork:
Think of England
Text theme:
England
Artwork theme:
Colonization, British colonial assimilation, cultural and national identity
History:
Part of the Regina Public Library Centennial Celebrations, Think of England was left untended once the show was over, and gradually disappeared.
Organized by Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina. An exhibition by Rachelle Viader Knowles and Don Gill, curated by Elizabeth McLuhan with Bernie Flaman.
Date: July 25 - September 14, 2008
Event date(s):
2008 Dimensions:
Height:
2m
Width:
18m Note(s):
"Specifically for this exhibition, I have made two new works that connect Victoria Park in Regina with the Victoria Park in my home town of Cardiff in Wales…another colonized country/people. As an artist, much of the work I do explores communication and relationships between people and places. Within the context of the Regina Public Library, I wanted to make works that use words. The text 'Think of England', inserted into Victoria Park which sits in front of the Dunlop Art Gallery, is both political in its historical instruction to respect and consider a ‘motherland’ and a critique as a question posed to the reader – what do YOU think of England? It is also a personal question posed to and by myself as someone born there, unsure of how to address nationhood, national affiliation, a sense of longing and belonging to place, as someone who grew up English as a ‘foreigner’ in Wales and lives as a ‘foreigner’ here, both places where local languages were systematically suppressed through acts of attempted eradication by the English."
Annette Hurting, Bernard Flaman (2008). The Sun Never Sets: Victoria in Context. Dunlop Art Gallery, 48p.
Artist's biography:
Rachelle Viader Knowles Document(s):
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