Marlene Creates: Places, Paths and Pauses

Organized and circulated by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in partnership with Dalhousie Art Gallery with the support of the Museum Assistance Program, Canadian Heritage.

Curated by Susan Gibson Garvey & Andrea Kunard

Presenting the work of prominent Newfoundland-based environmental artist and poet Marlene Creates, this exhibition offers viewers a comprehensive experience of nearly four decades of her unique activities. Throughout her career, Creates has sensitively probed the relationship between human experience and the natural world, choosing a path that privileges the act over the artifact, the moment over the monument. From her earliest ephemeral gestures in the land to her latest immersion in the boreal forest that surrounds her home in Portugal Cove, her photobased, multi-disciplinary practice has explored, as she puts it, “the idea of place — not as a geographical location but as a process that involves memory, multiple narratives, ecology, language, and both scientific and vernacular knowledge.” Her lifelong engagement offers a timely occasion for re-envisioning our own places with attentive environmental and cultural consciousness. Creates leads us to a greater understanding of the natural world and our “places” in it.