Photo: Emily Keller

By Emily Keller

AGGP

Art Gallery of Grande Prairie exhibit explores the ecology of humans and nature

Aug 5, 2019 | 5:30 AM

An exhibit at the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie aims to use humour to highlight a serious issue.

Ecology Is: Human | Nature opened in the beginning of July, and features artwork from six different artists exploring the balance of human influence on the natural environment.

One specific interactive artwork by artist Alana Bartol is called the Orphan Well Adoption Agency.

The piece features an office with a desk and chairs and framed pictures of abandoned oil wells.

Orphan Well Adoption Agency office at the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie

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Visitors can fill out an application to symbolically adopt one of the ‘orphan’ wells, and choose to receive correspondence from the artist writing as the well a few months after.

The gallery’s Derrick Chang explains how visitors can interact with the piece.

“If you come to the Orphan Well Adoption Agency, there are materials or information on previous adoptees and you can also see their photographs in the office, which is an active artwork which you can come in and spend time in.”

Previous letter from adopted well

Chang says many of the procedures used in the oil well adoption process are there to satirize the topic and bring a sense of humour to it without losing its intention.

“So the project is not so much to point fingers, but to create better social awareness around the impacts of a number of sites that are kind of out of sight and out of mind that we don’t think about because we don’t see them.”

Chang also said that there is no actual obligation or expectation for those who choose to adopt the wells to care for them.

The Orphan Well Adoption Agency has had two previous iterations in Calgary, where Bartol currently lives and works, and in Edmonton.

While the adoption agency is the most interactive piece, Bartol and others have several other works on display in the exhibit that focus on similar themes.

Artwork from various artists

The other works featured are from artists Tamara Lee-Anne-Cardinal, Carley Freisen, Lyndal Osborne, Marina Roy and Clint Wilson.

The exhibit is open until October 31, and admission to the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie is always free. Hours are available on their website.