Exhibitions - Simon Wroot's Studio

A Few Words

Teaching for me is a voyage of self discovery. I find myself looking at how I respond to comments and questions, how I find new ways to get my points across, how I interpret their responses, enthusiasms or them. I also find that challenging them to learn new ways to think, to interpret their ideas gives me the impetus to try new materials, interpretations and ideas.

In challenging a group of artists to try something new and answer an interesting call for entry I found myself meeting my own challenge with a very different look. These 3 pieces are the result.

Artist Statement:

Literally ‘Seeing Red’: Both pieces; ’The Buffalo Hunt’ and ‘Travelling Cree’ were crafted completely in Copper, which to metal artists is a red metal, thus a red palette.

Apparently ‘Seeing Red’: The first explorers of North America were trying to get to India, thus the ‘red’ skinned peoples that they met they called Red Indians.

Feeling the ‘Seeing Red’: Seeing Red is another expression for Anger. The displacement and minimalizing of the First Nations people and the destruction of their way of life by the European settlers has created a lot of anger.

Statement:

I decided to bring my love of history into this piece. I chose the iconic image of the hopeful goldminers ascending the Chilcoot Pass on the way to Dawson City during the goldrush of 1898. the images of these people repetitively carrying huge loads up the pass, only to go back down and get another until they had a ton of goods at the top of the pass.

The Alberta Governments lack of interest or understanding of culture, of ‘cultural industry’ is reflected in the steepness of the journey and the ‘you’re on your own’ feeling compared to the obvious baling out of various companies and industries, tax relief, subsidies and so on.

The cutting of the Culture budget itself was, to me, a statement of ‘We Don’t Care about you’ or a ‘you’re unimportant, what you do has no meaning’ on the behalf of OUR government.

Budget cutting just adds ‘weight’ to the load on my back, as I have to not only get my work into the public eye, but I feel like I also have to justify my existence at the same time.

I want the piece to be simple; there’s nothing complicated about the value of culture and especially the value of those who CREATE and EXPRESS our culture. I feel sorry for those who understand only the ‘business model’

"Intangible Cultural Assets,