You may never look at the dust on your bookshelf the same way again.
New Westminster’s New Media Gallery is hosting the new exhibition DUST, featuring the work of international artists Denis Beaubois, Herman Kolgen and Michael Saup. It’s on at the Anvil Centre gallery until Aug. 13.
“Search and you will find dust woven through the universe; swept up, dispersed and deposited across the globe; collecting in every corner of our lives,” says an email about the exhibition. “All of humanity lives on a fragment of cosmic dust … and we are dust. Visible, invisible, meaningful, reviled; dust has been exploited by artists as material, subject, ontology and here as landscape.”
Denis Beaubois, an artist from Mauritius and Australia, considers the dust collected from airport landscapes ("geographies of nowhere"), which he then painstakingly dissects to find meaning.
Michael Saup of Germany brings viewers face to face with the hidden scourge of dust in our own communities and around the world, revealed through virtual reality and composed sound.
Canada’s Herman Kolgen creates a descent through dust, from a world of light to a shadowy, dream world, imagined through video microscopy and composed sound.
“Each landscape in this exhibition is potent, immersive and experiential; each considers dust as it reflects and affects the human story,” the gallery’s email says. “Together the artists present us with extraordinary ways to think about dust and landscape at the beginning of the twenty first century.”
New Media Gallery is on the third floor at Anvil Centre, 777 Columbia St.
It’s open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays, with evening openings until 8 p.m. on Thursdays.
It’s free. You can find out more at the New Media Gallery website.
