Interactions
We move together - remember that, Amy Friend & Laurie Morrison (Collaboration), Printed by Sarah Martin, 30 x40 ", Pigment Print from scanned lumen print, 2022.
Moving Slow and silent - where does the mind go? Amy Friend & Laurie Morrison (Collaboration), Printed by Sarah Martin, 30 x40 ", Pigment Print from scanned lumen print, 2022.
Home is Earth and Water, Amy Friend & Laurie Morrison (Collaboration), Printed by Sarah Martin, Diptych, 30 x40 " each panel, Pigment Print from scanned lumen print, 2022.
Topography and Molecule - Shoreline, life, home…, Amy Friend & Laurie Morrison (Collaboration), Printed by Sarah Martin, 50 x 40” , Pigment Print from scanned lumen print, 2022.
Kayak and Bubbling Life, Amy Friend & Laurie Morrison (Collaboration), Printed by Sarah Martin, 30 x 40”, pigment Print from scanned lumen print, 2022.
With the water, within the water, Amy Friend & Qiushuang Xia (Collaboration), Printed by Sarah Martin, Pigment print, Variable scale, 2022.
Will we ever see what they see?, Amy Friend & Laurie Morrison (Collaboration), Printed by Sarah Martin, 50 x 40”, Pigment Print from scanned lumen print, 2022.
Amy Friend | Artist Statement
Interactions, 2022
Interactions surfaced as a project that was inspired by water sports taking place during the 2022 Canada Summer Games - more specifically, kayaking. Funding from Brock University’s Canada Summer Games Grants allowed this project to come together in a collaborative nature with research assistants Laurie Morrison, Qiushuang Xia, and Sarah Martin.
The work is exploratory in nature and poses several questions.
How do we move through our environment?
What is our relationship to the water and ecology around us?
The mascot of the 2022 Canada Summer Games is a turtle named Shelly. This prompted me to think specifically about the bodies of water that kayakers share with these creatures; exploring how bodily (physical) movements hold the potential to shape our environment in both subtle and drastic ways. We share spaces with the natural world and experience its movements as well.
Through collaborative processes, Laurie Morrison developed the initial images that were edited and printed for this exhibition. The photographs were captured at the water’s surface, precisely where paddles enter the water, and where turtles swim. Using analogue processes (light sensitive photo processes) and an abundance of experimentation, Morrison created this work by using analogue paper which is a black-and-white light sensitive photo-paper, affixed to a kayak, to capture the movement of splashing paddles, and the dynamic movement of waves.
A special exchange and interaction between paper, water, and sunlight transforms the photo-paper, creating the images.
From here, my collaborative role was to receive these images and edit them, while thinking about the environment and what vantage points a turtle might view – what movements are unrecorded, or unnoticed, in a broader sense? I aimed to playfully reveal the celestial, the molecular, and the movements that surround us, shared across wind, light, turtles, and humans.
These photographs were edited and then printed much larger than their original scale, immersing the viewer into these waterscapes, unveiling the smallest details that might otherwise go unnoticed. Sarah Martin assisted with the development of prints and various installation processes. Laurie Morrison also collected water from across the region. These samples are suspended in glass tubes, at varying heights throughout the gallery space, complimenting the images.
Qiushuang Xia dove into reflecting on what a turtle might see. Focusing on this perspective, Xia took photographs across the region’s waterways and through these images, experimented with a unique way of installing these photographs to underscore the constant movement that cannot precisely be captured through photographic imagery.
The work is installed to accentuate a sense of movement, playfully mimicking waves, and their gentle oscillations on the surface of water. Xia also captured the sound component that accompanies this project, recording from some of the same sites that were explored, to create the images in this exhibition. This audio sampling invites viewers to pause and meditate on the nuances of sound that might be heard, or noticed, across these shared spaces.
Interactions highlights experimentation and invites us to consider how we live and interact through movement, via kayaking and sport, in waterways that are shared with all life. Each step and each process of this project required varying degrees of trial and error - similar to many athletic processes, and journeys. How we remember movement, and the great impact of our movements on this earth were reflections that stayed present for me, throughout this project.
I want to thank my collaborative team for their generous time and playful intelligence as we thought through this project, from beginning to end.