General Entry - Emerging Talent Awards

As part of the 2013 Natural and Manufactured exhibition at the ODD Gallery in Dawson City, I presented a site-specific installation piece called The Homecoming in Bear Creek, Yukon Territory. The historical town of Bear Creek is situated approximately 12 km outside of Dawson City and was the former company town for Yukon Consolidated Gold Corporation (YCGC). It has been abandoned since the mid-1960s and is now maintained by Parks Canada as a National Historic Site. Many of the YCGC residential buildings have been transported from their original site in Bear Creek, and other sites, to Dawson City. All that remains of their presence in the original sites are their foundations. In the outdoor installation The Homecoming, I integrated five YCGC buildings into sites related to their former place of residence via large-scale photographic prints on linen. These prints were manipulated using theatre techniques once used by Daguerre in the Paris Diorama in the mid 1850s, and saw the houses shift from dusk to night. This created a sense of home in the structures, as well as a visual play on memory, ghosts and history. In tandem to the installation at Bear Creek, five signs were placed around Dawson City in front of the buildings where they currently stand today. Each sign contained a short history of the residence and its connection to YCGC and Bear Creek. In August 2013, when the pieces were installed in their locations, I documented each piece with a large format camera and video. Once removed from the site, I reflected on how the large linen pieces would live on in a subsequent exhibition, and decided against presenting the pieces anywhere else except Bear Creek. What remains in The Forest of No Return is the facsimile of the recreated town through photography, video and an artist book; a photograph within another photograph; theatre projected onto the landscape; a book of words and text.