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Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery

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3 Sep – 8 Dec 2024

Walter C. Koerner Library, 1958 Main Mall, UBC

Koerner Library: Kelly Wood

  • Kelly Wood

    Artist

    Kelly Wood (Canadian, b. 1962) is a photographer and practicing artist whose research focuses on subjects that relate to the environmental impact of waste accumulation, waste economies and all forms of visible and invisible pollution. Wood is an associate professor in visual arts and photography at the University of Waterloo. She holds a diploma from Emily Carr University and an MFA from the University of British Columbia. Wood has written about Vancouver photography for international publications such as History of Photography and Philosophy of Photography in the UK. She has been committed to the subject of waste in the environment as a visual problem for an extensive period of time; her photographs of local and other garbage forms now reside in major national and international museum collections and are included in the monograph of her photography, The Vancouver Carts (Black Dog, 2016). Wood is a member of the research organization The Synthetic Collective.

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Part of the exhibition An Opulence of Squander curated by Weiyi Chang, Kelly Wood’s Half Empty Bag and White Garbage (both 1997) were precursors to Wood’s durational Continuous Garbage Project (1998-2003), during which the artist photographed her domestic waste production over a five-year period. The subject of garbage has been central to Wood’s photographic practice since the late nineties, serving as a metonym through which she engages topics such as environmental degradation, consumerism and the excesses of capitalism. Both Half Empty Bag and White Garbage draw attention to the ubiquitous plastic bag, a quotidian object that has become a target of environmental policies. Wood’s framing of the plastic bag removes it from its familiar domestic and consumer contexts, transforming it into an abnormal object; this sense of estrangement is heightened by the unknowability of its contents. Like the other works in An Opulence of Squander, Wood’s photographs also engage with the notion that art making is inherently an excessive undertaking, attesting to the artist’s enduring commitment to issues of environmentalism and pollution.

This presentation of work by Kelly Wood is a collaboration with the Walter C. Koerner Library made possible by the generous support of the Audain Foundation. Art in the Library offers new perspectives on contemporary art by presenting art that challenges our perceptions about the world around us.

Image (above): Kelly Wood, White Garbage, 1997. Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, anonymous gift, 2005

 

  • Kelly Wood

    Artist

    Kelly Wood (Canadian, b. 1962) is a photographer and practicing artist whose research focuses on subjects that relate to the environmental impact of waste accumulation, waste economies and all forms of visible and invisible pollution. Wood is an associate professor in visual arts and photography at the University of Waterloo. She holds a diploma from Emily Carr University and an MFA from the University of British Columbia. Wood has written about Vancouver photography for international publications such as History of Photography and Philosophy of Photography in the UK. She has been committed to the subject of waste in the environment as a visual problem for an extensive period of time; her photographs of local and other garbage forms now reside in major national and international museum collections and are included in the monograph of her photography, The Vancouver Carts (Black Dog, 2016). Wood is a member of the research organization The Synthetic Collective.

    Read More

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