Art After Humanity
Tammy Salzl and Breanna Barrington’s exhibitions at Harcourt House Artist Run Centre, January 6- February 17, 2023
Both Tammy Salzl and Breanna Barrington are Edmonton-based multimedia artists with a mischievous and whimsical sense of humour, ecological concerns, and a work-with-what-you-have approach to artmaking. Both of their immersive outdoorsy installations have to do with a naturalistic world devoid of humans, but full of traces of humanity.
Breanna Barrington’s work focuses on the arte povera approach of using found materials to compose meaning, while Tammy Salzl’s work focuses on mythological storytelling, with bright colours and bold characters. Both installations are immersive and encourage the viewer to walk around the art, to seek different perspectives of the same work, and to build their own relationships to the characters within.
Brenna Barrington, Shorthand Forest
In the Front Gallery, Breanna Barrington’s Shorthand Forest isn’t as lush as I expected from the title but sets the tone for climate awareness. At first glance, it looks like an abandoned junk pile. The sightline of the installation is fairly low, mostly on tables or the ground, but there are “trees” that do go from floor to ceiling. The use of space is very purposeful, though it might be hard to detect that intention outside of a gallery. The piles of “junk” and “stuff” made me think of homelessness, and I caught myself wondering if one would find these outside in the real woods. Guerilla art made by the unhoused. Or maybe cryptids.
Looking closer, the viewer starts to see relationships between items. A wooden box with artist prints and drawings. A painted-over microwave holding zines. A pile of brown cardboard and crumpled paper with splashes of plastic orange and red objects and handwritten notes. A little clock overflowing with beads, shells, and dried flowers. Fluffy stuffing looks like clouds under a chair facing a dirty mirror. Altered carpet in a green honey-comb pattern eases the installation stations together. Cork trees contain tiny photographs of Barrington’s retrospective “trash art” work.
An abandoned pan sits on the floor. Inside the pan are letter beads on green string spelling out “heat” and “island”, a painting of a green field overlooking a large stone formation, a-upside down glass pinning down the painting. A battered paper umbrella and a decayed brown leaf surround the letter beads. A cheeky faded pin that reads “Alberta Made” is tucked right next to the pan. I laughed when I saw the pin, because it snuck up on me. What was initially a Pile of Stuff suddenly becomes a cheeky commentary on Alberta oil, greenhouse gases, and climate change.
Throughout the exhibition, Barrington’s handwriting on various materials and twisted wires shaped into letters work together to coax the viewer into a mindset of observing, listening, and finding ways to take action. Plant trees! Provide shade! It’s not too late to help the Earth.
The excess of stuff and consistent messages gradually tell the viewer that there is power in making mistakes. Imperfection isn’t the problem, but inaction is. The installation initially looks abandoned, decaying and in disrepair, but the message of the works is that humanity isn’t over yet.
Tammy Salzl, Emerald Queendom
In the Main Gallery, Tammy Salzl’s Emerald Queendom is already familiar territory for me. I had talked with Salzl before about her work, and she had told me that the Emerald Queendom had been intended for in-person viewing, rather than to only be experienced in photographs. It was still a couple years until I was able to see it in person, and it was wonderful to finally meet them for myself. It felt like meeting old friends and finding new ones. Each fairy and creature has its own personality and sense of life. Their eyes sparkle in the bright light and they seem eager to greet me (when not otherwise occupied). I understood why Salzl described apologizing when she bumped into them.
The Emerald Queendom as an installation is immersive. The room is darkened with a curtain and the wall is covered with painted trees. Music blankets the space with raven calls and ambient sound. The installations are displayed on raised tables, quite high at waist or chest height. The tall tables bring us closer to view each scene and are arranged in a roughly circular shape. It is fairly intuitive to navigate the space, and the arrangements invite us to walk right up close around the tables, rather than standing in a distant spot to observe it all.
The fairies are all humanoid and interact with each other and their environment in different ways. They’re not polite company by any means - they’re fucking, pissing, stealing, eating, laughing, and dancing loudly, as if no one were watching them. There is an element of voyeurism, as we are constantly peeking through delicate branches and dried grass to see what the fairies are getting up to. I remembered Salzl telling me about stealing rocks from people’s gardens for the installation. Maybe we’re not so different from them after all.
There are other media forms in the Emerald Queendom. Monitors of varying sizes are tucked into suitcases and clumps of earth, showing videos of movement in nature from animals and water. A 6-channel semi-generative soundtrack by Greg Mulyk activates the negative space between tables and trees. Time is present even if humans aren’t. While the fairies’ personalities do come across well in photos, the motion and music of the installation and the activity required to explore it, are the in-person elements that differ most from photographs.
When Cryptids Make Art
As a viewer, it was lovely to explore both worlds. Both worlds involved playing in the forest using found materials, and had traces of humans but no humans present. The music from Salzl’s installation worked surprisingly well for Barrington’s, and increased the immersive experience for both. The biggest difference between the two is their sense of time. Barrington’s world is immediate. Humans are still here, though not necessarily visible, whereas Salzl’s world is set in a post-human world. The other difference is that Barrington doesn’t necessarily alter their materials or even contain them. No exhibition will be exactly the same, whereas Salzl’s installation is more easily replicated (and was, from its original 2021 exhibition).
Both artists have a great sense of humour in the face of despair. In both Shorthand Forest and The Emerald Queendom, the viewer needs to take time to gather ideas between pieces. The message isn’t obvious or presented all at once. Both artists speak to the temporality of humanity. And yet, there are familiar characters in each that gives each installation a sense of comfort, even if there’s potential for despair.
Relevant resources:
About Breanna Barrington - https://www.breannabarrington.com/
About Tammy Salzl - https://www.tammysalzl.com/index.html
About Greg Mulyk - https://gregmulyk.com/
Review from Edmonton Journal - https://edmontonjournal.com/entertainment/local-arts/the-list-vibrant-art-enlivens-the-grey-days-of-january
Review from CBC - https://www.cbc.ca/arts/q-a-tammy-salzl-emerald-queendom-1.6710259
2021 review from Canadian Art - https://canadianart.ca/?agenda=emerald-queendom/
2021 review from Galleries West - https://www.gallerieswest.ca/magazine/stories/emerald-queendom/