Wild inspiration
The exhibit, curated by Suzanne Pressé, combines the works not of just two collaborators in the same medium, but two artists with a strong interest in the animal world.
“We both use animals as a catalyst and the subject in our work,” Baxter says. “It has to do with nature and our love and observation of it.”
Riopelle often included images of his beloved Quebec’s fauna. Geese, owls, game, even farm animals figure prominently and often in his prints and paintings. Baxter, on the other hand, casts her eye at a different kind of animal often found in close contact to humans: rats.
Her RatKind series of exhibitions places the often-despised rodent at the centre of her commentary on current and possibly future affairs, in which rats have taken over an irretrievably damaged Earth from humans and learned to live in harmony with nature. The exhibit will feature prints, digital prints, woodcuts, video and sculptures.
She describes RatKind as a commentary on both her fears of the devastation and potential loss of natural beauty caused by climate change and on humanity’s fear of the other. She adds that she faced challenges in getting her shows staged due to the subject matter and the strong negative feelings rats evoke in a surprisingly large number of people.
“I was shocked at how profoundly some people hated rats, and I found it fascinating,” she shares. “It seemed to me that this kind of fear of the different was the basis of racism. But if we never face this fear, we’re never going to get beyond it, and we’ll never evolve as a society.”
Fully immersed
At the same time as teaching at Concordia, the eight years between 1985 and 1992 that she spent with Riopelle were a whirlwind of creativity and adventure. Art and life were inextricable from each other.
“With Jean Paul, there was never any division. It wasn’t a question of working in the studio from nine to four and then going to eat something. Everything was work and life and art. We were always working in the studio, eating and drinking, and travelling. It was a total involvement in life and art and how they went together. We had that in common, as well as a mutual willingness to break the rules, make new ones and have fun doing it.”
Apprivoiser la bête runs from February 2 to April 23 at the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke.
Learn more about the exhibit: Jean Paul Riopelle / Bonnie Baxter. Apprivoiser la bête.