Clay Cove, Newfoundland

Description:

Clay Cove, Newfoundland was an audio-visual installation by Kate Craig presented on the thirty-first floor of Park Place in downtown Vancouver. The work expanded on a 1979 project by Craig created for the first video art event in Newfoundland at Memorial University Art Gallery. Revisited for the series Luminous Sites, the installation sought to evoke the textures and rhythms of life in Newfoundland.

Craig transformed the glass-clad office building into a series of intimate viewing stations with chairs positioned in front of select windows to invite visitors to sit and look out over the city. Extreme closeups of rock formations in Bonavista Bay were printed on photo-transparencies and adhered to the windows, layering imagery from Newfoundland onto the panoramic view of the Vancouver harbour, the mountains, and the sky. These intricate geological patterns were drawn from a video work by Craig that played on a monitor. The installation also included a soundscape composed of audio recordings of the St. John’s harbour foghorn, a babbling brook, waves breaking along the shoreline, and music by the Maritime ensemble Wonderful Grand Band. 

The installation presented a record of a specific place outside of the viewer's immediate environment as a point of resonance with the landscape visible from Park Place. Layering sounds and imagery from the East Coast shoreline onto the West Coast cityscape, Clay Cove, Newfoundland collapsed distance through juxtaposition.

Curated by Daina Augaitis and Karen Henry.

Video documentation is available upon request.