Fool's Gold
Plasy Monastery, as part of Meridian Crossings the 4th International Hermit (Agosto) Foundation Art Festival, Plasy, Czech Republic, 1995 (link)
Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for the Arts, as part of the group exhibition Altered States, curated by Catherine Crowston, 1997
Artspace, Peterborough, 1997
OBORO, Montreal, as part of the group exhibition Counterposes, curated by Jim Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher, 1998
University of Scarborough Gallery, 1998
This performance/installation was first created as part of the Hermit Foundation Art Festival in 1995 in the town of Plasy, Czech Republic where artists were invited to create new works within the walls of a 16th century monastery. Walter transformed a room into a tableau that mused on the idea of Fool's Gold to reflect both the medieval tradition of alchemy from this historic site and the changing economy in Eastern Europe at the time. The artist painted stones collected from the surrounding landscape and gave them away to viewers. Two 16mm film loops represent the elements of fire and water on either side of her work station, setting the stage where the artist as alchemist stocked a “pile of gold."
Fool's Gold was later adapted to a Canadian context, through a series of exhibitions, where painting stones gold became a metaphor for an economy based on resource extraction. In these iterations, the 16mm film loop projects a technologized landscape of “the wilderness” shot from a moving train. With assistance from gallery attendants, stones collected from nearby railway tracks were painted through the course of the exhibition, ensuring that supply met demand, as viewers were invited to take a "piece of gold."
Walter makes reference to the gold rush and the exploration and settling of Canada. Her presence as artist-alchemist addresses the means by which value is conferred upon the landscape and how it is literally transformed by political and economic interests.
(excerpt from exhibition brochure by Jim Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher)
