Across two galleries, Ruth Beer: Seep | Swell highlights opposing environmental forces
At the Art Gallery at Evergreen and Burnaby Art Gallery, resource extraction is explored through large-scale copper weavings
Installation view of Ruth Beer: Seep | Swell at the Art Gallery at Evergreen. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography
Burnaby Art Gallery and Art Gallery at Evergreen co-present Ruth Beer: Seep | Swell to February 9, with special events Constructed Landscape: Weaving Workshop on January 18 and Ruth Beer: Tour and Publication Launch on January 25
WHEN VANCOUVER-BASED multidisciplinary artist Ruth Beer’s son was young, she used to lull him to sleep by singing “You Are My Sunshine”. Most people remember the old children’s song as being warm and fuzzy: “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are grey,” go the lyrics to the 1939 release by Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell. But there’s a lesser-known line to the tune about lost love that’s a bit darker: “The other night, dear, as I lay sleeping, I dreamed I held you in my arms; but when I awoke, dear, I was mistaken, and I hung my head and cried.”
You Are My Sunshine is what Beer has titled one of her latest works: a 28-foot-long tapestry woven entirely out of copper magnet wire, suspended from the rafters in the middle of the Art Gallery at Evergreen in Coquitlam. Walk around the piece, and you’ll see swaths of copper cascading over wood beams, creating a wavy burnt-orange waterfall effect that catches the light just so. A few rectangular patches are visible within the pattern where the wire has been woven more densely; this is because Beer has actually transposed the musical notation for “You Are My Sunshine” onto the tapestry.
The work is a centrepiece in the expansive new exhibition Ruth Beer: Seep | Swell, shown across both the Art Gallery at Evergreen and Burnaby Art Gallery. The collection, curated by Katherine Dennis and Jennifer Cane, is split into works that explore two related topics: Seep at the AGE explores oil and copper within the context of resource extraction, while Swell at the BAG focuses more closely on the use of water as a vital life source and how human interference affects it.
According to the AGE’s interim curator Adrienne Fast, You Are My Sunshine—on display for the very first time as part of this exhibition—is a shining example of Beer’s ability to set contrasting themes against each other. In the same way that the artwork’s namesake song suggests that love comes with its woes, the sculptural weaving seems to hint that while copper is a useful and naturally awe-inspiring material, its human extraction can cause a whole host of issues for the ecosystem.
“There’s these two kinds of ideas: this hopeful, loving, positive optimism, but then also at the same time this darker, more pessimistic sort of worldview,” Fast tells Stir. “Those two things are held in constant tension with each other. And that’s really what I would say is a characteristic of a lot of Ruth’s work about the environment and about the landscape.
“We are in this position in the 21st century where we are dependent on the extraction of resources from the landscape, and we are also undoubtedly negatively impacted by that extraction,” she continues. “And we as human beings can’t really escape being a part of those two forces. That’s one of the reasons why I think weaving appeals to Ruth so much as a practice, and also sort of on a metaphorical level: the warp and the weft are these two opposing forces that are held together in the final weave.”
Ruth Beer’s Oil Topography, 2014, Jacquard woven tapestry with copper magnet wire, polyester, and cotton. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography
For those unfamiliar with the terms, “warp” refers to the vertical strands that are held stationary on the frame of a loom, while the horizontal “weft” strands are woven over and under those pieces to form a tapestry. Weaving is a major component of Seep | Swell—to create many of the works on display, Beer worked with a massive Jacquard loom, a machine that gained popularity in the 19th century for both simplifying and speeding up complex pattern-making.
Elsewhere within the Art Gallery at Evergreen, Oil Topography hangs on the wall, a large three-panel Jacquard weaving that incorporates copper magnet wire, polyester, and cotton. It resembles a topographic map, with shades of indigo and cerulean forming land masses and ocean waters of different elevations. Burnt-orange copper is an accent throughout; in some spots the metal looks like organically shaped islands, and in other areas it’s a bit more dispersed, calling to mind an oceanic oil spill. Step back to get a broader view, and the pattern seems almost celestial in nature.
Beer referenced a photo of an oil sheen in a puddle to map out the design of Oil Topography, notes Fast. The artist then travelled to Montreal in 2014 to weave the piece using a historical Jacquard loom, working 12-hour days to create the detailed panels.
If you look around the AGE, you’ll notice an abundance of sculptural works (and it’s worth noting that Beer considers her weaving a sculptural practice, too). Around one corner, there’s Spill 2, a glossy black puddle of polyurethane sitting unceremoniously on the floor like an oil spill; and spread across the room, there are three editions of Soil Oil, craggy black rocks made from materials like aluminium and acrylic polymer. Then there’s Rocks, a series of small bronze sculptures that Beer made by casting molds of real rocks she collected during a 2012 residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. The metal gives the organic shapes a regal appearance, highlighting the geological magnificence of the area the rocks were collected from.
Installation view of Ruth Beer: Seep | Swell at the Burnaby Art Gallery (Climate is shown on the right). Photo by Rachel Topham Photography
Beer also incorporates sound into many of her works. Over at the Burnaby Art Gallery, the copper magnet-wire weaving Antenna 1 cascades up and over a steel shelving unit with ripples and swishes similar to You Are My Sunshine. At its base sits another sculpted rock and a broadband radio playing an audio loop of flowing water; here and there, bits of serene birdcall and an ominous crackling ring out, blurring the boundary between sounds made by nature and humankind. Beer has long explored these sorts of nuances in her practice; take, for example, her examination of the salmon-canning industry’s demise in Catch & Release: Mapping Cultural and Geographic Transitions, or her research into expanding fossil-fuel industries with Trading Routes: Grease Trails, Oil Pipelines.
A few of Beer’s works in Seep | Swell (Loop 1 at the BAG, plus Loop 2 and Seep at the AGE) also incorporate old analog cassette tape. The material offers each of these works a noticeable sheen; they reflect the light every which way as you walk past them, prompting contemplation on the cycle of technological innovation and how the obsolescence of certain materials might affect the environment.
“She had a bunch of discarded cassette tapes, and she pulled out all of the innards of them and liked the material,” Fast explains of Beer’s process. “It reminded her of the way light bounces off of and reacts with oil. But she made a point of trying to use a real variety of different kinds of music and tapes—everything from recorded sermons to rock anthems of the ’80s—so there’s a real diversity of voices. And there is something quite poignant about that thought that those voices are still in the object. The voices are still there, they’re just held in a kind of stasis or silence.”
Right upon entering the Burnaby Art Gallery, visitors are met by the sight of another woven tapestry called Climate. Stretching about 15 feet long across the wall, it features indigo-dyed cotton stripes in navy, eggshell blue, and forest green. But splattered violently across the centre of the pattern is a copper electrical-wire gash. For this work, Beer actually drew inspiration from a stunning sight: a sunset reflecting across water that she felt looked almost too magnificent to be real. Though mesmerizing, it was also an imminent reminder of the air pollution affecting the area, which prompted the balance of beauty and disruption that’s seen in the final work.
There’s so much more to witness in this sweeping exhibition, from a whole upper room at the BAG filled with black-and-white monoprints that show different patterns, materials, and textures, to three pieces at the AGE made of cut-up and cross-hatched photographs that transform with visual effects when you scan a QR code and look at them through an electronic device. But what unites all the works is Beer’s unrelenting focus on opposing concepts, whether it be oil and water or technology and nature. Through eye-catching copper and thought-provoking backstories grounded in imminent environmental dilemmas, these pieces will maintain relevance for decades, if not centuries, to come.
“Part of Ruth’s practice involves deep and conscientious research—going out to communities that are the most directly impacted by the oil pipelines or mines or smelters, and talking to a wide variety of people who are environmentalists or who work for the oil companies,” Fast says. “And in that experience, as she’s talking to all different kinds of people, you keep hearing the same kinds of dualities that are expressed—it’s either about the environment, or it’s about jobs and the economy. And it’s this either/or kind of situation that she really tries to resist.
“If you just always divide the equation into those two absolutes, then there’s no interaction,” the curator continues. “Each side gets isolated and siloed. So with her work, she’s not trying to advocate for one or the other. She’s just making these things more visible, and asking people to think about how we are entwined and kind of enmeshed in this paradox that we can’t escape from.” 
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