This highly conceptual duo explores how human, animal and plant relationships are often woven together through materials that will never decompose. The artists brings attention to this multifaceted issue through their use of ubiquitous materials and careful instillation techniques. “Love Letter to the Landfill” by Heather Yip and Nicole LeBoutillier will challenge your perception of what art is, be sure to see it in person
Nicole and Heather met while attending the Low-Residency MFA program at Emily Carr University of Art & Design. While there and, since graduating they have remained friends, use similar processes and, have similar concerns in their art practices. The two often use video meeting platforms to discuss and critique one another’s work.
About the Artists
Nicole LeBoutillier works within a variety of media, Nicole’s work aims to capture a sense of place, one that is not fixed but shifts and reconfigures itself. Through the construction of her images, she explores relationships of adaptation, material accumulations and the processes of disruption. Drawing on her daily walking practice and referencing geography, architecture and cartography she transcribes her experiences navigating urban spaces into abstract visual map-like forms embedded with objects and everyday materials.
Heather Yip is a conceptual artist whose research and artwork considers human and familial relationships, technology and the environment through the lens of consumerism. She uses assemblage of found and discarded materials to draw on these themes in her work. Heather encourages the audience to question the role consumerism plays in our lives and, that it must not simply be accepted as a neutral space. Art-making allows Heather to investigate all kinds of intersecting relationships, especially intergenerational ones by observing what is purchased and how it is used and, more often than not discarded. Living in a smaller urban setting with a tourist-driven economy, Heather has created this recent work expressing our obsession with a carbon-based system.
Paper Trails Artist Statement
By Nicole LeBoutillier
Nicole incorporates paper packaging found within her kitchen cupboards as well as paper bags that she has acquired through point-of-sale purchases or take-away meals. She finds beauty in the design and function of these throw-away materials brought out further by rubbing graphite and oil pastel into the surfaces. Once the contents are consumed, she repurposes the materials by folding the paper to expose embedded textures and printed labels. Interspersed within the assemblage are other single use products, such as twist ties, plastic bottle tops, fast food condiment packets, stir sticks, plastic bags and household finishing nails. The work originally made within her studio over an extended period of time is then reassembled within the gallery space revealing the accumulations of her everyday consumer routines. “What does your Paper Trail look like?”
