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AERIAL FIELDS
video by drone | 2013 Sylvia developed a series of films focusing on agricultural production in Western Canada, entitled 'AERIAL FIELDS.' Her work explored farming and art as intersections of cultural production. Whilst there remains a quiet inherency within the lives of growers to see their habits as unworthy of comment, let alone the focus of art, this project tracked labour and cultivation methods through aerial field imagery. Not typically associated with art making: a video-equipped drone was employed as a way to revitalize the position of the artist/video-maker as both naturalist and observer. Artists such as Millais and Atget, whether with easel or camera, were only able to capture orchards and farmland from ground perspective. In this project the vast carpeted and dense plantings are rendered as a continuous horizontal plane – something rarely experienced in art or life. Through the physical separation from the recording device and the new visual perspective it enables, discovery and surveillance also come to the connotative forefront of this project. Sylvia’s work fills a void - depicting growers at work and thereby creating new indexical records of farm operations from unexpected perspectives. |
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Working in Surrey, BC
Sylvia acknowledges as an artist working in the City of Surrey, she has photographed and worked on the unceded territories and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, Semiahmoo, Katzie, Kwikwetlem, Kwantlen, Qayqayt and Tsawwassen First Nations, and she pays respect to the Elders, past and present, and to future generations.
Project reviews
2020
A critical discussion about the artist's development of Aerial Fields is included in the book, Shifting Perspectives, co-published by Surrey Art Gallery and Heritage House Publishers (Canada) see www.surrey.ca/arts-culture/surrey-art-gallery/gallery-publications/exhibition-catalogues/shifting-perspectives
2019
Blair, Paula. Essay ‘Aerial Fields: The Apparatus, Labour, and Territories of Agri/Cultural Production’ in Art After Dark, Surrey Art Gallery Publications, pp 69 - 74 ISBN 9781926573595
2017
Liz Wells, Professor of Photographic Culture at Plymouth University in England and author of Photography: A Critical Introduction (Routledge, 1996; 2015) has been invited by the Surrey Art Gallery to write about Aerial Fields. Wells' essay about Aerial Fields will be published and distributed by the Surrey Art Gallery, Canada, as part of the gallery's launch of an upcoming anthology on its UrbanScreen programme from 2010 to present.
2013
Grgar, Sonja. “The grass is not greener on the other side: Surrey exhibition highlights the importance of local agriculture” in The Source | Vol 13 – No 30 | October 8 – October 22, 2013
http://thelasource.com/en/2013/10/07/the-grass-is-not-greener-on-the-other-side-surrey-exhibition-highlights-the-importance-of-local-agriculture/
Hunter, Dorothy. " This one's for the Farmer' e-catalogue, Surrey Art Gallery, BC, Canada. 2013
Laurence, Robin. “Fall arts preview: Sylvia Grace Borda finds art in farms and sequins” in the Georgia Straight Newspaper, Vancouver, September 11 -18, 2013.
http://www.straight.com/arts/421776/fall-arts-preview-sylvia-grace-borda-finds-art-farms-and-sequins
Sylvia acknowledges as an artist working in the City of Surrey, she has photographed and worked on the unceded territories and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, Semiahmoo, Katzie, Kwikwetlem, Kwantlen, Qayqayt and Tsawwassen First Nations, and she pays respect to the Elders, past and present, and to future generations.
Project reviews
2020
A critical discussion about the artist's development of Aerial Fields is included in the book, Shifting Perspectives, co-published by Surrey Art Gallery and Heritage House Publishers (Canada) see www.surrey.ca/arts-culture/surrey-art-gallery/gallery-publications/exhibition-catalogues/shifting-perspectives
2019
Blair, Paula. Essay ‘Aerial Fields: The Apparatus, Labour, and Territories of Agri/Cultural Production’ in Art After Dark, Surrey Art Gallery Publications, pp 69 - 74 ISBN 9781926573595
2017
Liz Wells, Professor of Photographic Culture at Plymouth University in England and author of Photography: A Critical Introduction (Routledge, 1996; 2015) has been invited by the Surrey Art Gallery to write about Aerial Fields. Wells' essay about Aerial Fields will be published and distributed by the Surrey Art Gallery, Canada, as part of the gallery's launch of an upcoming anthology on its UrbanScreen programme from 2010 to present.
2013
Grgar, Sonja. “The grass is not greener on the other side: Surrey exhibition highlights the importance of local agriculture” in The Source | Vol 13 – No 30 | October 8 – October 22, 2013
http://thelasource.com/en/2013/10/07/the-grass-is-not-greener-on-the-other-side-surrey-exhibition-highlights-the-importance-of-local-agriculture/
Hunter, Dorothy. " This one's for the Farmer' e-catalogue, Surrey Art Gallery, BC, Canada. 2013
Laurence, Robin. “Fall arts preview: Sylvia Grace Borda finds art in farms and sequins” in the Georgia Straight Newspaper, Vancouver, September 11 -18, 2013.
http://www.straight.com/arts/421776/fall-arts-preview-sylvia-grace-borda-finds-art-farms-and-sequins
'Aerial Fields' was projected onto the Surrey Urban Screen at the Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre from September 23, 2013 - January 23, 2014. The film was presented as part of the wider opus and exhibition of work entitled "This one's for the farmer."