This one's for the Farmer
Exhibition suite
2013, 2015, 2019

‘This one’s for the Farmer’ was an exhibition presented in five parts at the Surrey Art Gallery, British Columbia, Canada between September 2013 to January 2014. Each part of the exhibition was produced in partnership with farming communities in the Surrey region and Fraser Valley basin of British Columbia, Canada.

Typically farming is not the subject matter of contemporary art: it remains hidden as an activity seen by most as a fleeting moment often from a moving car traversing along the highway. In ‘This one’s for the farmer’ the subject becomes central to the digital compositions in which carefully staged camera views create unconventional portraits of modern day farmers and their cultivation practices.
 
Upon closer inspection of this series, one notices that the aesthetic arrangements are at odds with their depicted environment and viewer expectations of the Surrey- Fraser Valley agricultural basin. By extracting farm work from its commodity status and tightly coupled role in scaled food production and the labour process,  ‘This one’s for the farmer’ draws new representations about an age old subject.  In contrasting elements of space, time, labour, and farming through the creation of a conceptual series, Sylvia elicited a contemporary art dialogue about farming, its practice, and possible misalignment within an individualistic society. After all, where does food on the dinner table come from, if not from farming?
The exhibition comprised of the following suites of work
The artist's discussion about the project can be found online at https://vimeo.com/176281773 from October 2013
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In addition a critical set of discussions about This one's for the Farmer can be found included in the book, Shifting Perspectives, co-published by Surrey Art Gallery and Heritage House Publishers (Canada, 2020) ​ISBN 9781772033298
www.surrey.ca/arts-culture/surrey-art-gallery/gallery-publications/exhibition-catalogues/shifting-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.


Exhibition essay: Field Studies: Appraising the works of 'This one's for the Farmer'
Dorothy Hunter, Critic in Residence at Studio Das Weisse Haus, Vienna

The relationship of Art to rurality, whilst centuries old, has not settled in comfortably alongside other artistic movements. Historically, rural scenes have repeatedly formed the basis of subjects in landscape painting, or in the setting of portraiture and fictitious narratives, and often as a visual token of a bucolic countryside on a patron’s wall. Yet despite this repetition, agricultural land has gone unseen beyond its place as a symbol or backdrop. Its presence has conventionally been on par with a vase of flowers - not so much a portrayal of the land than a sentimental reference.
 
Beyond the early proliferation of country scenes in traditional painting, agricultural labour has largely remained unrepresented, with national considerations typically favoured over a sense of locality in contemporary art. Since the early twentieth century the regional focus as a subject has only found relevance to a certain extent: with those who know the region, or who may engage superficially with its aesthetic.
 
Sylvia Grace Borda goes beyond the romanticisation of agriculture to reveal its wider relevance. As an artist she feels there must be a sensitive involvement with the space and its workers, engaging with a sense of place, time, and society. 
 
This one's for the Farmer engages in an artistic process which is about equalisation and re-presentation. After witnessing the diversification of land usage within Surrey, Borda sought to promote a democracy of space by increasing the visibility of agricultural processes in the area. With much local farmland depleting due to increased importation and aggressive land re-zoning, food production within the region is scattered around residential areas, rather than concentrated in land pockets. In this mixture of activity, the artist became interested in the isolated processes of farming that commuters pass by, but they are not noticed[i].
 
As such This one's for the Farmer  is an exercise in foregrounding, that is drawing together specific histories and spaces to form contemporary vignettes[ii]. The artist re-presents space and action, opening up usually private processes in the form of contemporary portraits of land and labour to be witnessed by a wider audience.
 
Through an intensive approach in which she worked alongside farmers undertaking their routine tasks, Borda sought to make a fluid representation of space and labour, in tandem to the experience of learning how the land is worked[iii]. Witnessing centuries-old processes, crossed with newly developed technologies, she became interested in presenting space and activity in a way that highlights its intrigue and importance without suggesting a documentary approach.
 
In this way, Borda explores what is presented visually in This one's for the Farmer , and how it relates to a wider knowledge of space, processes and media. Using diptych photographs and stereoscopic viewers, details of agricultural space are revealed in three dimensions. These reliefs, for instance, such as images of fallen rhododendrons and tarpaulin-covered weeds, are cultivations in themselves - taking on a more apparent layer of synthesis than a traditional still image - a new ‘reality’. “It creates something very private”, Borda says of the stereoscopic images. “You view something that is almost like a contemporary trompe l'oeil. Historically, trompe l’oeil is a technique associated with painting. It offered the viewer an opportunity to examine a dimensional world through the painter’s composition and rendering of space. This series on exhibition is a photographic equivalent...seeing the images through the stereoscopic viewer, there is the same sensation of being immersed in a private reflective and yet dimensional moment.”
 
The exploration and clustering of context is an intrinsic part of Borda’s practice, cross-referencing the layered associations of imaging media with specific spaces and times. Stereoscopy itself has a fragmented history, originating as part of Victorian parlour leisure time.  Often stereocards depicted exotic scenes as a novelty and conversation point. From its origins of personal experience, it has since become associated with entertainment experiences in theme parks and 3D cinema. As Borda says, “Experience is usually attached to the idea of entertainment…and this is about creating a 3D image that can be a stand-alone artwork.” By using media with straddled histories, the work is unconventional – employing a typically lowbrow medium that provokes questions of ‘value’ and novelty and public consumption.
 
Borda cites the film director, Werner Herzog, from his Cave of Forgotten Dreams – Herzog’s 3D film on hidden cave paintings in Lascaux, France, as an approach that is very relevant to the use of stereoscopy in the work Aura produced as part of This one's for the Farmer . Herzog intended to “capture the motivations of the cave painters… The cave niches and rock formations which provide shape and form to the intriguing and graceful animals on the walls directly inspired him to film the subject in 3D.”[iv] So, too, does Borda use 3D images in order to “capture the intensity of the physical layout of agricultural fields, and the depiction of the outputs of labour.” Rather than fitting subjects to a visual medium, the artist uses 3D still images to give a truthful representation of the undulations of the land.
 
The split context of this body of work is mirrored in the potential readings of This one's for the Farmer . With a variety of stakeholders collaborating in its realisation, the project occupies several spheres beyond art, working with civic responsibility and the framing of real people and lives. With the decision to “return to the real” and in an antithesis to the romanticism of rural life in art, multiple contexts must be acknowledged and, for Borda, to be explored. “Contemporary art tends to stand alone,” Borda says. “There’s often few clues on how to read it. This project involves a much more integrated approach, which can run the risk of being read as a documentary, because it is a document of evidence. But through artistic staging, several values can work together enabling the artwork to be read by several audiences.”
 
Alongside the portrayal of unseen processes is an ongoing exploration of what it means to treat the land both artistically and with a sense of place from different perspectives. These multiple contexts can be seen again in Borda’s diptych videos, Farm Work, in contrast to the spatial details of the three-dimensional still images, these films depict farmers interacting with the land, repeating actions across space and time. Slow movements across a static frame reveal a form of methodical drawing.
 
“The labour of farmers is very much based on a type of problem solving,” says the artist. “I’m not necessarily viewing it from a performance-based aspect, as that tends to be introspective. In a way this is much more observational, much more about tracing figures, forms and movement across the landscape, so that the viewer becomes privileged to enter a point of view that is largely atypical from their own working lives.”
 
In Farm Work, time and scale pervade the project. Focusing on the handpicking processes in some of Surrey’s farms, we can align the labour and product to a real-time activity. This is in contrast to large-scale farms that engage in mass production. In both, we can see the personal demands on these farmers in the task of cultivating food, and in terms of the socio-economic factors of local production implicit behind the image frame.
 
Sensitivity to time is a necessity, as Borda says, as “this is an artwork in time, and knowing that an older generation of farmers may not continue…farming is not contentious, it’s about human survival to produce food. People often don’t recognise its value.” Through the medium of film, we can engage with the farming activities and repeated actions: sharing time – each in a different frame. Much like the stereoscopic images, we can engage with a reality that is filtered through an imaging medium and its representation within contemporary art norms.
 
Borda’s engagement with a specific reality as an artistic foundation is embedded in the photographic contexts in which she has worked. Her practice of repositioning an overlooked subject within contemporary art and collective psyche[v] sits at odds to a tradition of narrative staging within Canadian photography, where construction of a subject is a pronounced element of this.
 
Aspects of staging similarly feature as an implicit part of Borda’s practice: but rather than through the composition of fictional scenes and people, it exists as an amalgamation between reality and a chosen artistic context. These tightly framed surveillances act as a counterpoint to the romanticised countryside that has come before them, redressing a balance in what is seen and supposed, becoming staged in time.
 
This one's for the Farmer  therefore comes with a duality of context. Within Canadian traditions of staging rooted in fine art, this project’s converse placement within reality shows a broken process of monitoring, at times recalling a forensic type of documentation. Here sees the influence of Borda’s other recent studies, i.e. that within a Northern Irish framework.
 
This one's for the Farmer  references a new photographic tradition within Northern Ireland – one of detached scrutiny and observation, building upon the image’s relationship to journalism, fragmentation and agenda. Northern Irish photography originally developed within the context of worldwide media scrutiny. It has evolved to respond to the politics of the image in itself, provoking questions of truth and personhood. So, too, does This one's for the Farmer  contend with daily reality through imaging processes, and what it means to have a basis in spaces inaccessible and presented for scrutiny. As such, This one's for the Farmer  is also an amalgamation of outside spaces and comparisons, in which staging is both an artistic and socio-political aspect.
 
Through these many contexts, and implicit and explicit references, the crux of This one's for the Farmer  lies in the artist becoming a responsive vehicle rather than a didactic one. It is a rooting in reality in which artistic relevance can rise to the surface, with the artist and collaborators passing through in an almost mono-mythical fashion. “(The process) is similar to what Joseph Campbell elucidates in  “The Hero With 1000 Faces”, Borda says. “You enter a space, not neutral, almost biased in a way. And as you go through the process of being in the space, you come out changed, as you realise your expectations and what you thought were relevant to the work is almost insignificant – there are other criteria that are more important to focus on. And you hope that somehow some of that inherent visual activity can also represent knowledge, and a transfer of that knowledge giving leverage to a new reality about farmers and their everyday life, and not least a new perspective for the viewer to consider about farming and art.”

ESSAY FOOTNOTES

[i] Sylvia Grace Borda, in conversation with the writer, 13th August 2013. All direct and indirect quotes from the artist derive from interviews conducted on this date.

[ii] Ibid

[iii] Ibid

[iv] Is Werner Herzog's new 3-D documentary a huge forward leap or total folly?,
Los Angeles Times, Sept 14th 2010

[v] Sylvia Grace Borda, in conversation with the writer, 13th August 2013.

The artist's project development and its outcomes were reviewed in numerous national and international magazines. A sampling of project reviews are included below:

2014           
Fremantle, Chris. “Farm Tableaux” in eco/art/scot/land Jan 25, 2014. http://ecoartscotland.net/2014/01/25/farm-tableaux/

2013            
Arva-Toth, Zoltan . “Photographers Create First Artworks in Google Street View” in Digital News: Photography Blog, October 29, 2013.
http://www.photographyblog.com/news/photographers_create_first_artworks_in_google_street_view/

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

Kimmett, Colleen. “Google Farm View: Artist Sylvia Grace Borda gives agrarian Surrey a techie treatment” in The Weekend Tyee, October 19, 2013. http://thetyee.ca/ArtsAndCulture/2013/10/19/Google-Farm-View/

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

Stass, Joanna. “Photographer creates interactive Google Street View artwork,” in News: Photography for Beginners UK Blog, October 31, 2013,
http://www.photoforbeginners.com/news/news-features/photographers-create-google-street-view-artwork


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In the following video clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSWkuH-WzGg) the artist presents an overview to the development of the Farm Tableaux project from its roots in Canada to its evolution in Finland. This interview forms part of an e-archive produced in June 2015 in tandem with the Mänttä Art Festival guest curated by Kalle Hamm and Dzamil Kamanger.