Vancouver-based interdisciplinary artist Emily Hermant works with recycled telecommunications and data cables, stripping them down and arranging them into patterns, casting them in silicone to make colourful moulded wall hangings, or creating rippling sculptures from the wires themselves. “The materials that I’m working with have speed built into them,” says Hermant, a professor of sculpture and expanded media at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. “They have a purpose, which is to connect across these large distances to allow people to communicate really instantaneously.” Her work – on view at the Monte Clark Gallery in Vancouver from Nov. 20 to Dec. 23 – transforms these fast materials through a slow, meticulous process. “I think we’re living in this culture where things happen so quickly,” says Hermant. “The beauty about being an artist is being able to try to take some of those snapshots and slow them down.”
Vancouver photographer Stephen Waddell won the 2019 Scotiabank Photography Prize and a new retrospective book of his work has just been published this year by Steidl. We caught up with Stephen at his studio and Monte Clark’s new gallery to talk a bit about the book but mostly about the work. We even managed to fit in some interesting local history!
