an image of dozens of blocks. Each block face has a different hand printed image adhered to it.

Exhibition Info

Oct 19 - Nov 16, 2024
10572 115 st, Edmonton, AB T5H 3K6

Wed-Fri | 12pm – 6pm
Sat | 12pm – 5pm

See current gallery hours

Free Admission Donate today

SNAP is pleased to present Carbon Generations, featuring new work by Alex R.M Thompson. The exhibition runs from October 19 – November 16, 2024 at SNAP Gallery.

Carbon Generations is a toy block petrofantasia in miniature. Recasting waste material as educational plaything, this exhibition points to construction-themed children’s media and connects their narratives to the normalization of dominant worldviews. Fossil fuel-intensive industry, sanitizing characters like Bob the Builder, and the threat of shifting climate inform the work. 

Opening Reception: Saturday October 19, 7pm-9pm

Artist Talk: Friday November 8th , 6pm-7pm.


Artist Statement

Welcome to Carbon Generations, a petrofantasia in miniature styled after John Locke’s alphabet blocks.(1) Making the transition from waste material to educational plaything, this exhibition seeks to recast the detritus of commercial activities into objects of interactive exploration and provocation. Existing in the contemporary context of construction-themed children’s media, Carbon Generations seeks to prompt the viewer to question the tensions revealed through these sanitized and emissionless imaginings of industrial activities. Bob the Builder seems to worry little about the carbon-intensive nature of massive projects, and the ongoing housing crisis and its demands for new builds aren’t exactly centred in his program.(2)

As a viewer, you are humbly invited to reconfigure, reimagine, and reposition the various components of the fossil-fueled world that surrounds you in the exhibition. The blocks are constructed from salvaged wood from laminated timber manufacturing, fished out of waste bins.(3) Each block has been pasted with 6 fragments of printed matter, each taken from larger compositions that have been repeatedly cut apart. The prints include new etchings, lino blocks, and a series of repurposed proofs, tests, hand-made paper, and unreleased prints.

Borrowed from recognizable structures and equipment that occupy our cityscapes, the fragments nod to the processes by which urban environments and shared infrastructure are built. Raw resources extracted from the earth, refined, and manufactured into building materials contribute significantly to the overall emissions generated by the construction industry.(4) Carbon Generations combines observations of machinery and materials with an interest in games and toys, and their roles in teaching and immersing users in sets of values or worldviews. Alluding to growing up with something and learning through close interaction, the work positions this relationship as a normalizing force creating an ever-present dominant system that, once recognized, can be struggled or grappled with, resisted, adapted, or acquiesced to.

Carbon Generations’ modular form allows it to operate in a few different ways simultaneously. Like life, the random jumble of building is experiential and deliberate, but can also be messy and potentially disorganized. Components are taken from the same sources, cut into pieces across many blocks, and the original compositions become hard to piece back together. The presence of letters allows for texts to emerge from the chaos, giving space for clarity, legibility, and generative ideation. The overall arrangement can expand or shrink, and the configuration of the blocks connects to the overall stability of the structure; precarity is embodied as tall towers and foundations of different scaled blocks might tumble unexpectedly. 

Are you compelled by the modular form of the work to try to reinvent the space in an image that suits your ambitions? Does this piecemeal, slow process of composing an urban environment drive you to seek out more efficient modes of development? Is it possible to pivot our energy and material demands, and can we reduce our overall impact on the changing climate to give us time to adapt?

Viewers are invited to interact with the blocks in this exhibition. They may be moved, stacked, and reconfigured. The artist asks that the viewer clean their hands before handling the pieces.

1 Almqvist, Birgitta. “Educational Toys, Creative Toys”. Toys, Play, and Childhood Development. Ed. Jeffrey H. Goldstein. Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. 46-66.

2 Yoffe, Hatzav et al. “Mapping construction sector greenhouse gas emissions: a crucial step in sustainably meeting increasing housing demands.” Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability, vol. 4, no. 2. 20 June, 2024.

3 Lego is a juggernaut in the construction toy world, but rather than offcuts and debris, it is derived from petrochemicals and has a longstanding and mutually beneficial relationship with oil & gas companies. This provides one additional facet of the research, and the embodied materials of toys are themselves byproducts of a fraught relationship to emissions and consumption. Whatever else may be associated with childhood, the implied innocence is marred by these climate-related complexities. See Stockmann, Nils, and Antonia Graf. “‘Polluting Our Kids’’ Imagination”? Exploring the Power of Lego in the Discourse on Sustainable Mobility.’” Sustainability: Science, Practice & Policy, vol. 16, no. 1, Dec. 2020, pp. 231–46. EBSCOhost,

https://doi-org.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/10.1080/15487733.2020.1802142.

4 Yoffe 2024.


About the Artist

Alex R.M. Thompson is a print- and installation-based artist who holds a BFA from OCAD University (Toronto), and an MFA from University of Alberta (Edmonton). He teaches printmaking and drawing at the University of Alberta in the Faculty of Art & Design, and is an active member and instructor at the Society of Northern Alberta Print-Artists (SNAP). He has participated in residencies at St. Michael’s Printshop (St. John’s, NL), Centre[3] (Hamilton, ON), The Banff Centre (Banff, AB), The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa, ON), and the Akademia Sztuki Pięknych (Łódź, Poland). Notable exhibitions include Berlin (Galleri Heike Arndt), Venice (Cities of the Future: Living Together), and Toronto (Nuit Blanche, The Power Plant Gallery). He has participated in a number of portfolios, including Reimagining Fire (2023, Calgary) and Barometric (2016, Toronto) and was the principal organiser of Bituminous Partings, an ecologically-motivated print exchange/portfolio featuring artists from across Canada and the U.S. (2021). He has worked as a studio technician at OCADU (printmaking) and University of Alberta (sculpture), and as a plate-maker and master printer for a range of artists at Open Studio (Toronto), the University of Alberta, and the Remai Modern (Saskatoon, SK). He has been awarded a number of grants in support of his ongoing creative research. 

 www.alexrmthompson.com


SNAP is happy to provide this programming at no cost to participants.

We hope you will consider making a donation to keep programs accessible in the future.

Donate