Carving Room

SNAP is pleased to present Carving Room, an exhibition by Andrew Thorne, in the gallery from August 28 to October 2, 2021.

Carving Room, is a print-based installation exploring Canada’s relationship to media and place. This is a project inspired by plywood, its abundance throughout the urban landscape, and its relationship with housing, development and resource extraction. The large-scale, woodcut project has been produced at SNAP, as part of the Emerging Artist in Residence program. This work has been supported by Arts Nova Scotia.

Carving Room was made to consider what spaces say, and what materials we use to construct them, physically and otherwise. Carving Room invites the public into a constructed place to reflect on our own spaces and their functions. Carving Room will call into question the language perpetuated by our media, and what devices it uses to censor and guide public interests.

I moved to Edmonton at the end of January, and in that time, I have been carving and printing large scale woodcuts, in hopes of mimicking or mocking the omnipresent voice of our media here in Canada. What symbols and images are conjured and for what intention? While flipping through the Edmonton Sun, I began to answer some of these questions. What stands out to me even more than the rhetoric, is what’s not being said. Public opinion is founded on the information that is received, not what is omitted. I began my own process of blocking and omitting information, by printing on the newspapers and other materials like curtains that I could use to “cover” and “reveal” information.

Carving Room understands mass media to be a colonial device used to control land and peoples. I see woodcut and silkscreen as mediums that house the potential to resist these interests of mass media. Instead, they can guide us towards a collective reimagining of what community can be and how spaces can better serve those individuals.

We acknowledge the support of Arts Nova Scotia.

Andrew Thorne is an interdisciplinary artist, born and raised on the unceded land of Mi’kma’ki and Wolastoqiyik, in Moncton, New Brunswick. Thorne received his BFA from NSCAD University in 2020. He recently finished the VANS New Grad Program and is currently completing SNAP’s Emerging Artist in Residency Program. This work has been graciously supported by Arts Nova Scotia.

Currently, the artist is most excited by woodcut, and materials such as plywood, as they are a symbol of forestry and resource-extraction. Andrew Thorne’s work can be found at the Lowlands Project Space and the Artists in the Fallow group show. Normally, Thorne can also be found performing with his group, Tangent.

andrewthorneart.com