Burtynsky’s oil photos set to fuel debate
Canadian artist’s exhibit marks May reopening of British photographic gallery
After a two-year, $14-million facelift at Britain’s main photographic art gallery, the downtown London exhibition space will reopen this spring — in the midst of an ongoing national debate in the United Kingdom about Alberta’s oilsands — with a show featuring Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky’s provocative series chronicling the world’s dependence on oil.
The acclaimed Burtynsky exhibit, scheduled to mark the grand reopening of the British Photographers’ Gallery in May, comes at a time when Canada’s massive bitumen resource is a focus of controversy not only in North America — where the proposed Keystone XL pipeline has emerged as a major issue ahead of this year’s U.S. presidential election — but also in Britain, where the Conservative-led coalition government is seen as a potential ally for Canada in selling its oil to Europe, while British environmentalists stand strongly opposed to what they call “dirty oil” from Canada’s “tar sands.”
Burtynsky’s large-scale photographs of oilfields, refineries and other scenes from what he sees as a petroleum-addicted planet are sure to fuel the debate in Britain over planned investments by BP and other British companies in Canada’s oilsands and offshore Arctic hydrocarbon deposits.
Some of Burtynsky’s images — including various aerial perspectives from the heart of the oilsands industry in Fort Mcmurray — offer disturbing depictions of landscapes degraded by petroleum production. Others highlight humanity’s multilayered relationship with oil, gas and the automobile, from commercial strips choked with drive-thru food joints to colossal piles of discarded tires.
The 56-year-old Burtynsky, born in St. Catharines, Ont., has acknowledged his “conflicted” feelings about oil — the energy source that “makes everything possible” in the modern world, but which is also “a source of dread, for its ongoing endangerment of our habitat,” the Earth.
“In no way can one encompass the influence and extended landscape of this thing we call oil,” Burtynsky wrote in the book based on his oilseries photographs. “These images can be considered notations by one artist — contemplations of a world reshaped by the massive energy force, and the cumulative effects of the industrial evolution.”
Edward Burtynsky: Oil premièred at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton in September 2010 and was also shown at the Mccord Museum of Canadian History in Montreal.
When the exhibit opened in Edmonton, Burtynsky told The Journal “this comes out of a concern that our footprint is maybe getting a little too big and we have to find ways to be not so impactful. I don’t really see this as political, but more a look at the consequences of our species. It’s what we do.”
Burtynsky was awarded the Order of Canada in 2006 for his “internationally recognized” artworks, which were described at his investiture as both “arresting and thought-provoking, demonstrating his ability to find esthetic beauty in the unlikeliest of places.”
British environmentalists and ethical-investment advocates have been waging a high-profile campaign to discourage involvement in the oilsands by British companies or support for the industry from the U.K. government.
The March 2010 national première of the documentary film Dirty Oil, a critical look at Canada’s oilsands narrated by Ontario-born actor Neve Campbell, generated controversy in Britain at the time.
The film was released in conjunction with a World Wildlife Fund-u.k. report that argued the oilsands are unsustainable and environmentally destructive. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers slammed the report’s “factual errors” and “missing context.”