Anne Ramsden, Anastylosis: Childhood (Falling), 1999. Colour photographs (Lamda prints), diptych. Gift of the artist, 2016. Photo: Courtesy the artist.
Anastylosis is an archeological term describing the reconstruction of an object from its surviving fragments, often using a coloured bonding agent so that viewers can understand the reconstruction process. Ramsden applied the technique to nearly 300 household dishes that she smashed and reconstructed according to this system, which she then showed in a large installation, Anastylosis: Inventory (1999-2000). All of the reconstructed objects are displayed on archival shelving units to encourage an awareness of the activity of looking. Anastylosis: Childhood (Falling), represents a small part of this larger project.
Anastylosis: Childhood (Falling) is a photographic diptych showing broken children's dishes before they were restored and as reconstituted wholes. Photographed against a black background, images of the white dishes enforce the drama of the fracturing and reassembly.
Ramsden's investigation into the relationship between the manner in which we understand society, both in the past and present, is methodologically complex in its references to archeology, and aesthetically and conceptually rich in its presentation of the construction of the whole from fragments. The notion of how we look and understand objects, both objects of art and quotidian objects, is queried by Ramsden as a social process that may need to be dissembled in order for the whole to be comprehended.
Anne Ramsden is a Montreal based artist. Her nationally recognized work, which focuses on knowledge systems, has her exploring the collection, the museum, consumer culture and mass production, the domestic sphere, subjectivity and spectatorship.
Andreas Bunte, Erosion, 2016. HD video, 17:25 minutes, ed. 1/5. Gift of the artist, 2016. Photo: Blaine Campbell.
After being SFU's Audain Visual Artist in Residence in 2014, Andreas Bunte then made the site-specific film, Erosion, in January 2016 at SFU's Burnaby campus. In Erosion, Bunte treats SFU's iconic and internationally recognized Brutalist architecture as geological formation. The film addresses a specificity of place and the complex artistic, philosophical and environmental dialogues that engage our current moment. In asserting that architecture is geology, Bunte is interested in how we have interfered with our planet's materials such that we have literally transformed the earth’s geomorphology. Erosion provides insight into the geological implications of SFU's building over the social experience of the site to articulate a new vision of art, architecture and our current epoch, the Anthropocene.
Andrea Bunte is a Berlin based artist who works with experimental film and installation, combining film with media such as collage, architectural structures, sound and text. Bunte's internationally recognized work takes up the interplay between technology, architecture and the body.