The Two Rivers Gallery opened a new exhibition showing the work of three artists on the evening of Thursday, Feb. 6, including that of a world-renowned photojournalist who was arrested while covering the Wet’suwet’en protests against a natural gas pipeline in 2021.
In one of the rooms of the main gallery is “Dreamers,” a showcase of pictures taken in different locales in North American by World Press Photo Award-winning photojournalist Amber Bracken, the only Canadian woman to have earned that honour.
The other gallery room features “The Road Not Taken,” which has works by Prince George-based Canadian artist Betty Kovacic and North Vancouver-based artist Emily Neufeld.
Kovacic’s pieces include art made on slabs of reclaimed copper as well as hanging pieces made with reclaimed plexiglass. Neufeld’s work is an installation made up of photos of abandoned mining shacks laid out on photo plates jutting out from the floor on a bed of rocks, reminiscent of a riverbed.
The three artists each gave a talk about their work on Feb. 6. The Citizen visited the gallery earlier in the day to interview them.
Bracken said while her photographs have been displayed as part of larger shows before, the installation at the Two Rivers Gallery is her first-ever solo exhibition.
She said gallery curator Ehsan Mohammadi reached out to her expressing interest in showcasing her work and the two of them worked together to select the pieces on display.
The photos are from a wide range of locales and events. One shows a man on the concrete remains of a riverside bridge near Bracken’s hometown of Edmonton.
Another shows a run-over rabbit on the side of a highway, taken while Bracken was covering the protests in North Dakota over the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016.
The photo taken closest to Prince George is an image of a moose taken through the scope of a hunting rifle while Bracken was in Wet’suwet’en territory near Smithers covering the protests against the Coastal Gaslink natural gas pipeline for The Narwhal.
Despite those last two photos being taken on the periphery of protests, the gallery doesn’t focus on any one event.
“It didn’t feel good to me to focus just on one story on two stories,” Bracken said. “I ended up kind of pulling together a really big cross-section of my archive.”
There are, however, some common themes among the works selected. There’s a focus on tactility, with some closeups of humans interacting with textures in their environment. Bracken said it wasn't intentional, but looking back over the last decade, a lot of her work about land and people's relationship with it.
"I'm hoping that when people come, what they'll reflect on is the inescapability of the fact that you are, whether you know it or not, in relationship to land and place," she said. "It's just a matter of figuring out what kind of relationship you want to have."
There’s also displays of people interacting with their environment in general, as well as some showcasing of First Nations and Indigenous cultures.
“This is a photo from when I tagged along on a moose hunt,” Bracken said of the moose photo. “The hunter had taken a long time and we were on foot, so it was quite difficult.
“It was long hiking through deep snow. It was not an easy go. The hunter had found a moose and had it in the sights but ultimately decided not to pull the trigger as it was deemed to be a juvenile and not mature. They were trying to allow populations to regenerate in the area.”
While it wasn’t immediate to the larger event she was covering at the time, Bracken said it showed the context to which the Wet’suwet’en were going to keep their traditional lifestyle alive and how they were managing their natural resources.
She said part of the messy idea of Canadian patriotism is that we think of ourselves as good neighbours.
“I think that paying attention to our relationship in an ongoing sense with our most immediate neighbours and hosts is really central to the idea of being Canadian,” Bracken said, referring to Indigenous peoples.
“I think it intersects with so many contemporary issues that are of just general concern to the public. Land issues intersect with energy, they intersect with environment, they intersect with democratic principle and policing.”
Some of the events Bracken photographs are not always well-covered by other media outlets.
She said that when it comes to things like the Dakota Access Pipelines or Coastal Gaslink, it’s not a challenge to get the perspective from the companies, governments or police involved.
“You can call them, you can email them, they’ll give press conferences,” Bracken said. “You don’t have to pay for hotels … whereas getting to the opposition to these projects is physically challenging. They’re often remote, they’re often complicated by weather or challenging roads. It can be financially challenging because you have to travel and it takes time.”
Once you arrive, Bracken said it can also be difficult to cultivate trust — maybe you can’t get through a police blockade or campers won’t talk to you. But she said she sees it as part of her job to try and balance the discourse on these issues by providing access to perspectives from all sides.
During her evening talk, Bracken said she sees her role in covering these events as non-interventionist. She doesn’t direct people and doesn’t tell them what to do.
“I just have to be present, be educated, watch things unfold and look for those moments that tell the story as it’s been informed to me.”
In November 2021, while providing coverage of the Coastal Gaslink protests for The Narwhal, Bracken and fellow freelance journalist Michael Toledano were arrested by the RCMP alongside protesters despite identifying themselves as journalists.
Those arrested were eventually taken to Prince George and held in custody before a judge ordered Bracken and Toledano’s release. Coastal GasLink dropped civil contempt charges against the journalists the next month.
A lawsuit filed by Bracken against the RCMP over her arrest is still working its way through the courts.
Returning to PG after the arrest to celebrate her work, Bracken said it was a recognition that she has to carry on.
“I’ve had a lot of experiences here and it’s unfortunate that one of them was that experience, but it’s not the only one, you know?” she said.
Kovacic is no stranger to the Two Rivers Gallery, with some of her works part of the gallery’s permanent collection. However, her work has also been featured in exhibitions across BC and Alberta.
Her name for the works currently on display is “We Are One,” which were showcased at the Smithers Art Gallery last summer.
Her biggest pieces on display are images on sheets of copper salvaged from her family’s farm, found by her husband. In fact, to the best of her ability, most the materials used in her pieces were either salvaged or donated
After burning off the pollution on the copper, Kovacic said she thought the colours and patterns on the metal that emerged were beautiful and she didn’t want to cover them. That’s why the images painted onto the metal are only lines and not full figures.
“I added lines with the idea that, from a distance, the paintings almost look like they’re abstract, but as the viewer comes closer, the animals are revealed,” Kovacic said. “Almost all the animals are … endangered or threatened or at risk.”
One of the images is in the shape of the human circulatory system. Laid overtop of the metal sheet is a plexiglass triangle with an outline of a fetus painted on it in blue.
“In this body of work, I’m actually looking at the connection between humans, nature and all of nature’s citizens,” Kovacic said.
“The circulatory system was for a project about water. I was thinking that the circulatory system of the human being, or any animal that has a circulatory system, looks much like rivers. I thought that was interested because the veins in our body look like the rivers on the land when viewed from above or on a map.”
Accompanying the copper sheets are plexiglass triangles hanging from the wall with images of the limbs of animals on them. Hanging from the triangles are smaller pieces of plexiglass with images of other animals.
That series is called “Interdependent.”
Kovacic said she wanted to give the idea that these animals are hanging by a thread .
“The different animal feet that you see, there’s a koala bear, an eagle, an octopus and a human hand,” she said. “What I wanted to show is that we are all interdependent on each other. It’s not just human who are holding up life, it’s all the other creatures as well.
“In my personal philosophy and spiritual belief, I think that everything is connected and shares an energy and shares almost like a poetic connection made of life and light and energy.”
Neufeld’s work, titled “Overburden,” is the hardest to explain without visual reference. From a distance it looks like a series of pillars holding up square plates, emerging from a bed of rocks, almost like a topographical map.
When you get closer, you see that the plates are in groups, displaying photo collages of different worn-out shacks. In some of the photos, there are embellishments of gold or silver foil stuck to the structures.
She told The Citizen that her piece is about gold and silver mining ghost towns in BC as well as resource extraction in general. Her work has been centred around homes at the end of their lifespan for the last 15 years, she said.
“I’ve made work in homes that were slated for demolition in the Lower Mainland where they’re putting in infills of higher densification or just bigger houses,” Neufeld said. “Then I did work in abandoned farmhouses across the prairies where the larger farms conglomerate together and we end up with homes on a quarter-section that are no longer (occupied).”
The photos on the plates are of log cabins deep in the woods left over from mining communities. The layout of the piece, she said, is based on claims map from the Quesnel Forks area.
She said she had to do a lot of research to find the cabins she photographed. Sometimes she would arrive at the site of a former mining community and find nothing left. Other times, truckers on forestry roads would help her track down the location of remaining structures.
Part of the intent behind the piece is to examine why humans place value on certain things, like gold. It’s currently in use in the manufacture of electronics, but during the gold rush, society had determined that its aesthetic qualities meant it was worth a lot of money.
“I just think sometimes that destroying the planet that’s actually providing us with food and shelter in order to get this useless gold metal is a weird choice to make,” Neufeld said.
“Like, there’s a compulsion to do that. I think that these myths of striking it rich still resonates today. People are still going out and panning for gold. People still want to be part of a pyramid scheme to get rich quick.”
When she was in the Quesnel Forks area, she said she met a couple from Quebec who had come out because one of their fathers had come out in the sixties to pan for hold. He died in his eighties without finding anything.
“They were like ‘we just wished he’d come home and spend time with us, but he wanted to be this hero who brought home these riches for his family.’”
Neufeld imagines that it will look different if and when it travels to other venues because it will need to be adapted to fit in other buildings. She said the rocks beneath the piece were brought in by Rolling Mix Concrete.
On the afternoon before the show opened, the room was set up with large fans blasting air the installation, trying to get any water on the rocks to evaporate.
She said she was “thrilled” to have her works displayed alongside Bracken and Kovacic.
“I think Betty offers a hopeful future, not exactly a utopia, but an idea of a different approach we could take to working alongside the other creatures that we share this planet with,” Neufeld said. “I think Amber has a very similar critique of resource extraction and a very similar reverence for the natural world that actually feeds and houses us.”
The three artists’ work will be on display until April 13. Kovacic will also be facilitating a workshop about self-expression through visual art at the end of March as well as teaching spring break art workshops for kids.
