For some thirty years, Edmonton has provided a unique environment for sculpture, especially for sculpture in the Cubist tradition. That tradition was started by Picasso almost a hundred years ago and was enriched my Julio Gonzales, David Smith, and Anthony Caro.

Mostly this tradition has used steel as a working material. Steel lends itself to cutting, arranging, and joining; it takes Cubist collage into the third dimension. The tradition took root in Edmonton some thirty years ago with Alan Reynolds, who was soon followed by Catherine Burgess, Clay Ellis, Ken Macklin, Vesna Makale, and Peter Hide. Hide did much to encourage and maintain the tradition through his teaching in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Alberta. This exhibition displays work by seven recent students of his and Royden Mills. It demonstrates that the tradition is far from dead.

Three of the artists are very recent graduates from the U of A sculpture program. The other four graduated earlier, but continue to work in the city. Of the latter Andrew French, Mark Bellows, and Ryan McCourt share a studio, giving them the double advantage of being removed from the student environment while retaining continued access to one another for stimulation and criticism. This does not amount to their charting a common course. If anything, the shared studio has confirmed them in separate directions: the hothouse atmosphere appears to have stimulated both invention and individuality. Their work seems to be getting closer to the source of their inspiration. French’s into the occupation of space by brute force, Bellows into a poetry of volume, McCourt into elegant profiles. This is not to denigrate the others; they all have distinctive gifts but are generally at a more exploratory stage of development.

To my eyes, what is surprising and reassuring is that these artists have chosen to make sculptures in an art world that for the past two decades has favored “installations.” The objects that they make don’t presume to be parts of a larger concern, a high-sounding “issue.” As a result, there’s no equivocation about whether the “art” is in the object or attached to an “issue,” in their case it’s always rooted in the object, in the thing itself.

This is unusual in artists of their generation: because of it they’ve charted a rocky course and for this alone they demand and deserve attention. If their work is any indication, the next generation is well on its way.

Terry Fenton, May 2002