RAILWAY LANDS | ERIC WALKER
25.09.2005 | 13.11.2005
Eric Walker discusses his practice as such:
My recent work cycle Railway Lands, presents a representational link between rail transportation and telecommunication themes and (post) modern landscape painting. One work in the cycle for example, The Ocean Limited (East Bound) at Sackville, New Brunswick August 13, 1998, (2000), originating from an idea, recorded in the summer of 1998, while an artist in residence at Struts Artist Run in Sackville, is the model for a group of three "panoramic" train images. The eleven inch high, by 64 feet long "Ocean Limited" was produced in 18 sections - one section for each car depicted. It was followed in 2001 by the 62 foot long, 28 section CN Freight Train 148 at Aulac, New Brunswick, May 24, 1998 and twenty six foot long in seven section, Montreal Commuter( Train) de Banlieu. (2002).
The balance of Railway Lands falls into three categories: microwave relay towers, locomotive imagery and railway structures. With the exception of the The Crow Gulch Train Disaster works - based in news photography - all the other images were in their conceptual birth, observed first hand by the artist. They are in the fashion of documentary photography objective documents, but rendered in a (post) documentary style.
Another branch of my work relates to Maritime popular culture. This work currently manifest as Container Ships at Halifax (2003 to present) is an effort to represent all the container ships that visited Halifax in 2000.
The Container Ship works were preceded by the Disaster Ship Series (1997-98) which comprised a body of 60 constructions exhibited at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in 1998.
Eric Walker was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1957. He studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design between 1976 and 1983 where he was greatly influenced by the modernism of such visiting artists as Canada's Patterson Ewen, Germany's Joseph Beuys and Americans Robert Frank and June Leaf; as well as the later polemicists Martha Rosler, Dan Graham and Allan Sekula. Walker began exhibiting in 1982 with a graduation show at the Anna Leonowen's Gallery (NSCAD), Halifax and has continued to work and exhibit primarily in the university/regional art gallery/artist run scene for two decades. Walker has received numerous awards and grants for his artwork, including in 1999 a Canada Council "a" grant and "a" awards from both the Ontario Arts Council (2001, 2003) and the Conseil des arts et des lettres de Quebec (1991). Walker's works are widely held in public collections including the Canada Council Art Bank, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Owens Art Gallery (Mount Allison University), The Ottawa Art Gallery, Carleton University Art Gallery, Dalhousie University Art Gallery (Halifax), the City of Ottawa and V-Tape (video), Toronto. Walker has exhibited his art work widely in Canada, with international representation in group shows in Lublin, Poland (1987), Mexico City (2001), Amsterdam (2001) and in 2002 a solo exhibition at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo. Walker lives in Ottawa.
