The temporary outdoor public art exhibition Paved Paradise – a part of the City’s Art in Public Places program, which provides the opportunity to exhibit temporary public art across the city, now in its second year – will be showcasing seven original photo-based works by Kingston artists that highlight the impact of industrial activity on the local environment.
Artists Noah Scheinman and Adam Biehler will have their art displayed in an exhibition titled Tomorrow’s Geology Today on seven mini billboards located on the north side of Brock Street at Ontario Street, next to the parking lot and facing City Hall.
Their art was created following a public call for submissions made earlier in the year for the theme of Imagined Futures, Pressing Times, inviting artists to create works with an eye towards the City of Kingston’s recent declaration of a climate emergency. The selected works were chosen by members of the City’s Public Art Working Group.
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“The theme for the second iteration of Paved Paradise asked artists to engage with the public about the critical issue of climate change,” said Danika Lochhead, manager, arts and sector development. “Through this platform, public art can spark dialogue within the community about what it means to be living in a climate crisis and how the City of Kingston’s declaration should translate into action.”
According to a release:
Tomorrow’s Geology Today examines how Kingston, as a city so well known for its limestone, has been built using material that physically records past events over millions of years. Using the billboards as a platform for a large-scale photo essay, Tomorrow’s Geology Today shows how resource extraction and burning of fossil fuels are being recorded as new layers of activity impacting the earth’s geology at both local and global scales.
An opening event for the exhibition, with the artists in attendance, will be take place on Saturday, July 13 from 2-4pm at the Paved Paradise location beside the parking lot on Brock and Ontario Streets.
Artist Biographies provided by the City:
Noah Scheinman is an artist, designer and writer based in Kingston whose practice explores the intersecting histories of environment, technology and culture. His work combines a background in architecture and urban design with an emergent language of sculpture, installation, collage, photography and video. Scheinman’s interdisciplinary approach is motivated by the desire to understand planetary networks of energy, ecology and emotion in terms of the political economies that drive material and geographic transformations.
Adam Biehler is a Kingston-based photographer/videographer whose personal work focuses on the relationship between humans and their environments. His works aim to illustrate both the impact of humans on their environments and the impact of an environment on human activity. Biehler achieves this narrative either by juxtaposing industrial and commercial elements in wild nature settings or by inserting stoic characters into onerous man-made environments.
Learn more about the Paved Paradise project at this City of Kingston page or find out about the City’s Public Art Program.
Image: Paved Paradise Exhibition Launch event page
