Remnant

Grant Watson

November 10 to December 9, 2017

In Remnant, Victoria-based sculptor Grant Watson explores the causal relationships between the objectness of toys, the adoption of devices into childhood playtimes and the evolution and reinvention of the role of maker as new technologies like 3D printing inevitably reposition the status of the handmade much like photography influenced painting and then digital technologies impacted photography. Comprising 16 life-size articulated dogs cast in cement, plaster and other nontoxic additives laboriously created over 18 months and modelled from plastic toys that are now obsolete, Remnant harnesses the dichotomies inherent in symbolism and metaphor to create malleable narratives between the popular and arcane; declining inventories indexed to resurgent obsolescence—the shifting and relative value of loss and gain.

In addition to making work which has appeared in numerous group and solo exhibitions, Grant Watson is a shipwright and pattern maker who has fabricated work for a number of artists and replicated artifacts for the Royal BC Museum. He graduated from the University of Victoria with honours in 1993.