This artwork is part of my interest in the effects of consumerism on our bodies and our minds. Shopping, collecting, saving, hoarding and the attendant activities of organizing, cleaning, filing, sorting, recycling and purging occupy large swaths of time and energy. What are the effects on our mental health of this continuous cycle?

Here, the entire torso has been subsumed by boxes and packaging, negating the body entirely. Yet there is strength in the posture and some pathos in the out-stretched hand grasping for ever more stuff.

Our relationship to materialism is complicated. Our strong desire for things, whether they serve a functional purpose or primarily an aesthetic one, is undeniable. At the same time we are conscious of the moral obligation to pursue a path towards more sustainable living – economically, socially and environmentally. How are we coping with the continuous cycle of consuming and purging, desire and repulsion, mania and depression? How are these behaviours manifested in the body?

Figure with Box Torso by Ellen Scobie

Figure with Box Torso by Ellen Scobie

Figure with Box Torso by Ellen Scobie

Figure with Box Torso by Ellen Scobie

Figure with Box Torso by Ellen Scobie

Figure with Box Torso by Ellen Scobie

Figure with Box Torso by Ellen Scobie

Figure with Box Torso by Ellen Scobie

RACHEL TOPHAM PHOTOGRAPHY

Exhibition History

Fraser Valley Biennial 2023
presented at
The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford

January 27 – May 6, 2023
Guest Curator: Candace Couse
Organized and circulated by The Reach Gallery Museum

The Fraser Valley Biennial is the premier regional group exhibition, bringing together exemplary works of contemporary art created in the Fraser Valley over the past two years. Since its start in 2011, the Biennial has showcased the work of more than 250 local and regional artists, many of whom have gone on to significant achievements in their respective practices.

This year’s exhibition, guest curated by artist and scholar Candace Couse, brings together 22 artists who have responded to the theme “the body.” The theme has been interpreted widely, and works in the exhibition include pieces that focus on issues of ability and disability, disease, strength and resilience, embodied self-hood, and the relationship between the body and technology.

“The body is taught, and it teaches. The body transforms environments through labour. It is the slate on which scripts are written, and here the body keeps both secrets and score. It is porous, leaky, boundaryless, and thus not fully controllable by historical or dominant understandings. The body, in this context, opens as a site of meaning where it is understood as product and producer of biological or social limitations and constructs. In short, the body becomes a place for experimentation as it holds multiple and contradictory representations rich for exploration.”

–Candace Couse, Fraser Valley Biennial 2023 Catalogue