2009 Finalist
Creator: Susan Feindel
Nominator: Ingrid Jenkner
Seconders: Wayne Boucher, Katie Belcher
Susan Feindel’s installation See Below presents an immersive experience of the ocean floor, re-enacted through a group of huge black and white painted canvases (based on sonar side-scan imagery) covering the floor of the dimly-lit gallery, accompanied by small pin-pricked map drawings illuminated from beneath and an ambient sound-scape recorded with Norwegian marine sediment. Feindel’s extensive research for this project includes several guest residencies on oceanographic research vessels. Courageously original in conception and execution, the installation combines science, technology and art, dramatically invoking, for example, the scars of scallop dragging and trawling and the fragility of the deep ocean environment off Canada’s Eastern continental shelf. In this mature and affecting work Feindel offers a total sensory experience that is both locally and globally significant.
Brief bio: Susan Feindel obtained her BFA from Mount Allison University in 1966 and she has been making art, mainly in Nova Scotia and Ottawa, since then. Initially involved in landscape but in recent years more focused on marine environments, she has joined research expeditions to observe the high arctic, the deep ocean and other threatened sites. Her works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Canada and abroad and extensively reviewed. See Below was exhibited in Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery in 2009.
