Projects / Shows

AWSS (Autumn-Winter, Spring-Summer)

An audio and textile installation, in ongoing creation by Barbara Adler, seasonally updated to reflect colour predictions derived from fashion and industrial logging.

A pair of silk and crochet-wrapped audio speakers play commissioned compositions by Toni-Leah C. Yake, Julia Ulehla, Jen Yakamovitch, Aram Bajakian and Why Choir (Roxanne Nesbitt and Ben Brown). Each composition responds to a relationship between the artist and a specific place, either real or imagined.

Silk and cellulose threads are natural-dyed according to the shifting colours of vegetation observed and photographed during horse rides and walks through a commercially replanted logging cut near the artist’s home in xwesam/Roberts Creek. The fabric covering the speakers is based on colour predictions made by Premiere Vision, a French textile trend forecaster. These predictions are released roughly a year and a half in advance of a fashion season and initiate a production timeline that culminates in events that take place in the installation, including performances and Slow Socials. Over time, the installation has grown to include a series of hyperbolic textile ‘calendars’, incorporating studio scraps and community-contributed patches.

In our climate emergency, predictions are unstable. AWSS’ colour palette lags behind species succession, the growth and spread of invasive plants and the damaging effects of prolonged drought on the Sunshine Coast. Likewise, caring for horses, people and place demands slow rhythms and repeated attention, compressing and expanding time to ruffle production calendars, and ambition.

AWSS foregrounds conflicting rhythms of work: the growth and decay of vegetation, artistic creation and relational practice, and industrial production. Through these contrasts, the project invites the public to consider the links between extractive human labour and environmental exhaustion, drawing a thread of solidarity with the other-than-human world.

The installation continues to be shown in-process, featuring collaborations with local artists. Past collaborators include Wayne Mercier (Gabriola Island), Cole Schmidt (Vancouver), Martin Reisle (Vancouver), and Daniel Gaucher (Galiano Island).