Losing Sight of Blindness

Nick Dobson

September 12 to October 17, 2003

Nick Dobson’s exhibition “Losing Sight of Blindness” reflects an interesting synthesis of the artist’s own double life, a point of contact for activities that might be described as his artistic self and his day job. However, this description is not only insufficient but also somewhat guilty of pandering to the artist stereotype, without due consideration of how it is that Dobson’s art blurs various boundaries between work, play, creation and fabrication. Having completed undergraduate and graduate degrees in Fine Art alongside of periodic work for the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers (local 146), Dobson draws upon his experience in labour to think about the subject of “being” in relation to power. The existential upshot of his content relates an overwhelming sense of scale, one that Dobson has encountered repeatedly when working on power vessels in Northern Alberta. Work sites such as the Suncor plant near Fort McMurray might be likened to the otherworldly and fantastic images of future cities in science fiction with respect to the overbearing mass of the heavy machinery. Here the romantic notion of humankind dwarfed by the total grandeur of nature and God is transferred to a more contemporary yardstick; it is actually the manmade which conquers the horizon. Embedded into this frame is the notion of solidarity, a work force, and trade unionism. To be sure the vessels that Dobson represents also sign many contemporary problematics, Western consumption principle among them, and yet the awesome tone of these large scale prints retain a kind of reverence towards the accomplishment of many hands working towards a common goal. Printmaking itself is an overtly mechanical media, paralleling to some degree the various apparatus of the industrial job site. In this way Dobson has chosen a means of production that extends the impact of his working life in relation to the radical imagery of gargantuan vessels generating power.

Places I Find Myself

By bringing together elements of work and play in his job and art, Dobson has encountered resistance from many of those around him. The class distinctions that cut across artistic practice in terms of its eventual reception often neglect those deemed “blue collar.” While much of the critique rife within the art world is directed towards the moneyed class, those in the working world are often dismissed with a snicker, as if to charge that their bearing in culture is irrelevant. As previously mentioned Dobson’s images are nothing if not respectful towards the working life. In “Losing Sight of Blindness” there is a spirituality that emerges from the singular experience of encountering a job site out of whack with daily living, a foreign experience essentially larger than life.

Obscured Matrix 1

As curator, my proposal to the Board of Directors of Artspace drewupon the content of Dobson’s work in relation to the labour situation in Peterborough. Hence this exhibition may recall another show from Artspace’s recent past, Toronto photographer Peter MacCallum’s “Concrete Industries” could be thought of as an interesting precedent for artwork dealing with industry. However MacCallum’s working methodology remains documentary in style, reserving fascination for those who would join the artist in a vicarious, albeit insightful and well researched, examination of what is ostensibly “another world”. Dobson’s images are decidedly experiential in nature; he is both the artist and the worker that provide the intimate perspective of these representations. As with many smaller cities across Ontario, Peterborough has suffered closures and downsizing on the scale of a general economic recession. The work contained in “Losing Sight of Blindness” is in part a personal exploration, but one ultimately rooted in language and therefore shared experience. In this way the ambition of bringing this exhibition to Peterborough is to stimulate dialogue within our community both in terms of printmaking as an art form as well as raising the social consciousness towards labour as a facet of our immediate culture.

Written by David LaRiviere