{"id":28972,"date":"2014-10-04T14:51:07","date_gmt":"2014-10-04T19:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artmur.com\/?page_id=28972"},"modified":"2022-11-29T19:56:18","modified_gmt":"2022-11-30T00:56:18","slug":"canadians-and-americans-best-friends-forever-its-complicated","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/artmur.com\/en\/artists\/diana-thorneycroft\/canadians-and-americans-best-friends-forever-its-complicated\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadians and Americans (Best Friends Forever\u2026 It\u2019s Complicated)"},"content":{"rendered":"
November 1 – December 20, 2014
\nDiana Thorneycroft: Canadians and Americans (Best Friends Forever\u2026 It\u2019s Complicated) <\/em><\/p>\n

Text by Natasha Chaykowski<\/p>\n

Vexed, irresolute and complex are perhaps some of the most apt words to describe the relationship between Canada and the United States. \u201cComplicated\u201d is another appropriate adjective to tell of the cultural, historical and political dynamics of these national entities, and is how Diana Thorneycroft articulates a friendship between the two. In her most recent series of photographic works, Canadians and Americans (best friends forever… it’s complicated), she has produced a suite of theatrical and at times humorous mise-en-sc\u00e8nes that conjure the drama and intricacy of a complicated friendship.<\/p>\n

Thorneycroft\u2019s carefully composed tableaux are staged against the canonical backdrops of well-known paintings; the quintessentially sublime cliffs of Caspar David Friedrich\u2019s The Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog, J. E. H. MacDonald\u2019s mountainous landscape, and Andrew Wyatt\u2019s idyllic and pastoral plains from Christina\u2019s World are some of the painterly locales that set the scenes of Thorneycroft\u2019s photographs. These recognizable backgrounds host her imaginative ruminations on the respective cultures of Canada and our neighbour to the south.<\/p>\n

Where figures exist in such paintings, they are replaced in Throneycroft\u2019s works by figurines\u2014Barbies, action figures, dolls\u2014in the company of meticulously detailed accessories, other bits of scenery, and plastic props. The woman crawling through the tawny field, her back turned from the viewer, in Wyatt\u2019s painting, is replaced by a doll, who remains prostrate in Christina\u2019s World (Gets Turned Upside Down by Cpl. Dew Wright) (2012). In Thorneycroft\u2019s version however, an RCMP officer, pointing a gun at the house in the distance, lies on top of the woman, suggesting that he is protecting her. This addition of Canadian iconography onto the surfaces of an iconic American painting speaks to the artist\u2019s interest in the distinctions between the two cultures. She unfurls this relationship further in adding characters to otherwise figure-less paintings in other works in the series.<\/p>\n

Such is the case in Lake O’Hara (Clark, Northern Dancer and the Evil Weasel) (2012), in which a Superman figure strikes a pose astride Northern Dancer, the first Canadian horse to win the Kentucky Derby. In MacDonald\u2019s original, a clearing in the foreground allows for a vignetted view of the famous turquoise waters of British Colombia\u2019s Lake O\u2019Hara. Here, a classic American hero boldly occupies the otherwise pristine Canadian landscape, a comment on the infringement (or threat of infringement) of powerful American forces.<\/p>\n

While these works feature one or two dominating cultural references, many of the images in this series are populated by a teeming number of figures and objects, creating a cacophony of cultural symbols. Sometimes the relationship between Thorneycroft\u2019s many allusions is obvious, while at others, the profusion of references is productively harder to grasp; it requires some work. In this way, these images demand of the viewer a performance of the friendship they address, which is a friendship that is forever demanding of work, and necessarily complicated.<\/p><\/div>

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