Major Solo Shows + Publication Spotlight Ruth Beer’s Artistic Exploration of Relationship Between Humankind and Industry

A new pair of solo exhibitions at major public galleries and an accompanying publication contemplate the work of artist and ECU faculty member Ruth Beer.

Co-presented by the Burnaby Art Gallery and the Art Gallery at Evergreen in Coquitlam, Ruth Beer: Seep | Swell draws on works from more than a decade of practice to spotlight Ruth’s longtime exploration of the “entwined relationships between humankind and our natural extractive industries.”

An accomplished and prolific researcher, Ruth notes Seep | Swell focuses sharply on her aesthetic output, offering an opportunity for new ways of understanding complex themes including the political, economic and ideological valences of landscape and geography.

“Whereas we might think the themes and approaches of a body of research are interesting, as an activist, I aim to encourage people to take inspiration from their experience of seeing and reflecting on the artwork, and ultimately to effect change,” Ruth says. “Artwork provides an opportunity for concentration and for absorbing ideas in a different way. In the exhibition we encounter the work through our senses and through visual language. We also encounter it through materiality that we won’t find in newspapers, in research papers. It allows viewers to engage with ways of thinking and knowing that aren’t strictly rational.”

The majority of works in Seep | Swell were produced as part two major, multi-year SSHRC Insight Grants. Both Trading Routes: Grease Trails, Oil Pipelines (2013-2018) and Shifting Ground: Mapping Energy, Geographies and Communities in the North (2019-2024) involved numerous international collaborators and research assistants from across disciplines, and produced findings including artworks, exhibitions, publications, presentations and symposia.

Seep | Swell, however, focuses squarely on Ruth’s artistic output throughout this period. The accompanying publication, Ruth Beer: Seep | Swell, reflects on the extensive collection through images, curatorial essays and poetry commissioned especially for the book.

“For decades, Beer has used sculpture to explore the depictions, constructs and myths of landscape,” reads the exhibition text. “Through an array of materially seductive artworks—glistening copper weavings, tapestries, bronze and ceramic stones, interactive woven photographs and prints on paper—Beer offers timely reflections on themes related to human-land relationships and the pressing climate crisis.

For Ruth, a keen attention to the communicative power of specific materials has been a north star throughout her career. Copper, for instance, is both alluring and toxic; rare and ubiquitous. These tensions make it an ideal language for addressing intractable topics such as the interrelation between humans, the environment and industry.

“It’s dazzling, it’s precious, it’s warm, it shines. It mesmerizes, it draws you in,” Ruth says. “It has links to Indigenous traditions, as well as to renewables and other industries. We need it. But the Mount Polley Mine disaster polluted the waterways and surrounding landscape, which had harmful effects for humans and wildlife. So, copper has many facets. It grabs you with its loveliness and yet it’s poison. That is a powerful paradox.”

These compelling material ambiguities are part of the unique forcefulness aesthetic practice can bring to a conversation, Ruth says. And they are evident in works such as Oil Topography, a 2014 hand-woven jacquard tapestry made of copper wire, polyester and cotton. The composition derives from a single aerial photograph of the oil-saturated waters in Prince William Sound following the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. By using industrial materials to weave an image of this terrible disaster into an entrancing, large-scale composition, Ruth offers a kind of “counter-monument” to all-too-familiar tropes of the “petro-catastrophe.”

Negotiating between aesthetic allure and conceptual depth is key to ensuring an artwork communicates to its fullest potential, Ruth says. The wow factor of technical mastery is ultimately superficial without deeper conceptual grounding. As a professor at ECU, this insight is one of the central considerations she aims to underscore for students, she adds.

“Students often think about the artwork leading the intellect, or vice versa,” she says. “And I do love teaching about physicality, form, gravity, and spatial elements that comprise the language of sculpture. This is a language they can use to translate or develop their great ideas. But in my teaching practice I work to emphasize the merging or bringing together of theory and practice in balance.”

Ruth Beer: Seep | Swell runs at the Burnaby Art Gallery through Jan. 26, 2025, and at the Art Gallery at Evergreen through Feb. 9, 2025.

A launch for the Ruth Beer: Seep | Swell publication begins at 2pm on Jan. 25, 2025, with an artist tour at the Burnaby Art Gallery, concluding with a reception at the Art Gallery at Evergreen from 3:30 pm to 5 pm.

Visit Ruth’s website to learn more about her work.