Terroir, Terror, Terroir, 2020
Installation with 4 unframed inkjet prints, 48″ x 240″.
Installation view, Terra Economicus, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Canada, 2020. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.
Terroir, Terror, Terroir is twenty-foot landscape photograph of the Green Lane Landfill in Southwold, Ontario, two hundred kilometres west of Toronto. Purchased by the municipality of Toronto in 2006, Green Lane is where the majority of the city’s household waste is discarded and is projected to serve as the city’s primary landfill until the year 2035. Superimposed on the photograph are text descriptions developed from a site visit that the artist took to Green Lane with a sommelier, a wine professional with specialized training in identifying and classifying wines. Employing the knowledge and expertise that the sommelier would normally use to describe the aromatic and chemical components of a wine, the descriptions attempt to capture the olfactory profile of the landfill, combining elements of food science, chemistry, and subjective interpretation. The term terroir is used by the wine industry and wine experts to describe how the characteristics of a geographic region—its soil, water, climate, and terrain—are reflected in the aromas, flavours, and appearance of a wine. Terroir, Terror, Terroir satirizes the undercurrents of elitism and cultural capital associated with wine connoisseurship—and contemporary foodie culture in general—by hijacking its fixation with locale and applying its jargon to a radically different form of land use. Landfills are a controversial and vexing aspect of urban planning, both a necessity and a menace that is often foisted on communities lacking the political clout and means to control where such infrastructure is sited.
Exhibition history
Terra Economicus, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Canada, 2020, curated by Leila Timmins.
Installation detail, Terra Economicus, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Canada, 2020. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.
Installation detail, Terra Economicus, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Canada, 2020. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.
Installation detail, Terra Economicus, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Canada, 2020. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.
Installation detail, Terra Economicus, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Canada, 2020. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.