Getting to the grass roots

Carrie Allison has thought a lot about lawns.

Specifically, the Halifax-based multidisciplinary artist thought about the time, money, resources and energy spent on the endless pursuit of the perfectly manicured, kelly-green squares in front of suburban houses; the colonial ideas about value, virtue, class and wealth lawns uphold; and the pressures exerted by societal expectations and full-on city bylaws to control what is a living thing.

It’s those ideas that inform we tend to care, a touring solo exhibition curated by Franchesca Hebert-Spence. The Winnipeg iteration of the show will be presented across two venues — Urban Shaman and within WAG-Qaumajuq’s permanent collection galleries — in collaboration with Marie-Anne Redhead, assistant curator of Indigenous and contemporary art at WAG-Qaumajuq.

“Lawns and grass are very much associated with that sort of, I would say, propaganda of what we value in society,” says Allison, 39, who is of nêhiýaw/Métis/mixed European descent. “They are used to tell people what they should value and how they should use their time.”

Not just their time, but also their space.

“This dictation of land is something that I was really interested in, through the lens of ‘productivity,’ quote-unquote. That’s very much within the framework of western colonialism and western ideas of value, that the land is only good if it can produce something for the economy,” she says.

“And then when it comes to lawns, it’s really just about what looks esthetically pleasing. In much of North America, the grass that we grow on lawns is not supposed to be growing here.”

The seeds for these works were planted when Allison was sitting on the rolling green of Citadel Hill in Halifax in the summertime and her friend made a comment about how weird it was that we still maintain lawns, which were status symbols of European royalty.

How fitting, then, that at the WAG, we tend to care has been mounted within European and North American Art, 1500-1900. Allison’s contemporary works quite literally interrupt the chronology of European Renaissance and early settler North American art, as both a critique and intervention.

Many of Allison’s pieces on view are beaded: meticulous, time-consuming, labour-intensive work — not unlike, she notes, that of maintaining a lawn.

“My neighbour, who I’m really close to, has a great lawn. Our lawn has since been defunct. It’s now all clover, essentially, and so we don’t really have to mow it very often. But my neighbour has this amazing lawn and I really enjoy going over there and sitting on it because it’s soft,” she says.

One day, her neighbour saw her beading what would become the sparkling plots of grass that top the poplar plinths that compose the large-scale installation they built fields of grass on sawdust: poplar, a comment on how trees are too often collateral in the development of “productive” land.

“He was essentially like, ‘That’s crazy. That’s a crazy use of your time, what are you doing?’ — and I think the exact same thing about him maintaining his lawn,” she says. “But that is deemed as being a productive use of your time and labour, whereas my labour as an artist, as an Indigenous woman, is not valued as much.”

Hebert-Spence, the exhibition’s curator, sees tremendous value in it. The amount of care, research and time Allison, who has twice been long-listed for the Sobey Art Award, puts into her art is one of the things that attracted her to it.

“I feel really strongly about how that labour, overall, in the arts community and in art galleries and within arts markets, isn’t valued the way that it should be. I curate a lot of craft work, so those are kind of the things that make me gravitate to Carrie’s work,” she says during the installation at Urban Shaman, her eight-month-old daughter, Ozhaawashko-Giizhig, gurgling away on her lap.

The Winnipeg-born, Inuvik-based curator, who is Anishinaabe, also valued being able to work closely with another mother of young children. As they were developing we tend to care, both women had babies; Allison’s kids are four and almost two, while Hebert-Spence also has an almost two-year-old son.

“Fran and I have been friends and colleagues for a long time, so it’s been nice to share that with her,” Allison says. “I think it’s really important for parents to work together, especially if you’re the primary parent in the relationship. I think there’s a lot of sympathy and love and understanding, which you don’t always get in working relationships.”

Included in this show is also a work from Sîpîy (or “river” in Cree), a series honouring specific rivers. Allison’s beaded Red River will be on view at the WAG.

So how many beads does it take to get from The Forks to Lake Winnipeg?

“Everyone always asks me that,” she says with a laugh. “I have no idea.”

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