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Where there’s smoke, there’s art

Gibsons Public Art Gallery
smoke
Artist Gordon Halloran used special effects on this photo to suggest what The Smoking Room experience – and the experience of a major wildfire – might be like.

Art can justifiably be created for no particular reason, just “for art’s sake,” as the expression goes. But art can just as well send a message, pose questions and evoke conflicting feelings. It’s with those intentions that Gordon Halloran has created The Smoking Room, a three-hour “immersive installation” at Gibsons Public Art Gallery to be staged on Monday, March 11.

Halloran’s questions go like this: If a wildfire swept across a swath of the Sunshine Coast and generated so much smoke that everywhere you went you could only see a few feet in front of you, how would that feel and how would you react? And what if you knew the wildfire was almost certainly a consequence of climate change?

The Smoking Room was inspired by both the threat of climate change globally and the alarming local experience during the July, 2015 Old Sechelt Mine fire, which cost the life of tree faller John Phare, and sent a pall of sooty smoke over much of the Coast for days.

“When we had that big fire, the smoke was coming in and we had to close everything off,” Halloran said in an interview at his Roberts Creek home. “And there was this strange quality of yellow light in the sky, and it was dark everywhere. That experience was the stimulus for this.

“We’ve just been conscious of the fire thing over the last few years. There was no talk of it before that. It was ridiculous to even think about it because it was so wet here. But now we have five or six months of heat and dryness, that’s different. It’s changed almost overnight.”

Halloran also points out a problem of widespread public emergencies particular to this Coast: “We only have one highway. There’s basically no way out. Once that gets clogged up, we’re going nowhere.”

As an artist, Halloran said he’s not interested in messaging solely about climate-change, but also in the experiential effects of the situation. 

“Art involves the gut and the brain, the sense of what life is, what the experience is like. We come up against things like this that are beyond us. How do we respond? That interests me, that side of it,” he said. “What’s it like to be in a gallery space that you’ve thought of as very peaceful and fun, to have to consider the larger questions that we’re faced with?”

Theatrical fogging machines will generate the smoke, which will not be dangerous to breathe, but will be thick enough to reduce visibility to arm’s length. A limited number of people will be allowed into the murky gallery space at a time. He’s also having participants wear a paper mask over their nose and mouth, which, in smoke-filled streets and homes might be necessary, and which has its own effects.

“When these masks are on, there is that sense of isolation between people, making it more difficult to speak and be heard, and they kind of suggest not speaking,” Halloran said.

He expects those attending might record some of their experiences on smartphones and said he would be happy if they’d send him those video files for a visual record and possible future use.

The event runs from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Admission is free.