Imagine a future in which climate change has rendered northern Canada quite temperate and beautiful, but also pre-industrial.
Cory Collins has imagined it - and mapped it out.
Collins, a Newfoundland-based artist, writer and behaviour therapist, has a new exhibition at the Burnaby Public Library's McGill branch.
Re-Mappings, part of the Burnaby Art Gallery's outreach program, is on at the North Burnaby library branch until Feb. 8.
"Much of my work looks at the idea of utopianism expressed in cities," Collins explains in a press release. "Pictorial or illustrated maps, whether for commercial or artistic purposes, often compress, exaggerate or expand aspects of cityscape to achieve certain emphases or communicate a city's perceived ethos, and my work does this as well."
Collins noted that his work also aims to suggest alternative futures or histories - often in the context of the above-mentioned future where climate change has changed the face of northern Canada.
"Other pieces also suggest alternate geographies or histories, whether from chroniclers looking at a misremembered past, or cartographers who mix up political and physical features," he said. "Together, these works draw upon the rich traditions of pictorial and other kinds of mapping, but also from popular outgrowths of this style, echoing many 're-mappings' of imagined life in novels, video games and especially in our own minds, which too frequently go uncommitted to memory, let alone paper."
McGill library is at 4595 Albert St. The exhibition can be viewed at any time during library hours - see www.bpl.bc.ca or call 604-299-8955 for library information.
For more on Burnaby Art Gallery exhibitions, see www.burnabyartgallery.ca.
