In 2015 I was deployed as a member of the Canadian Forces Artist Program at CFB Stadaconna and on the frigate HMCS Halifax. My program of work was very straightforward, it was to follow in my father Kenneth Walker’s footsteps some 60 years later by living briefly at Stadaconna and going to sea on a war ship as he did in 1942.
Three works evolved from
this experience. The first, a photo documentation of my deployment, 330
photographs posted on Flickr, to which you will find a link further down in the
blog and two works installed at the Canada War Museum, CFAP G7
exhibition in February 2018.
The installation works were
both documentary in nature. An overhead view of HMC Dockyard and CFB
Stadaconna, showing all the buildings and ships present before deployment on TGEX 615
and a high definition video, which presents life aboard HMCS Halifax at sea. My
idea with the installation was to show a painted construction side by side with
a video to encourage the viewers to wonder how the same artist could produce
two very distinctly different types of images with all the contradictory meaning
each medium carries.
I originally thought I would
make a painted construction of HMCS Halifax alongside at the dockyard with North End Halifax in the background. However when I started doing image
research on the North End, I discovered the Google satellite coincidentally
passed over Halifax the very weekend I was living in Juno Tower at
Stadaconna, so the work became an overhead view based on this satellite
imagery. The high definition video, The View From Point Pleasant was intended
both as a documentary and a poetic reflection on the spiritual connection
between Halifax and the Royal Canadian Navy.
Point Pleasant is a historic
park in South End Halifax with a view to the North Atlantic. People have been
watching war ships depart and waiting their return here since the
18th Century. My Mi’kmaw ancestors watched and waited there in 1746
for the arrival of their French allies, the Duc Danville’s fleet and in 1749 watched
as Cornwallis’ English fleet entered Chebucto to the general destruction of
both the Mi’kmaw and Sang Mêlés Acadien.
Like generations of
Haligonians I also watched war ships leave from Point Pleasant and wondered
what life on board was like for the sailors. The View from Point Pleasant is meant
to be a kind of poetic speculation of what people imagine as they look out to
sea from that place.
