Colette Laliberté –  Statement

Shedding Memories | Des hangars dans le temps

The drawings reference the rectangular, decaying sheds found in Duntara, a remote Newfoundland out port located on the coast at Bonavista Bay. The drawings, with their ghostly feel and their softness of line, are positioned strategically on the large sheets of drawing paper. 

In Duntara’s better days, it was an active fishing outport; now it consists of only twenty-four people, down from forty-six in 2011. With the decline of the cod stocks, few people are fishing. Abandoned, windswept fishers’ sheds and century old houses  lay scattered around the bay. Most of them may be gone in a year or two.

These graphite pencil, ink, and gouache drawings were made during the course of a two-week residency at 2 Rooms Artist Residency. While the drawings may, at first glance, seem to be simply sophisticated doodles, upon further observation a structure emerges that combines history and memory into a deft and intricate mosaic of lines.

Weaving together the past, the present and the future, these sites belong to a soon-to-be-forgotten history as well as to a framework of places that are yet to become.

Colette Laliberté