I became acquainted with Kayla Blincow over eight months ago, but it was not until I saw places left behind: new work by Kayla Blincow that I felt I really got to know her. As Gallery Assistant at the Walter Philips Gallery, The Banff Centre, I saw Kayla often in her role as Studio Work-Study in the Department of Visual Arts; she was usually quiet and reserved. Nonetheless, Blincow presents in places left behind three beautifully intricate bodies of work that are disarmingly personal, open, and self-reflexive.

Upon entering the small space of the Other Gallery I was immediately struck by the sculptural works whose dramatic, curving lines and thick filigree of steel work filled most of the floor space. But what really drew me in was the title piece: a collection of about forty-five 5"x 7" digital prints on vellum paper arranged in a single row around three walls of the gallery. Interspersed among these images were related fragments of text printed on small squares of paper.

Blincow confided in me that the project arose from a desire to reflect on the idea that by constantly photographing life events, one is never actually experiencing them, but distancing oneself from them through a camera; what is known in cultural studies as the "tourist gaze."1 Though Blincow lived in Tacoma, Washington for four years, during the latter two years she rarely photographed events because she wanted her experience there to be genuine. For places left behind she revisited and documented old haunts to develop an analysis of nostalgia and memory. To this end I think the work functions brilliantly on both a personal and broader social level. The work is dense in visual material, personal and cultural philosophy, and arising themes and issues.

Tacoma became known as the "City of Destiny" during the prosperous years following its designation as the Northern Pacific Railroad's western terminus in 1873. Like many cities in America, it suffered a decline in the mid-20th century due to factors such as suburbanization or divestment, recently, however, it has seen a renaissance.2 This familiar pattern of growth and decline in urban centres leads to the kind of collective romantic nostalgia in which Blincow participates and relates to the viewer through her narrative.

Blincow's relf-reflexive acknowledgement and critique of nostalgia echoes Christopher Lasch's writing on the difference between nostalgia and memory:

The emotional appeal of happy memories does not depend on disparagement of the present, the hallmark of the nostalgic attitude. Nostalgia appeals to the feeling that the past offered delights no longer obtainable...Memory too may idealize the past, but not in order to condemn the present. It draws hope and comfort from the past in order to enrich the present and to face what comes with good cheer.3

At the same time, the work exhibits an overarching ambivalence towards nostalgia: Blincow gleans comfort from past memories, yet she embraces -albeit with cynicism- the sense of loss that ultimately gives rise to nostalgia. Blincow explained that, for her, beauty is an endearing sorrow for something tainted to which we nonetheless retain an unwavering attachment; there is beauty in deterioration and destruction because they give things life. By artificially preserving things that are assigned value, Blincow believes that they are emptied of the very life that makes them attractive. Yet the impulse remains to document, preserve, and to remember with nostalgia.

As a port city and the western railway terminus, Tacoma is a city of movement and transience. It is fitting that Blincow should have her first solo show in Banff; a place also defined by transience. Originally from Colorado, she has had temporary residences in Western North America and Europe. As curator Candice Hopkins writes in her 2007 essay "On Nomadism," "Banff, through its history as both (temporary) home to the Ktunaxa, Secwepemc and Hopi, and its present use, enacts what Carol Becker so poetically observed as the difference between first world nomads and third world nomads; those who travel because they can and those (refugees and migrants) who travel because they have to."4 Blincow is among those for whom travel is socially or economically essential due to the increased normalization of migration in the context of capitalist models of wealth distribution and a rising global economy. Blincow's work invites us to critically consider the environmental, cultural, and psychological effects of such transience.

The second body of work in the exhibition, Blincow's large-scale steel sculptures, comments on effects of urban nomadism on the natural world, and more broadly on the relationship between humans and nature. These four undulating figures are made of ¼" steel rod, hand-cut into 2 or 3 inch pieces and then welded together into hexagons to form dynamic, organic honeycomb structures. The honeycomb pattern and labour-intensive process reference the transience and temporality of bees hives; bees build beautifully intricate, architectural forms through painstaking physical labour and then abandon them to natural cycles of (re)use and decay.

Contemporary nomadism parallels the bees' temporary dwelling strategy, but too often the urban spaces and rural dwellings of the first-world nomad neglect to emulate the synergy with the environment that beehives demonstrate. Within the context of Banff National Park, this contrast becomes particularly poignant. The delicate alpine ecosystem of the Rocky Mountains and the Bow Valley sees millions of tourists travelling through each year. Blincow invites us to consider the ramifications of the park as a place of artificial preservation and tourism rather than a system of painstaking, organic building and natural deterioration. The contrast of steel as a building material with the natural substances of beehives, underscores this discrepancy.

The third work explicitly emulates the synergy of beehives with the environment in its process and aesthetic. The title of the work, Return, signifies Blincow's philosophy of allowing natural deterioration to take its course. In its first phase, Return was an arch built of white linen, wood and found fallen branches. The piece was installed outdoors and allowed to deteriorate for five months. Blincow then dissembled the arch, breaking the lumber and branches into pieces. In its final phase, the piece entered the gallery. The cloth strips were hung on the wall with the broken structural elements piled on the floor beneath them. This ensemble is accompanied by intimate black and white digital print photographs documenting the arch in its assembled form.

Hanging in the gallery, the white cloth is marked with wispy, dripping brown lines moving delicately across the bright white fabric; tidemarks created when moisture from rain, melted snow, and dew mixed with dirt particles and wood fibres, migrated across the fabric, and was deposited in rust-coloured rivulets and undulating lines.The markings take on their own beauty in the story they tell; they read as a signifier of what the object once was and the process of deterioration that it went through.

The overall effect is to evoke something that was once beautiful and functional turned to a pile of detritus; like finding a lost toy or cherished object lying on the ground during a spring melt. Together the works in Places Left Behind embody the mixed feeling of nostalgia and comfort that comes with such a discovery. With this group of work, Blincow invites us to reflect on the rhythms of life and decay; migration and transience; and memory and nostalgia that mark the urban and rural spaces we call home.

Kayla Blincow's steel sculptures are installed on the Ceramics Deck, Glyde Hall, at The Banff Centre.

places left behind ran from 18th to 24th May, 2009.

1. For example, the work of Canadian artist Jin Me Yoon addresses the tourist gaze. Also, see, Lynda Jessup, "The group of seven and the tourist landscape in Western Canada, or the more things change..." In Journal of Canadian Studies, 37.1 (Spring 2002): 144-79. Or Mike Crang, "Picturing practices: research through the tourist gaze," In Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 21, No. 3, 359-373 (1997).
2. City of Tacoma website (Accessed 12 June, 2009).
3. Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics, New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1991: 82-3.
4. Candice Hopkins, "On Nomadism," In Campsites, Exh Cat. Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, Alberta. 2007: 23.