Murals made from air
THE VANCOUVER SUN - Thursday, May 31, 1973
By Joan Lowndes
Sun Art Critic
This committee is responsible for the murals, sculpture, mosaics, fountains and other embellishments to public buildings throughout Canada. It functions by virtue of the legislation authorizing the minster of public works to spend up to one percent of the value of a federal construction contract on fine art.
One of the more informal moments during the two days that the committee spent here occurred Thursday evening at the Beau-Xi Gallery, when it gathered with architects and officials of the post office to see a set of ten photo-murals commissioned from Michael de Courcy.
de Courcy, who has been awarded several Canada Council bursaries came to prominently to attention in 1970-71 when he was represented in the B.C. Almanac, a project of the stills division of the National Film Board of Canada. and in Photography into Sculpture organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
His black and white charts of 10 locations in B.C. are at once intensely regional and universal. This duality enunciated in the very titles: Regional Land Impressions of British Columbia— Light Reflections from the Surface of a Planet — our planet as seen from the moon.
The genesis of these extremely sophisticated works unlocks their meaning. The ten locations are Tofino, Galiano, Matsqui, Boston Bar, Clinton, Prince George, Fort St. John, Valemont, Radium, Winfield. de Courcy flew over them in a light plane at astound 5000 feet, taking thousands of pictures.
From the contact sheets he selected those which had unique characteristics, then began to slowly break down their tonal qualities into pure black and white, looking down and into them under a macro lens.
As he magnified the detail hundreds of times, the images became in most cases abstract, for abstract and representational are only two aspects of nature. Blown up, the detail of an insect's wing, of the trunk of a tree, read as pattern. It is only the bounding lines and true scale which permits us to recognize objects.
Yet de Courcy's magnification leads us to another truth: to the particles of primal matter, the very energy structure of the universe where the foam on the breakers at Tofino forms a different pattern from that of the sea around Galiano Island. Only one image does not break down entirely: the mountain the symbol of B.C.
But I have gone too far too fast. Each mural presents a complex ensemble of energy and ideas. First the picture of the earth transmitted on the first telecast from the moon, the sign of the new age. then there is the map of B.C. with the 10 landing places ringed.
A big halftone blow-up of a particular aerial view, say the furrowed fields of Fort St. John, occupies the upper half of the mural, with a minuscule section of it projected in even greater detail to represent its, "land impression". At the same time cell-like of all the locations are included.
de Courcy has even made seals of these land impressions, with which mail from any given region can be given a special identification mark.
In addition he has made silkscreens of his aerial views, of which two sets have been purchased by the Art Bank. The Hudson River Museum, N.Y. is interested in exhibiting them and they are also to be hung in the conference room where the commonwealth ministers will meet in Ottawa in July.
