ARTS.

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Everyone talks about the weather

Les Linfoots new exhibit
opens at Douglas College

 

By Angela Espinoza, Arts Editor

AS BC residents, it’s
impossible to not discuss
the weather on a daily basis.
As I'm writing this, our
record-breaking dry spell has
been rudely interrupted by
our old pal rain for the first
time in about a month. Artist
Les Linfoot, whose works

are primarily focused on the
weather, will be presenting an
exhibit entitled Everyone Talks
About the Weather this month,
and took some time to talk about
it with us.

How did you get involved
with the Amelia Douglas Art
Gallery?

Les Linfoot: I was aware that
there was a gallery [at Douglas
College], and I’ve been down
a couple of times to see other
shows, and it looked like an
interesting place... so] had a
bunch of paintings I wanted to
show and it just seemed like

a good match. I approached
the gallery myself with the
suggestion that I have the show
whenever they could fit me in.

Do you mind if I ask, why
weather?

LL: Every day I get up, I deal
with the weather. The title of
the show, Everyone talks About
the Weather, is derived from [a
quote] apparently Mark Twain
said, “Everybody talks about
the weather, but nobody does
anything about it,” which is a
humorous little line. But also,
everything we do is associated
with the weather, from the
minute we step outside, even
in the house; everything is
connected to the weather. And
of course at the moment, climate
change... so how the weather

changes is a big subject too.

How would you describe the
works in Everyone Talks...?

LL: [The works are] landscape
derived I would say, [they’re]
not your normal landscape. But
there are elements of landscape
in there, and a lot of it is also
derived from maps... and aerial
photographs, which are [kinds]
of landscape. And some of it’s
just improvised by the fact that I
like ripping up paper.

Plus the weather icon
symbol, the cloud with the rain
coming out if it, I don’t know
if you know, but I worked for a
number of years as an editorial
artist at a newspaper, and one
of the things I did was make the
weather maps way back in the
‘80s before we got computers.
We used to actually draw them
and you would use various
graphic tools and graphic
supplies, like...little lithograph
symbols of clouds to make the
weather maps, so I’ve been
playing with those a bit in there.

What other kinds of pieces will
be there?

LL: The exhibit has 12 paintings
in it... they’re all weather-
report related, then there are

10 drawings. Basically what
happens in my working is I
work away at the paintings, and
then when I hit a dense spot or

I can’t go on or something, then
I take [the painting] off and I
put one of these little drawings
up. The drawings are kind of
like sketches, and actually now
people don’t call them drawings,
they tend to call them collages.
They’re sort of like sketches or
notes or little breaks for me, so
there’s sort of two sides to the
show, there’s the more serious
work in the paintings, and then
the smaller works are just kind
of... a respite from the paintings.
What do you want visitors to
take from the exhibit?

LL: I'd like them to go home

looking at landscapes in a
slightly different way, and
realizing it doesn’t have to

 

One sample of Linfoot’s work. | Photo courtesy of Les Linfoot

mean a horizon and a group
of trees. I’d like them to think
how the landscape interacts
with all the things that make it

a landscape—you, the buildings
around you, the sky, all that
stuff included in [developing] a
landscape.

 

Not even ‘God Forgives

By Angela Espinoza, Arts Editor

OOOoot

here aren’t many nice ways
to say a film is, “the worst
film I have seen in a long time.”
What makes this realization
particularly painful though
is that this film happens to

8

 

be another team-up between
director Nicolas Winding Refn
and dreamboat Ryan Gosling,
who worked together on 2011's,
Drive.

Where Drive was
suspenseful, superbly acted,
beautiful to look at, and
fantastic to listen to, Only God
Forgives only succeed in the
cinematography category.

Gosling plays Julian, one
half of a brother-run Taiwanese

drug ring, and manages to

piss off the wrong karaoke-
singing crooked cop (Vithaya
Pansringarm), all while
Gosling’s mother (Kristin Scott
Thomas) visits for her elder
son’s funeral. So imagine that
with occasional gruesome
violence, horribly-stupid
dialogue, and several instances
of cutaways to karaoke singing,
and you literally have Only God
Forgives.

Where Drive was
mysterious and quiet, Only
God Forgives simply chooses
to say nothing. Where Gosling
was a charming bad boy in
Drive, here he regularly visits
a prostitute (whom he attacks
at one point) and gets his ass
kicked by an old Asian man. The
violence in Drive was definitely
gruesome, but at no point did
it get unbelievably ridiculous,
especially in context, which Only

God Forgives has none.

Only God Forgives had
to have been a quick cash-in
on Drive’s success, because
never otherwise would I think
such a horrible Goddamned
movie could come from the
collaboration of Refn and
Gosling.