Greg Bellerby: 2006 Commissioner Canadian Pavilion, SweaterLodge Curator, Director Charles H. Scott Gallery

SweaterLodge is a multi-faceted installation by Pechet and Robb Studio, a Vancouver interdisciplinary Design Practice. Since forming their practice in 1991, they have produced projects which include private residences, cemeteries, memorials, public art, interiors, set design and furniture. They received the Lieutenant-Govenor of British Columbia Innovation Award in 2005 for their Lakewood residence, a reworking of the ubiquitous “Vancouver Special” house. They have also received awards from both the Canadian and American society of Landscape Architects.

Bill Pechet and Stephanie Robb both have degrees in visual arts and in architecture. Their cross-disciplinary practice is based on an interest in cultural commentary. Their work often raises the question of “is it art or is it architecture?” For Pechet and Robb the question is moot. They are more interested in blurring the boundary between disciplines than in defining them. They approach all their projects, small or large, art or architecture, with humour and theatricality. It is therefore in keeping with their sensibility for them to create a super-size orange polar fleece sweater as the main feature of their installation in the Canadian Pavilion in Venice.

SweaterLodge is a complex and layered installation that explores many aspects and concerns particular to the city of Vancouver. The polar fleece sweater is an unofficial uniform of the city and symbolizes how leisure and outdoor recreation influence Vancouver urban living. It also speaks to issues of urban development and sustainability, two of the biggest challenges for any city. The polar fleece used for SweaterLodge is made from recycled plastic drink containers. The idea of re-use and re-purposing of materials and objects is central to the installation. The sweater itself becomes an architectural space, the shipping crates transform into furniture. At the end of the project the sweater will be recycled and made into hats and scarves and distributed out into the community.

Along with the sweater, a major element of the installation is a video which depicts many aspects of Vancouver and its relationship to nature, architecture and social spaces. The film depicts how Vancouver’s physical proximity to nature is re-enacted in the daily activities and the interactions of its population. Health clubs and gyms are as common as coffee and sushi bars, and the bicycle is increasingly seen as the alternative to the car for getting around the city. It is therefore appropriate that the video projections would be activated by peddling stationary bicycles. Presented as three side by side projections, the effect is a collage of images that allows for unexpected contrasts and comparisons and creates a unique portrait of the city.

There has been a conscious effort to consider elements both large and small. There is an obvious interest in scale and how changing the scale of a familiar object refreshes our awareness and understanding of how that object usually carries meaning. The shifts in scale in the SweaterLodge installation bring our attention to material construction - surfaces, shapes and colours. Pechet and Robb have developed a lexicon of materials, colours and forms that reinforces the content of the work. The fleece is the most obvious, but they have also utilized components such as carabiners, grommets, Velcro, zippers, OSB (crate material), all chosen to enhance and support the reference to recreation technology, leisure, and sustainability.

Humour is used extensively in the work. Pechet and Robb playfully reference clichés of Canadian identity brought about by our vast wilderness landscape and pioneer history. Humour is used as a device that leads to a critical engagement with issues of the contemporary city, unrestrained consumption, style over substance, how culture and nature are commercialized and become marketing inventory. SweaterLodge may appear as a warm fuzzy space, it is also an environment designed with complexity and subtle meanings.

The sweat lodge, familiar to West Coast Canadians as a structure used by Canadian North West Coast indigenous peoples, but also used by indigenous people worldwide, is a space of ritual cleansing and enlightenment. SweaterLodge attempts to speak to that contemplative space of the sweat lodge, while critically highlighting the exploitative mechanisms of the leisure machine. Sweater Lodge aims to be an experiential space, not merely a representation of an idea or a place, providing an opportunity for the viewer to be engaged as well as enlightened.

Greg Bellerby
Charles H. Scott Gallery
Emily Carr Institute