Project: Paper animations

Meredith Carruthers, Still image, Will this Boat Take Us There? Branch, 2004
Photo: Paul Litherland

In 2004 my MFA thesis exhibition, Will this Boat Take Us There?, was presented in the Bourget Gallery, Montreal. Seven circular holes were cut in the gallery's temporary back wall, to create portholes or windows. Each of these openings featured a looping animation. The animations (originally captured on 16mm film) integrated a variety of ephemeral materials in a paper landscape- in Sky chocolate wrapper birds crossed a paper background, the paper leaves of Branch cyclically absorbed and expelled brilliant red aniline dye and the shadows of card -stock Trees were filmed on a Japanese paper screen. In 2006 the film loops and objects used to make them were shown alongside work by print artist Alison Judd at the Niagara Artist Company in an exhibition titled Trembling bog and the Image Terrarium (www.nac.org).


Meredith Carruthers, Flocons de neige, watercolour on paper, 2004

With assistance from the Gallery Articule special projects fund, CIAM and bindery La Tranchefile, Will this Boat Take Us There? was published on DVD in a silk-bound portfolio. The DVD and the watercolour-ed paper cutouts above are available through Galerie Goldie in Montreal (www.galeriegoldie.com).