A Conflicted Relationship

I Am Conflicted About This Relationship

2024-2025, Steel, plywood, fabric, yarn, polyester batting, rubber hose, wire, glue, thread, 59 x 34 x 25 inches

With this piece I am addressing an issue in which most individuals in my local culture have some experience.

I was raised in a home supported by my parents’ small business — running a gas station and auto repair garage leased from a large regional oil company for over 25 years — and am grateful for that support for my family and my upbringing.

I came of age working in this environment, which did not escape our culture’s pervasive patriarchy. I recall my confusion and embarrassment at age 13, as the recipient of an adult male customer’s suggestive remarks, when I started pumping gas there. As a young girl, my concept of femininity was partly informed by the posters of the attractive, young company spokeswomen in the storefront windows every summer, and the mini-skirt and hot pants uniform of the 1970s. While this company did not lead the cultural campaign for female objectification, they were participants.

Conversation about this company must include discussion of the local economy. The east coast region of Canada, with our lower population, is often overlooked, considered irrelevant, not only by those in other countries, but also our own. Though not an economics expert, I understand the capitalist model of our economy depends upon business being profitable, and our population being employed and consuming.

Yet, I am uncomfortable about our world’s dependence upon fossil fuels. I feel unease when I gaze at the gorgeous sunsets in my hometown, now knowing they are due to air pollution. I share discomfort about the controlling power of a family of profit-driven companies having such control over our region.

I Am Conflicted About This Relationship is born of this duality – of recognition that we live in a capitalist society and require economic drivers, and of unease regarding the influence of this company on the region’s culture and what dependence upon this industry means to our world.

Presented from a female perspective, the work replies to the sexual politics within the patriarchy by covering the traditionally-male welded-steel armature with soft fabrics which relate to the toys of girlhood. Inspired by the work of Winnipeg artist Barb Hunt and the California Institute of the Arts artists of 1972’s Woman House, the work embodies an eerie, unsettling mood which emanates from the phallic gas nozzle, the umbilical-cord hose, and the echoes of sanitary napkins in the capitalist product register and company logo.

I Am Conflicted About This Relationship is currently exhibited in the Purdy Crawford Centre for the Arts of Mount Allison University.