Features
The Art of Science
Artist-in-residence in School of Environmental Sciences eager to explore science through artworks
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| Julie René de Cotret will take the measure of science in creating art installations on campus. PHOTO BY MARTIN SCHWALBE |
BY ANDREW VOWLES
When Julie René de Cotret attends occasional lectures on campus, she scribbles and draws ideas in her black sketchbook. Back in her Graham Hall studio, those jottings might spark her next installation project intended as an artist’s take on science.
What began as little more than her interest in research themes has turned into an artist-in-residence position in the new School of Environmental Sciences (SES) — a first for this new unit and its predecessor departments in the Ontario Agricultural College, and likely a first for any science unit at U of G.
The Montreal native will explore science through the kinds of art installations she’s created for almost a decade. She plans to spend two years on campus, along with working in her home studio in Hillsburgh.
René de Cotret set up shop last month in a former environmental biology graphics studio. Now she’s begun sketching concepts and collecting materials for various works.
“She’s interested in the themes that occur in research in our department,” says SES director Prof. Jonathan Newman, who will pay the artist a small stipend for her work.
René de Cotret doesn’t plan to review art by U of G community members. Instead she’ll create her own works intended to reflect on research conducted in SES and elsewhere across campus. For example, she’s interested in exploring climate change through one or more installations that weave together physical objects, images, words and video.
She aims to raise awareness of environmental issues and human impacts in a complementary way to traditional lectures and research — or, as she puts it, to “show our habits and the ways we live our everyday life in a different light.”
Being at a university is a big change from the usual solitary working life of an artist, says René de Cotret. Here, she has a chance to attend lectures and share ideas with colleagues, including students. “It’s a great opportunity to enrich my knowledge.”
She studied fine art at John Abbott College in Montreal and at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She spent a year as a guest student at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas in 2005, and completed artist-in-residence stints in Vermont in 2005 and in Newfoundland’s Terra Nova for Parks Canada in 2008.
René de Cotret moved to Ontario in 2005 with her partner, Jefferson Campbell-Cooper, also an artist. She co-chairs the board of directors of Ed Video Media Arts Centre in Guelph.
She has created solo and group shows, including the Bangkok Project, a collaborative video projection in Elora last fall. Also in Elora, she exhibited last year at the Elora Centre for the Arts and the World’s Smallest Art Gallery.
The latter show commented on new uses for farm crops such as biofuels. Recently she attended a Department of Plant Agriculture lecture on food to learn more.
For another show, she used found objects to make a nine-foot-high vinyl-covered structure resembling a blowup pile. Coloured green and gold, the piece was intended to raise questions about resource extraction to make commodities.
“I want to ask questions,” she says, describing her use of art to study social concepts. “There’s a blend of excitement and discovery there. That’s the part I enjoy the most and the part that I like sharing with people, too.”
This summer, René de Cotret met with Newman to share her work and ideas. “I was intrigued,” says the biologist, who also helps run the Arts, Science and Technology Research Alliance that organizes lectures and other cross-disciplinary campus events. He will serve on a review committee for her work along with other science and art faculty.
“I’m hoping she produces some interesting art because she’s been inspired by things,” says Newman. “We gain from that, too, seeing the kinds of work we do expressed through someone else’s ideas. There’s more to the world than science and logic. The more we understand that, the better off we are. It’s also good for students to see research and connection among disciplines.”