Heather Benning: Field Doll

Additional Information

Other associated events: Opening reception and artist talk, Saturday, May 30, 2:00pm

Heather Benning’s Field Doll features a 12-foot tall sculptural adaptation of a doll that has accompanied Heather on her extensive travels. Grappling with abandonment, this exhibition frames progress (temporal, spatial and social) through a child’s perspective. The doll embodies security in the face of loss and displacement, and apprehension toward the unknown future. A large photograph of the gigantic doll positioned in an abandoned farm yard in Saskatchewan will accompany the sculpture along with images from Benning’s astonishing sculptural intervention Dollhouse (2007). These works touch on a significant theme of Benning’s practice — the desertion of small scale farm practices and the communities that they sustain. Progress and its casualties are further implied by the third element of the exhibition, a kinetic sculpture of a tricycle tipped on its side with one wheel spinning, as if blown by the wind. The feeling of a sudden disappearance, abduction, or an ominous event is palpable in this uncanny exhibition about a child’s delights, hopes, and fears.

Heather Benning grew up in rural Saskatchewan and graduated from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2004. She returned to the west to complete several large site-specific sculptures. Benning has had numerous solo and group shows and is currently completing an MFA in Sculpture at the Edinburgh College of Art and Design.

Heather Benning, Field Doll (Installation View), 2009.