116 CANADIAN A RT • SPRING 2016 canadianart.ca 117
Brandon Vickerd Passenger
#3 2 014 Taxidermy birds,
squirrels, skunk, clothing,
fibreglass and metal 1. 2 7 m x- 5 cm x 81. 2 cm Installation
view at Vollmer Culture
and Recreation Complex,
Lasalle, Ontario
A group of moviegoers leaving the theatre next to Artcite in Windsor, Ontario,
crowds around the small lit-up orb of a spacecraft lying in the shattered wind-
shield of a parked car. For an instant, they believe it might actually be an object
from space. It’s a dark delight. Who doesn’t want to believe that they are witness
to an extraordinary occurrence—that something from outside their world has
crashed into it, rearranged itself and shifted the viewpoint? Instead, the object
is Sputnik Returned #2 (2 015), a fiction temporarily placed by artist Brandon
Vickerd with just enough historical “truth” to make it momentarily plausible.
Vickerd trades in this moment of the suspension of disbelief, however fleet-
ing the jolt of discovery might be. He presents us with experiences that fascinate,
disturb and unsettle. The aftermath of viewing some of his works is a mixture
of relief and the acknowledgement of a prank well played, while other works of
his can amplify more troubling thoughts. He prods our assumptions and
expectations across the divisions between assumed dichotomies, mixing
together tales and history, truth and fiction, high art and popular culture,
skilled trades and academia, the human and animal and the organic and
technological. In every case it’s an encounter not easily forgotten.
My first encounter with Vickerd’s public artwork was a few months earlier,
when I met the figures collectively titled Passenger (2011–) at the Vollmer Culture
and Recreation Complex in LaSalle, Ontario. They made me deeply uneasy. I
wasn’t expecting the entanglement of taxidermy animals that emerged—instead
of human faces and hands —from the clothes of three solitary figures dispersed
around the complex. From a distance they looked like people dressed casually
in hoodies and pants, but were revealed to be a conglomeration of animalsB Y PEARL VAN GEESTThe uncanny art of BRANDON VICKERD
IT CAME
FROM
OUTER
SPACE
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