FROM DISTANCE…
Brian Kent Gotro
4-channel video installation, sound
Dimensions: variable
Original Exhibition Year: 2016




At the heart of FROM DISTANCE… is the unseen person… the figure off-screen. Here identity is obscured and we are left with fragments of ‘story’ through provided clues. The Eastern Canadian seascape forms a kind of identity of place and time -a haunting emptiness capable of dwarfing all human concerns. Nature becomes the dominant subject threatening to fragment the human experience.

It is in this fragmentation that FROM DISTANCE… resides. Echoed via the projected image and on multiple types of screens personal anchors are revealed, reveling in vacancy and expanse.

Comprised of various recordings from Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the beauty of Canada’s Maritime provinces is on prominent display. This is a place distinctly different from Western or Central Canada. The Maritime provinces are less gentrified and certainly less condo-ized. Here ‘waterfront’ actually means water meeting beach and not privatized beachfront property. It is because of this, keystones of the past seem every present in their hold on a slower kind of time, a more traditional rhythm. Here human activity is defined by the four seasons rather than boldly defiant of them.