Mark Prier

Artwork

Jubilee, 2019-2021

Sometime between 1887 and 1897, Queen Victoria sent a gift to the Halifax Public Gardens to mark either her Golden or Diamond Jubilee (the records aren’t entirely clear). The gift was an ornamental European beech tree (Fagus sylvatica).

Within five years of planting the tree, it became apparent that Queen Victoria’s gift had come with a hitchhiker—the beech scale insect. American beech trees (Fagus grandifolia) around Halifax began to show signs of beech scale infestation. Then, they began to show symptoms of what is now called Beech Bark Disease.

The results were devastating. The disease ultimately prevents normally large, smooth-barked, and long-lived beech trees from becoming much more than stunted, pockmarked shrubs with short lifespans.

The beech scale spread outward from Halifax, bringing Beech Bark Disease with it. The disease spread to Southern Ontario from Halifax (and ultimately it’s still spreading further west). In rural Grey County, there is a small stand of beech trees with Beech Bark Disease. One of these beech trees, now dead from the disease, acted as the model for one sculpture. Beech wood from the area served to make both sculptures. In the exhibition, an earlier sculpture from 2018 (American Beech Codex (cDNA Contigs 1 - 7)) was placed upon on of the new sculptures.

Meanwhile, a related diversion...

In Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, a statue of Queen Victoria stands in Gore Park because the Queen Victoria Statue Memorial Committee, a group of Hamilton women, raised money and made it happen. Unveiled in 1908, the monument features these engravings: “VICTORIA / Queen and Empress / a model wife and mother”, “may children of our children say she wrought her people lasting good”, and “the women of Hamilton in affectionate admiration have raised this monument”.

Given the proximity between Victoria Hall (the building where these works were ultimately exhibited) and the statue, it seemed appropriate to collaborate with these engravings to release the unconscious thoughts of these two Victorias into the present, to reveal whatever secret musings the past century has impressed upon these siblings.

Taking each engraving as a unit (but ignoring the dates), I created as many anagrams as I could stand, then arranged the results into something crawling within the vicinity of legibility. When I read this anagrammed text, I see lewd, delirious references to the colonial present galloping alongside the colonial past. These formed the basis for a series of prints and a limited edition booklet.

The complete text of the anagrams

In a craven despot’s requiem
(a federal home, midtown),
a lion, chromed fury, clawed hungry horseshit, groped seething Apollo
aloft. Oh, Mennonite whim, a tainted tome of fair Cain. In death, his venoms mature.

Invade, picaresque monster!
Fated maiden wormhole,
duly confirm a hero. Act shrewdly, roguish hen! Opposing other alleged
fowl, thine hematin-moon faerie monition a daft act. Heed that summer invasion!

Primrose quietens! Advance!
Wailed from methadone,
a firm, unholy credo withers hungry old aches. Apostrophe, dogleg line,
lithe monotone fawn, HIM. In a deft erotomaniac fiat, unmet amnesia doth shiver.

I, maidservant corpse-queen,
a white Dane model from
a foul Nordic rhyme cradling thy house shrew. Pledge anthropologies!
Hew it, nomen of Hamilton! I’m a canoe adrift into fate and other heavens I summit.

On a quiver, escarpment-side:
a filamented whoredom
for a lucid hymen or shrewdest hourly aching. Adept hellion egg-spoor,
one Hamilton-hewn motif to a Canadian motif, free it! A thievish moment asunder.

Conquest: reprieved manias,
woad he melted in a form.
A round, icy helm for worthy gals uncherished. Pert pigeonholed goals
in mine hometown haft, lo, faint motion, a cadet afire, Methodist shaman in revue.

Captive queen’s dire ransom
a dead file, mother mown
for a cloudy menhir or a duchy her slings thew. No gorge atop deep hills,
thine main footmen howl after it, domination aface isthmi and avenues, or them.

I, a victor, queened pressman,
fathom a dewier dolmen.
You, rifled monarch, hurry close. Dawn heights propel a ghosted legion:
a fine-hewn moonlit moth of time, an Oneida artifact in shadiest vermouth. Amen.

Materials: sculptures (American beech wood, danish oil, metal components), prints (archival ink on paper, mounted to Komatex), and a booklet.

Black vinyl wall text on a white gallery wall, reading: Mark Prier, Jubilee, October 2021. In the middle is an unusual circular symbol, like an official seal or a shield. A column of weathered orange-red brick vertically divides a white gallery wall. Hanging in front of the brick from a white string is a booklet with a yellow cover titled, Jubilee. A wooden sculpture not unlike a table replicates a tree stump's silhouette sits on a wooden gallery floor. In the background, a wooden grave marker stands on the floor before a white gallery wall. Looking down at a wooden sculpture replicating a tree stump's silhouette that sits on a wooden gallery floor. On its tabletop surface sits a rectangular wooden tablet covered in engraved text titled, American Beech (Fagus grandifolia).
A wooden grave marker stands on a wooden gallery floor before a white wall. Four rectangular prints in landscape orientation line white gallery walls at a corner. Each print has a central circular symbol, like an official seal or a shield, in grey, overlaid with black text. Two rectangular prints in landscape orientation side by side on a white gallery wall. Each print has a central circular symbol, like an official seal or a shield, in grey, overlaid with black text. The print on the left says: I, a victor, queened pressman, fathom a dewier dolmen. You, rifled monarch, hurry close. Dawn heights propel a ghosted legion: a fine-hewn moonlit moth of time, an Oneida artifact in shadiest vermouth. Amen. The print on the right simply has a large capital W. A closeup of a print, showing the detail of the edge of the unusual circular symbol in grey and a portion of the black text over it: I, maidservant corpse-queen, a white Dane model from...