It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon after weeks of June rain. Under the shade of mature trees, I make myself comfortable on a generously stuffed backyard futon—as I see it, the ultimate signifier of outdoor enjoyment. I’m surrounded by vegetable gardens and the soft sound of music. The air smells particularly sweet, and the midday prairie mosquitoes are at a minimum, even in the shade. Over my shoulder, a group of mini-golfers are laughing and groaning as they putt their way through an outdoor art exhibition. I’m here, nestled in the backyard of the Lowlands Project Space, to talk to my friend, Artist and Curator Steven Teeuwsen, about their most recent outdoor exhibition: Good Ol’ Lawn Fun (G.O.L.F.).
Steven is a relaxed and ultra-friendly host whose beard is as generous as his spirit. Our meandering chat is sporadically interrupted by the arrival of gallery patrons (a.k.a. mini-golfers), whom Teeuwsen warmly welcomes while explaining the “rules and regulations” and as much about the art project as he can squeeze in before putters and score cards are in hand. The exhibition, of course, is art disguised as a twelve-hole mini golf course, each hole designed and created by an artist.
Lowlands Project Space is one of Amiskwacîwâskahikan’s newest art spaces, and it feels very “of this place” in a local, prairie, DIY sense. The space opened in the fall of 2020 and has been a joyful and much-needed addition to the art scene in the city. Lowlands is the result of a decade of work Teeuwsen has done in the cultural sector—dreaming and scheming of a visual art project space where he could cultivate and curate new projects and connect with the community. Teeuwsen, along with artist Jill Stanton, has rented neighbouring bungalows in the Highlands community. The artists live in one and have converted the other, a ninety-year-old house, into the Lowlands Gallery. At a critical moment—when being outdoors was the only safe and viable option for gathering during the COVID-19 pandemic—the artists removed a fence and combined the houses’ existing yards, creating an outdoor exhibition space where Teeuwsen has been curating thematic outdoor group exhibitions; collaborating on performances; and hosting events, DJs, and bands in this outdoor space for almost two years.
It’s deeply refreshing to watch Lowlands’ great success in bringing an arts initiative into a mostly residential community. The project’s lack of pretension and organizational bureaucracy is a thing of beauty. One of its strengths is that the entire project feels very “of now” in an enjoy-it-while-it-lasts sort of vein. Lowlands’ small, ambitious, and nimble project-based model seems like the right non-solution solution for creating and experiencing visual art at such an unstable time. Of course, precarity is nothing new for arts institutions, but the last few years have felt especially challenging. Many of the city’s larger legacy institutions are in a constant scramble to secure long-term space, afford rent into an unforeseeable future, keep hold of existing audiences, develop new ones, and equitably fundraise during a dramatic economic downturn. Meanwhile, Lowlands has managed to exist outside this normalized operating system and the organizational stress response it incites. From my perch, Lowlands’ presupposed impermanence feels right, organic rather than urgent. Yet, Lowlands has stretched far beyond the limits of a “pop-up” space: It is actively continuing to support artists in their pursuit of creative practice by paying fees, offering mentorship, and establishing a meaningful relationship with audiences and neighbours alike.
When I raise the issue of Lowlands’ inevitable impermanence with Teeuwsen, he becomes visibly emotional. Like me, he appreciates this as part of the project’s beauty, and yet, having put years of thoughtful, hard, and impassioned work into building (quite literally) what Lowlands has become, he is saddened by the reality of its precarity.
In September of 2020, while most galleries were shuttered due to COVID-19 pandemic precautions, Lowlands Project Space launched its first outdoor exhibition, Castles of Butter, aptly titled to reflect the fragile and unstable nature of the entire cultural sector at the time. At a time of such overstated uncertainty, this new project space felt like a true lifeline for the arts community.
Image description: An overview of the Lowlands Project Space backyard gallery. In the foreground, on the right-hand side, a metallic-hued sculpture drapes across the branches of a tree. In the background: to the far left, a sculpture carved from a wooden log stands on a stone pathway; to it’s right, a wooden box sitting on the lawn contains an artwork only slightly visible from this angle; and on the far right, a sculpture of a deer looking back toward the left of the image – where a stair railing sits just at the edge of the frame. Trees and foliage fill the top of the image.
Above: Image: Brennan Black, The Big Ship, 2022. Mixed Media. 5m x 1.5m x .5m.
Image description: A long, rectangular, grey, wooden box-like structure runs diagonally across the frame of the image. Within the wooden structure, in the foreground, green Astroturf slopes down towards sand and murky, brown water. From out of the water, a raised section of Astroturf curves up in the centre of the box to form a ramp. Beyond the Astroturf ramp, the water extends to the end of the wooden structure, creating a little, brown pond. Small wooden sculptures of houses in bright yellow, green, and orange, pop up from the surface of the water. The majority of each house is submerged in the brown pond; only the peaks of the roofs break the surface of the water, as if the houses have succumbed to flooding. In the rear of the course, the mini-golf hole sits within a red and yellow life vest that floats atop the water.
The G.O.L.F. exhibition, curated by Ryland Fortie, brings a new level of interaction to this contemporary art exhibition and makes space for a lot of fun. Fortie is an artist who lives in the neighbourhood; when I spoke with him, he said curating the exhibition felt like a way to give back to the community. Fortie sees the outdoor art space as an ideal arena for artists to engage and explore. Similarly, the mini-golf format provided artists with a design problem to solve. Each hole of the course offers a unique take on the game, with many unexpected hazards, traps, and opportunities for failure. The exhibition is rife with metaphors and some art history references. Each hole requires a unique strategy—occasionally, even a special tool—offering ample opportunity for humour and frustration in good measure. Many of the artists built their holes around hybridizations, borrowing playing styles from other games including pinball, beer-pong, and Plinko.
Thematically, mini-golf is well-positioned to turn a critical eye toward its troubling and environmentally problematic drunk uncle—regular sized golf. Hole #4 points to this crux in the most overt way. The Big Ship, by Artist Brennan Black, is the exhibition’s only true water hazard. In a deep flood of murky water, the peaked roofs of a cul de sac of miniature houses are visible just above the flood line. Beyond them, the golf hole floats on a life preserver, a nearly impossible and constantly moving target—an apt metaphor for the current Climate Crises. Cruelly, mini-golfers only really get one shot, as once the ball is sunk, there’s no way to play through. The Big Ship offers up only failure (except perhaps for the extremely fortunate) and a brief moment to pause and consider the metaphorical horror before you continue merrily along the course. In Black’s work, the miniature is doing what it does best: allowing for a zoomed out view where we might begin to see connections to larger systems at play.
Lowlands’ presupposed impermanence feels right, organic rather than urgent. Yet, Lowlands has stretched far beyond the limits of a “pop-up” space: It is actively continuing to support artists in their pursuit of creative practice by paying fees, offering mentorship, and establishing a meaningful relationship with audiences and neighbours alike.
Stepping back from the exhibition and Lowlands Project Space, there are other metaphors embedded where artists are challenging predetermined ideas of how a game should be played. Lowlands offers artists an alternative model for how to make and show art outside the walls of a major institution. Through the outdoor exhibition format, Lowlands also provokes questions about public space and public art, bringing art and artists closer to their communities as an outcome. Since opening, Lowlands has endeavoured to provide space and opportunity for artists during a time of great uncertainty. In the process, it has become a place for safe gathering and thoughtful collaboration, a place where artists can take the lead in shaping their futures. We are better for it—and for their insistence that, along the way, we might have some good ol’ fun.
Many thanks to Steven Teeuwsen and Ryland Fortie for making the time to speak with me about their curatorial projects.
April Dean is a visual artist living in Treaty 6 territory. She served as the Executive Director of SNAP, a non-profit & artist-run centre between 2012-2022 and recently joined the University of Alberta, Department of Fine Arts: Art & Design as the Gallery Manager [www.aprildeanart.com].
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