.

.

MIA + ERIC PORTFOLIO

About

We are Mia Rushton and Eric Moschopedis, an interdisciplinary artist team from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Since 2008 we have been creating interdisciplinary exhibitions, temporary public art, participatory works, and interventions under the moniker, Mia + Eric. We bring together elements of craft, performance, cultural geography, and multi-species ethnography to create site-specific and socially-engaged works. Thematically our practice deals with interspecies relationships, biodiversity and place-based knowledge production in cities, small towns, and rural spaces. We have presented our projects, artist talks, workshops, and exhibitions at both formal and DIY galleries, festivals, residencies, conferences, and post-secondary institutions regionally, nationally, and internationally. We often work in contemporary performance/theatre and visual art contexts. Although we are independent artists that work project to project, we function like an organization, juggling multiple projects across different locations each year. For example, in 2020 and 2021 we were involved in nearly 40 talks, residencies, workshops and creative projects in Alberta, Ontario, British Columbia, Germany, Norway, and the UK. The form and scale of our work changes in response to the context in which we are working, which means no one project is alike.

Mia completed her BFA Printmaking at the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD) in 2003. Eric received a BFA Performance from University of Calgary in 2002 and an MFA Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies from University of British Columbia: Okanagan in 2008.

Together, Mia + Eric have presented public projects and exhibitions at Parks Canada Discovery Centre (Woody Point, Newfoundland), ESKER Project Space (Calgary), Fierce Festival (Birmingham, UK), Grand Union (Birmingham, UK), Battersea Arts Centre (London, UK), Luminato Festival (Toronto), Flux Night (Atlanta), Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton), GIFT (Gateshead, UK), Matchbox (Rhein-Neckar Region, Germany), Arctic Arts Festival (Harstad, Norway), Bonne Bay Marine Station (Norris Point, Newfoundland), and Stromereien Performance Festival (Zürich). We have published several books, zines, and broadsheets. We have received numerous awards and grants, and in 2016 Mia + Eric were long-listed for the Sobey Art Award.

Artist statement

Mia + Eric's practice interrogates interspecies relationships and biodiversity in cities, small towns, and rural spaces. We are increasingly investigating our relationship to natural environments with an eye towards ecology and human built geographies. We use walking, finding, and collecting (of natural objects, photographs, videos, conversations, archival materials etc.) as an embodied research methodology and regularly develop projects with non-artists. The form our work takes changes in response to the context in which we are working, but has included public interventions, social engagement, photographs, installations, workshops, temporary public art, and publications.

Video

Dieser Gepflanzte Ort (This Planted Place), 2022

This Planted Place is a three-channel, 25 minute video installation. It examines the ecological complexities and human and more-than-human relationships in the Heidewald—a small woodland in Maxdorf, Germany. The Heidewald is the largest planted robinia forest north of the Alps. This species is controversial because of its ability to aggressively overtake native species, but it is also an important resource for the region as the annual blossoms attract beekeepers and their colonies from all across Germany each spring. It is a place for recreation, resources, and biodiversity — its’ meadows alone providing rare habitat for at risk grasses and flowers. In many ways, the Heidewald is the perfect representation of the idyllic German woodland. We see this in the slow moving shots of trees, insects, and other species in This Planted Place. But this setting of contemplation is continually disrupted by the human world: chainsaws, airplanes, sirens and a human voice amplified by megaphone. At one point we hear this voice ask, “what is this place?”. The Heidewald is a planted place—a wholly unique landscape, but also a place where questions of global significance can be asked. 

With the support of fifty residents and local experts (ecologists, foresters, historians, landscape planners, educators and more), we were able to collect facts, anecdotes, and local lore that have influenced the video. Local residents collaborated in the process of creating this work by performing in the video, submitting haiku about the Heidewald, and through numerous conversations and walks in the woods.

This Planted Place was commissioned by Matchbox - the itinerant art and culture project in the Rhine-Neckar Region as part of 3 WOODS.

Alectoria sarmentosa, 2020

Alectoria sarmentosa is a 50 minute, one channel video. Shot in a single take, the video shows a pair of hands slowly and meticulously unravelling a piece of Witches Hair lichen from its tangled form into a complex network of vein-like strands. This particular plant species is found hanging like long-green hair from the upper branches of coniferous trees—larch, spruce, and fir—in old-growth forested areas. It is classified as a fungus, but it is actually lichen and algae working in tandem to create a new form. The possible metaphors of this plant’s symbiosis are staggering and provide an approach to thinking about interspecies relationships.

Static Work

The Winds Undercurrent, 2018

Artist Statement

Wind shapes ecologies, landscapes, and cultures. Once a natural phenomenon, winds are now a hybrid force created by atmospheric pressure and human influence. The impacts of climate change on the fragile coastal ecosystem of Bonne Bay, Newfoundland are visible in the intertidal zone—the space where wind, water, land, and seaweed meet. As winds in the region have warmed, the protective winter ice required for seaweed hibernation has stopped forming. This special vegetation and the habitats that it creates are at risk as a result. The Winds Undercurrent explores seaweed as an important indicator of climatic, cultural, and ecological stress in Bonne Bay.

The 10 photographs capture several species of seaweed reanimated as fabric, affected by warming winds, dancing in the air and interacting with the landscape. The flag’s semi-translucent forms bring to mind pressed seaweed specimens collected and displayed in field guides and herbariums. In this way, The Winds Undercurrent acts as catalog of endangered salt water algae (seaweed) in Bonne Bay, Newfoundland.

Each component of this work can be shown separately.

Description

Printed on HAHNEMUHLE cotton rag photo paper, The Winds Undercurrent is a series of ten 20” x 30” framed photographs that were created during an artist residency at Memorial University’s Bonne Bay Marine Station in Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland. Using a variety of seaweed species collected from the intertidal zone and water pumped directly from Bonne Bay, fabric dyes were created and used to dye 24 handmade silk flags. Using driftwood and stones for support, the flags were temporarily installed in a 150 foot line along the coast, adjacent to Bonne Bay Marine Station in Norris Point and photographed. The 10 photographs capture several species of seaweed reanimated as fabric, affected by warming winds, dancing in the air and interacting with the landscape. The flag’s semi-translucent forms bring to mind pressed seaweed specimens collected and displayed in field guides and herbariums. In this way, The Winds Undercurrent acts as catalog of endangered salt water algae (seaweed) in Bonne Bay, Newfoundland.

The abstracted flags resemble six pressed seaweed specimens found in a pile of cardboard in the Bonne Bay Marine Station. They are orphans samples collected by Dr. Bob Hooper and his students in the 1970s or 1980s and stand in for the 40 year history of saltwater algae research that has occurred in the area.

A small computer console draws thirty years of wind speed and direction data from Environment Canada’s weather archive. As data is processed, it controls a fan that blows a varying intensities and shifting directions - animating eight flags hung in alignment with the cardinal directions. The notorious winds of Norris Point Newfoundland are reanimated and relocated within the gallery. Every minute, the fun marks an hour of data.

The Winds Undercurrent was exhibited at Parks Canada's The Discovery Centre, in Woody Point, Newfoundland (2018).

Grazing Between Two Worlds, 2021

Grazing Between Two Worlds was a collaborative project between Mia + Eric, a shepherdess, and 180 goats. After three years volunteering as goat herders on McHugh Bluff in Calgary and building personal relationships with many of the goats, Mia + Eric decided to create a performance with the goats as a thank you for their labour. Using weeds and other plants that are commonly eaten by the goats while working, Mia created several dye baths and dyed purpose built costumes that allowed the artists to attach plants to their bodies. As moving weed stores, the artists were able to encourage the goats to move from one grazing area to another while nibbling away at their costumes. Dressed as hybrid goat herders/moving trough, the artists put their bodies into the landscape—between the the bluff as it is and an imagined future bluff that the goats are working to create.

Project ephemera—costumes and documentary photographs—could be exhibited.

Dimensions and specifications:

Title here, 2021

Test here

Dimensions and specifications:

Title here, 2021

text here

Dimensions and specifications:

Title here, 2021

Text

Dimensions and specifications:

Live Work

Hello Neighbours

We wanted to experiment with how people could expand who they live with. Too often we think of our neighbours as being other humans who live next to us or in our communities. What would it look like if residents of Maxdorf began to imagine the places where we live as being shared with humans and the more-than-human world. This 90 minute project invited people into the Heidewald to meet someone new: a flower, bird, plant, rock etc. They would spend time with this other being finding ways to understand them through simple explorations that were facilitated by a small handbook. After meeting their neighbour they would then introduce this other being to another human.

Animals After Dark

Animals After Dark was an extension of our walking, finding, and collecting process, but occurred after dark and late at night. We wondered which animals inhabited our streets, parks, empty lots, alleys, and backyards after the sun went down? To investigate we invited residents to join us for a night-time nature walk to find out. We brought animal and insect guide books with us, a couple of flashlights, and we shared information amongst ourselves. Each participant was provided a hand drawn field guide that could be used to document their observations. Participants were encouraged to make drawings, take notes, or write questions about things that they saw and things they imagined in the darkness. We met at Firehall #6 and made our way through fields, back alleys, and down side streets, to the bluff and then back to the firehall following a different route. The walk took two-and-half-hours. We had approximately 10 participants. This was a valuable opportunity for us to explore the community at night and to see how participants experienced a workshop of this nature. We learned that it was a successful format of engagement and have since repeated the workshop (post-residency) with a focus on beavers. During this subsequent workshop we were joined by a member of the Parks Department whose expertise is beaver management.