This one's for the Farmer

Category

Exhibition

Year

2013 - 2014

Institution

Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, BC

Comment

‘This one’s for the farmer’ encompasses five bodies of work. Each set of work has been produced with the farming community as a partner. While the title seems to exclude the art viewer, the whole body of work is about enticing viewers to take a second look at what is being portrayed.Typically farming is not the subject matter of contemporary art: it remains hidden as an activity seen by most as a fleeting moment often from a moving car transversing the highway. In ‘This one’s for the farmer’ the subject becomes central to the digital compositions, wherein carefully staged camera views are juxtaposed to create unconventional portraits of modern day farmers and their cultivation practices.Upon closer inspection of this series, one notices that the aestheticized arrangements illustrate farm work and their surrounding environment assisting to broaden what defines metropolitan Surrey, and the wider Fraser Vallery growing basin. By extracting farm work as a commodity and part of a larger food production processes and labour, ‘This one’s for the farmer’ draws new representations.In contrasting space, time, labour and farming through the creation of a conceptual series, Borda attempts to create a contemporary dialogue about farming and its development and misalignment within society today.After all where does food on the dinner plate come from if it is not for farming?