Common Collective: 40-Tonne Viewfinder

Common Collective is a group of five Ontario and Quebec-based artists with backgrounds ranging from documentary to sculpture to sound design, and animation . Part of a trilogy of installations that combine video and sculptural elements, 40-Tonne Viewfinder features a looped projection inside a grain silo of a type and scale that has become mostly obsolete in the current context of industrialized agriculture. The work responds to the changing patterns of life and land use in the region of Stratford, Ontario, where all five artists were raised. Renowned for its theatre festival, the small city of Stratford is a cultural and tourism hub embedded in a picturesque rural landscape, a situation that resonates with Charlottetown’s relationship to the fields and farms that surround it, increasingly defined by the encroachment of real estate development on prime agricultural land.

-Pan Wendt, Curator


Photo credit: Common Collective: 40-Tonne Viewfinder - Common Collective, grain bin used for 40-Tonne Viewfinder, 2023.