Clouds, mushrooms, apples and bees

What can we learn from mushrooms on the forest floor? Or quiet beekeepers tending to their colonies? Quite a bit, it turns out, if we’re willing to leave the studio and get our hands dirty. Naturalist, educator and visual artist, Diane Borsato defies easy definition with a unique and exploratory practice that follows her many “lines of curiosity” out into the natural world.

Earlier this summer, we had a chance to Zoom chat with Borsato to discuss her various works, including several in the AGO Collection. Listen to the conversation below.

Cloud Party

Have you ever looked up at the sky and marvelled at the clouds? The Cloud Appreciation Society certainly encourages you to do so, and Borsato is an official member. With cumulonimbus and stratocirrus drifting in her thoughts, Borsato looked around the Thomson Collection of Canadian Art and noticed something – clouds! And they were everywhere. This sparked the idea for Cloud Party, a unique tour of the AGO Collection that discarded the usual art historical narratives and instead used the tools for describing weather and other natural phenomenon as a way of engaging with each work. Have you seen the cloud formations in Lawren Harris’s Lake and Mountains? Or noticed the total eclipse of the sun in Claude Tousignant’s work Violence Lucide?

Apiary Videos

Held in the AGO Collection, this video-based work was an investigation into one of Borsato’s many preoccupations, beekeeping. After watching beekeepers at work, Borsato was fascinated by the calm, almost choreographed movements they performed while tending to their hives. Intended as a way to calm the bees, Borsato wanted to explore and document the beauty and tranquility of this practice using video. So, she took her camera to the fields and rooftops to watch and listen as beekeepers performed their affecting rituals.  

Diane Borsato. Apiary Videos, 2013. Video (digital file, 10 minutes, for gallery projection) Edition 1/3 + Artist Proof

Tea Service 

Contemporary art can push the limits of a conservator's skill. Imagine being invited to drink tea from cups not in use since the early 19^th century!? In this piece, Borsato invited conservators, a registrar, an interpretive planner, a curator and an art critic together to use all their senses and experience the thrill of drinking from cups temporarily removed from the AGO Collection. The action reanimated the objects for a short while, bringing the museum to life in a unique and playful way. And of course, our conservator wrapped things up by (very carefully) washing the dishes.  

Diane Borsato. Tea Service (Conservators will wash the dishes), 2013. 2 framed photographs 1(29x19”), 1 (22x18”) Unique prints + Artist Proof

Looking for more from Diane Borsato? Check out her artist profile on our webpage and get inspired to chase your own lines of curiosity out in the natural world! 

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