Twenty-one pup tents in diminishing sizes that occupy floor space. Too small to provide human shelter, the tents become decoration or toys. The troop of pup tents are made with contemporary, digital-patterned camouflage and create two vistas.
From one side of the installation, a field of green rectangles is cut through by a path of beige that mimics compositions of illusory depth common in landscape painting. The digital camouflage also imitates frontal and aerial perspectives of the landscape while referencing political, economic, and environmental shifts resulting from warfare.
Repeated images, based on Canadian landscape painter Lawren Harris’ iconic 1924 work, Maligne Lake, adorn the other side of the tent flaps. This image and several others painted by members of the Group of Seven gained emblematic status due in part to a propaganda campaign launched in WWII. In collaboration, the Toronto-based Sampson Matthews Print Company and the budding National Gallery of Canada distributed prints of landscape paintings to military bases, field hospitals, and diplomatic offices across Europe and Asia. These images of vast, uninhabited wilderness served to remind soldiers of what they were fighting for and signified home with endless potential. The images were so popular that after the war, prints were sold domestically to decorate schools, hospitals, libraries, firehalls and other public buildings until the late 1960s. This dissemination, the most successful Canadian public art program to date, established a visual brand for a young nation newly inaugurated on the world stage and eager to embark on a program of post-war industrialization.
Commercially available camouflage fabric in forest green & arid beige, hand-dyed camouflage in red, blue, orange, & yellow, wood tent frames and dowels
Flat-pack pup tents with appliquéd image based on Harris’ Maligne Lake
Photography: Eric Tschaeppeler
Puptent dimensions
3 – 29x39x29”
3 – 24x36x25”
1 – 22x32x23”
3 – 20x30x21”
1 – 28x18x20”
1 – 26x17x18”
3 – 24x15x17”
1 – 22x13x15”
1 – 20x13x14”
3 – 18x12x13”