While on holiday the past two weeks I had the privilege to view Edward Burtynsky’s exhibition, “Oil”, at The Rooms Museum and Art Gallery in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Subsequent to the exhibition in St. John’s, Oil will be exhibited at the Art Gallery of Alberta, in Edmonton from September 18, 2010 through January 2, 2011.
Oil explores one of the most important subjects of our time by one of the most respected and recognized contemporary photographers in the world. Edward Burtynsky has travelled internationally to chronicle the production, distribution, and use of this critical fuel. In addition to revealing the rarely-seen mechanics of its manufacture, Burtynsky photographs the effects of oil on our lives, depicting landscapes altered by its extraction from the earth and by the cities and suburban sprawl generated around its use. He also addresses the coming “end of oil,” as we confront its rising cost and dwindling availability.
Oil encompasses themes that have been explored in more specific Burtynsky exhibitions, including images depicting the reduction to scrap of oil tankers in Bangladesh, and images of the North American worship of the automobile. The quintessential image of the entire exhibit, however, is the image above of a sea of goose-neck oil pumps in a field in California. This work is amazing, both inspiring and thought-provoking at the same time.