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“TEMPLE” – 1996
Current environmental problems and the lack of running water in her childhood, gave Belmore the awareness of the vitality of this element and the tormented relationship, man has to it. In “Temple” she assembles three elements to represent the three forms under which we are used to think of water: packaged, freely running (but still constrained in an artificial system, like a water fountain), and “wild” (Dompierre, 1996). The first component of this installation is the “temple”, a wooden structure, whose shape resembles a worshiping place and is entirely covered with transparent plastic bags (like those used for packaging milk), filled with water from Lake Ontario, the Don River and from the tap. The reason for a temple-like structure and also for the title of this installation leans to the celebration of nature.
Before denouncing human irresponsibility towards water, Belmore offers a “poetic evocation of the nature” (Dompierre, 1996) and an opportunity to communicate with this entity. This is also the very reason for why temples exist. They should allow the worshippers to establish a more intimate and direct relationship with the deity, in this case with nature. The second component is a water fountain (like those you can find in public parks). As in the “temple”, also here water is adapted for people’s consumption; it is neither packaged nor free, but still under human control. Finally, the third component is a telescope positioned on the top of a staircase just behind the water fountain. The three objects are placed one after another, in a sequence that reproduces the processes water undergoes. In the last stage the water of the Lake Ontario, in its natural form, is seen through the telescope.
All the three components are triggers for associations. Their common element is water that builds a bridge between the man and nature. By using transparent packages, Belmore wants us to appreciate the aesthetical beauty of sparkling water, which is supposed to be pure and safe as the containers suggest. But its variegate color means that probably it is altered and even harmful. Belmore is aware of how “packaging affects our perception of the contents” (Dompierre, 1996). She understands that this is not only a marketing rule; it is also our attitude towards people and their culture.
The plastic packaging also evokes the fragility of the barrier that keeps the water safe from the external factors; indeed water is in need of protection, because it is one of the most vulnerable and degenerable elements of nature. But instead of worrying about its preservation in its natural environment, people prefer to preserve it in containers. Although water is what we most associate with life, we do not care about keeping it “alive”, and this distance between us and the natural element is represented by the staircase as well as the telescope. The first component estranges us from the nature, while the second one gives us a mediated relationship with water (we look at it from distance), but at the same time it distorts our perception of it (through the lens the water seems to be luminous and pure, but the reality is that it is contamined).
From this installation emerges our condemnation to only live with either impure or chemically altered water, as the water fountain symbolizes. This environmentally engaged work shows the stages of water, as it was and as it is going to be, and the role the western culture plays in this process.
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