Artist statement

I am interested in how we interact with each other from biases, habits, and occasionally with conscious cognitive effort. Racism and other divisions we make between people are so common that I suspect there are genetic bases for it. But, behaviours like this can be modified from within culture.

This workstation is my representation of a path to change some of the current circumstances affecting Indigenous people in Canada. We as individuals, are the feet, the base for this workstation. We make and support the institutions shaping society. The column of the workstation is those institutions; they can change situations and circumstances described on the top by changing laws and by influencing social development. Truth finding, acknowledgement, and reconciliation are found on the workstation’s top as possibilities.

We are the grassroots. People have the power to initiate change. The actions of individuals lead to the evolution of institutions; our efforts and awareness will bring changes to the institutions and structures of power. Then our institutions and cultures can address the need for reconciliation between Indigenous nations and the power structures in Canada. We have the ability to understand, the agency to initiate change, and a responsibility as humans to make things better.

This desktop can rotate and it might provide you with a change in perspective but without real work we won’t change the relationship with Indigenous people.

About the artist

After graduating from Ryerson’s media studies program, David Ferguson exhibited photography in Canada’s public art galleries. He was concerned with the nature of representation and meaning which led to a desire to understand why we were changing the environment and climate as we were He stopped exhibiting photography but continued to work in Toronto galleries as an installer.

David became involved with the Art Gallery of Bancroft after moving to a semi-remote area near Bancroft to build an off-grid, passive solar home, studio and workshop. He was instrumental in the considerable growth of that organization for 8 years, serving as president for a 2 year term and currently sits on the board of directors. 

During this same period David was practicing the craft of making things of wood. For 5 years this work was exhibited on the Bancroft and Area Studio tour.

David felt challenged to make his woodwork more expressive and now finds that by working conceptually with text and design elements in an installation format he can address, more literally, some of the issues he approached with photographs.

At ground level David lives off-grid, growing and harvesting some of his own food and fuel. He continues to help with the food banks and the nonprofits in his locale and has a board position with Harvest Hastings which is a county-wide, and county-supported, organization focused on helping producers from the land. Things of great concern to him are the inequities of lived experience and food insecurity, entwined as they are with the challenges to the environment and socio/political/economic structures. David’s work is informed by those issues, a curiosity about cognitive and behavioural biases along with hope for positive change.

Find more about David at david@dferguson.ca