beginning
We were young and still believed in heaven Galerie Circulaire, September 4 - October 16, 2010


"Avant de découvrir des terres nouvelles,  il faut consentir à perdre de vue tout rivage"

Gabrielle Roy
".. in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known world... Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return" 
Herman Melville

This  print installation  returns to the utopian themes of Hague's Martian Odyssey projects - Home away from home and I will not be sad in this world. Like the Voyager spacecraft sent in 1977 to find new worlds, new species, new possibilities, this current enterprise contains clues to our own nature.   A cluster of "spaceships "embarks for the future carrying forms of life on earth, male and female, two by two".  These arks are constructed from birchbark trees (woodcuts) and reinforced, woven paper shapes. They and their animal occupants (also woodcuts) are  suspended together from the  ceiling, along with space clouds.  Behind them is an anxious sea of razor wire (cut paper) and ahead of them are fans to blow the flotilla gently off course. The delicacy, fragmentation and vulnerability of the materials reflect  the precariousness and wonder of life on earth and the fragility of goodness and hope. The visible tension of the animals shows both their awareness of all this and their determination to press on nonetheless.