What on Earth is Holding the Loop Up?

It was the colour that initially drew Calgary artist Lauren Chipeur to sulphur. Staring at a piece of the raw element, small enough to sit in the palm of her hand, she marvelled at the neon hues. The yellow is so brilliant that in our modern eyes and mind it looks like the product of human imagination. But sulphur is a fundamental element in our world – it is an essential element in our bodies, in agriculture and in industry. It is the sulphonic acid produced by cutting an onion that makes us cry. 

What is sulphur, how is it used, how does it travel from onions to me to the land to industry? Tracing these interconnected threads, What on earth is holding the loop up? navigates the complexity and scale of our entangled modern world. Through ceramics, paper, installation and photography, Lauren looks at the ways in which we can get to know the material reality of the world around us. She seeks to understand our connections to systems, both natural and industrial, that seem too large for us to fully comprehend as individuals. 

But the work is also personal, familiar. Objects and forms appear from our everyday lives, small tethers that ground us in our day-to-day reality. As the monumental and unseen meets the intimate and familiar, What on earth is holding the loop up? slowly peels back the layers of our entangled reality, like the layers of an onion.