Amanda Rhodenizer
Love Boat
February 17, 2023 — April 15, 2023
The Blue Building Gallery is pleased to host Love Boat a new solo exhibition of work by Amanda Rhodenizer.
Two years in the making, Love Boat is an exhibition of paintings and sculptures exploring the legacies of the HMCS Cormorant—a vessel once famed for being the first in the Canadian Navy to board a mixed gender crew. More recently, from 2002 to 2021, the Cormorant came to rest at a dock near Rhodenizer’s home in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. There, again, it became the centre of controversy, drawing reports of neglect and ecological concern until finally being towed away for scrapping in November 2021.
Exploring the vessel as metaphor, Rhodenizer’s exhibition raises poignant questions about how trauma is recorded in the places it occurs.
Text from the exhibition, images and the artist’s bio follow below.
Amanda Rhodenizer
Love Boat
“Cormorants are excellent divers, at home in both salt and fresh water and are known for their wariness and alertness to danger.”
— HMCS Cormorant Welcome Aboard booklet
In the 1980s the HMCS Cormorant became the first Canadian Navy vessel to board a mixed gender crew. The ship soon became known among men as “The Love Boat.” Accounts of rampant sexual harassment and misogyny followed suit.
After a 20 year career as a diving support vessel, HMCS Cormorant was decommissioned at a dock in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia in 2002. The following years saw the ship change hands many times. By the time of an inspection and investigation in 2004, HMCS Cormorant was found in a state of abandonment. A contentious lack of security led to allegations of looting, misuse and a report that thousands of litres of fuel had been replaced by toxic waste in its fuel cells.
Nearly 20 years later, amid growing ecological concerns and pressure from locals, HMCS Cormorant was towed away for scrapping in November 2021.
HMCS Cormorant was the site of a historic first; of gender-based violence; of decades of labour; and finally, of ecological harm. Its abandonment resulted in physical changes to its dock in Bridgewater and impacted the health of the LaHave River. Rhodenizer has made a series of large-scale paintings of the dock, inviting viewers to walk along the river’s edge and search with her for traces of the HMCS Cormorant’s history in its last resting place.
About the Artist
Inspired by the traditions and limitations of landscape painting, Amanda Rhodenizer often focuses her work around contemporary real estate practices in Canada. When painting the figure, she frequently positions them against the uncertainty of the changing climate. Raised on the beautiful South Shore of Mi’kma’ki/Nova Scotia, she also explores her family’s connections to colonization, folk art, tourism, and boat building as ongoing themes in her work.
Rhodenizer received a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2006, and an MFA from the University of Waterloo in 2014. Her work has been exhibited nationally in group and solo exhibitions. In 2017 Rhodenizer participated in the Doris McCarthy Artist-in-Residence program in Scarborough, and in 2021 her solo exhibition O’er the Western Hills was presented by the University of Waterloo Art Gallery.