Blurope

March 15 - 20, 2022

Snowcastle​

​

Blurope, photographic essay by Mike Mitchell, was exhibited in in the Snowcastle (on Kingsway on YK Bay). Blurope (or sideline as its called) is everywhere in the NWT and this exhibit documented its many applications. Not only is blue rope a particularly pretty specimen of rope, like blue veins under snowy skin, but in Mike's mind it is also a "social connective tissue; the bookbinding of the North's collective stories."

​

When you think of northern material culture, you probably think of hide, bone, antler, canvas, duffel, fur, melmac, granite, plywood, spruce wood, birchbark etc. But in his photographic essay "Blurope; a photographic yarn," Mike Mitchell posits that blue rope (or sideline as its called) should enter the north's material canon. It's everywhere, and northerners are particularly adept at using it in unusual, innovative ways.

​