A Belvedere is a building, such as a summerhouse or roofed gallery, sited to command a fine view. Urban's belvedere is a heritage home in Meadows, located on the west coast of the island of Newfoundland. "This site," represented in the exhibition in photographs, videos and a three-dimensional model of this house "haunts and holds me in a very peculiar way," says Urban.

Central to the exhibition Recalling Belvedere is the performance Belvedere. Filmed at the Bowmanville Zoo in Bowmanville, Ontario, the performance was represented in the exhibition as a projection on the inside walls of a portable tent-like fabric enclosure.

In Belvedere, Colette Urban rides an elephant. On her head and covering her face she wears a replica of the house in Meadows. Draping over her shoulders and body is a brocade cape adorned with ornamental floral beadwork. From this beaded layer a second elaborately decorated costume covers the body of the elephant. Stitched together from various fabrics and textiles in such a way to resemble the rugged landscape of Newfoundland, in particular, the specific landscape surrounding the house in Meadows, the costume resembles a caparison worn by elephants in ceremonial parades.

The elephant may seem like a peculiar addition to remembering the Newfoundland landscape. For Urban, however, this unlikely character enriches the project in many ways - its inherent and acquired characteristics illustrate her desire to understand this place and her longing for this landscape.

The performance Belvedere is "a representation of the exotic, gentle and majestic spectacle of my belvedere," says Urban, in as much as it is a representation of the exotic, gentle and majestic spectacle of the elephant. In Belvedere, the elephant is used as a metaphor to represent the physical scale of the island and its particular qualities. The elephant's large scale, like the island of Newfoundland, demands attention. Its matriarchal social structure, its extended community, and its prodigious memory serve as reminders that Newfoundland was once a proud matriarchal society before European exploration and colonisation.
 
Urban exposes the diverse cultural use of the elephant image in an ever-growing collection of elephant paraphernalia - a collection that has no visible end and one that highlights the proliferation of the elephant image in its myriad of interpretations. In books, photographs, videotapes, clothing, souvenirs, knick-knacks and stories, the elephant carries a wealth of symbolic and historical references, and reminders. As in the familiar image of Queen Elizabeth II, dressed in blue and holding open a large umbrella, sitting in the howdah of a ceremoniously dressed elephant.

© 2004, Colleen O'Neill

Biography

Colette Urban was born in Denver, Colorado, USA in 1951. She moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada in the early '70s to study at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design where she received a BFA. In 1982, she received an MFA from the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia. Colette Urban became a Canadian citizen in 1993.

Urban lives in St. Mary's, Ontario, and works as an associate professor in the Visual Arts Department at the University of Western Ontario. She spends her summers in Meadows, Newfoundland.

Colette Urban is known throughout Canada for both her performance and installation works. She has been performing and exhibiting her work both in Canada and abroad since the early '80s. At the Vancouver Art Gallery, British Columbia; Art Gallery of Calgary, Alberta; Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre of the Arts, Alberta; Art Gallery of Windsor, Ontario; Memorial University of Newfoundland, Grenfell Gallery, Newfoundland, and Museum Van Nagsael, Rotterdam, among others.

Colette Urban's work has been featured in numerous publications, including, FUSE, Art in America, Vie des arts, and BACKFLASH.