It's a topic that raises eyebrows the moment it is broached.
The gun is a highly divisive symbol, evoking a barrier to intrusion, a means to a meal or the raw emotion of fear. And soon, the topic of guns can be explored at Vernon's Headbones Gallery.
Rylan Broadbent has taken the topic on with his new exhibit, Playing with Guns.
By re-evaluating the gun, passing it through the filter of art, its function all but disappears, and from the loaded barrel comes another message.
"It is not, however, a soft challenge like a cartoon 'pop' from a toy gun," says Headbones owner Julie Oakes.
Broadbent has created mandalas from guns. The pieces, beautifully constructed, read first as delicate, lovely, embodying notions of peace and harmony, balance and equilibrium, meditation and focus. As Oakes points out, these are passive messages.
"The mind sees not the individual symbol but an entirety made up of design components that work communally to create a whole," she said. "As recognition sets in, the hard metal, abrupt edges, steely tones and immutable firmness of a physical gun, which Broadbent has convinced us as existing solely as a means to unity, registers."
But these guns don't seem dangerous because they have appeared only as a cog. There has been a transference of power from allusions to the danger of war to "the harmlessness of a snowflake," Oakes said.
Broadbent achieves this without losing the endemic shape of the gun, nor has he "defused" a reality. He has simply looked at the gun in a new way, with the eyes of an artist. The gun is just another starting point from which to create.
"In compromised political positions, it can be advisable to not give undo credence to threat, to trust in the goodness of humanity and those who carry the gun. It is wise counsel to witness proceedings and from seeing, to acquire visual knowledge, understanding infused with possibilities rather than barriers," said Oakes.
"Broadbent has presented a possibility without pointing figures. He has not ignored ‘the gun question’. He has considered it as a reality which should be examined under varying lights."
Artists have used the gun as a symbol throughout history.
War paintings and depictions of battles have been confirmed through art as visual statements, as political, religious and philosophical points of view.
Guns symbolize heroism when in the hands of heroes, a means to noble ends, testaments to righteous paths and even, Oakes said, evidence of objective truth, depending on which side of the fence they were fired.
"It was unavoidable that a symbol that shouted strength should fall into comparison with the anatomy of man — often cited tongue-in-cheek with a wink-and-a-nudge. The long phallic barrel, a handle which fits the palm, a flicking of a trigger able to promote an explosion, these similes fed with ease into sexual inuendos placing masculinity foremost. The classic woman’s pistol is small, a dainty pearl-handled item that fits in a purse and the word ‘pistol’ is just a letter away from ‘pistil’, the female organs of a flower. This could have been an seductive and alluring perspective on the gun that Broadbent could have taken," Oakes said.
But Broadbent didn't. Instead, he has used the gun as a piece of a mandala. He has brought the gun on stage as a shape before it becomes a symbol. He has pulled the bullet another step away from power dynamics.
Broadbent's exhibit at Headbones Gallery, located at 6700 Old Kamloops Rd., will have its opening on Jan. 25 from 12-5 p.m.
