In fall 2018, Graham Landin moved his home and studio to a decommissioned BC Tel building on fallow land in the Agricultural Land Reserve. Like much of the property in the area, land use blurs between designation and application. The lot had variably been used to house utilities, grow produce, park heavy machinery, dump excavated soil and store salvaged metal. Today wild grasses and volunteer trees have reclaimed the terrain. The indeterminate vernacular of the site introduced Graham to new conditions and materials to live and work with.

Salvage wood is plentiful along the banks of the Fraser, whose north and south arms flood the intertidal zones surrounding Richmond. Its current carries stray wood and other commodities downstream from the interior, and the tide draws them upstream from the  Pacific Ocean. Access points to the shoreline are increasingly obstructed by industrial development. Regardless, a motley crew of dirt bikers, beachcombers, berry pickers and fishers find means of trespass. Among their company, Graham built a riverside deck out of driftwood and stone. From this base, he can scour the flotsam that washes ashore. Among the refuse, unhinged docks and doors, rope, flip-flops, fishing nets, buoys, broken dishes and coconuts have entered his material vocabulary.

The Fraser flows into the Georgia Strait, which in turn enters the North Pacific Current, joining a continuous network that circumnavigates the Pacific Ocean and forms the Turtle Gyre. The gyre moves aquatic life and terrestrial ephemera caught in its path across the Bering Strait, down the west coast of North America to the equator, past the southern islands, then north along the Philippines, Japan and Russia. Drifting the full circuit takes approximately 6.3 years. Flotsam that washes up along the Pacific Northwest originates from any and all Pacific adjacent territories, affirming the natural and cultural drift that has formed the region. The sculptures in Triangle Beach bear traces of Graham’s encounters with this phenomenon and express the flow between necessity, opportunity and contingency that living near the shoreline presents.