Ce qu'il faut pour vivre (The Necessities of Life)

Nicola Smith

Opening 24.09.14 6-8pm
Artist Talks 16.10.14 6-7pm

First and foremost, Nicola Smith is concerned with the process of painting. She begins a work each day. The past five years she has looked to the movies, most recently to the cinema of Québec.

This series of watercolours is painted after film-stills from Ce qu'il faut pour vivre (The Necessities of Life), directed by Benoît Pilon, 2008. Based on real events, and set in the early 1950s during a tuberculosis epidemic in Eastern Canada, much of the story unfolds in a sanatorium in Québec City.

The scenes are of dinnertime in the hospital, as the patients eat spaghetti from trays in bed. Eating, and watching each other eat, and in particular watching Tiivii, as he struggles with the profoundly unfamiliar meal.