Nicholson visited and photographed cannabis grow operations both licensed and unlicensed on Vancouver Island and the interior of BC in order to document the artificial environment created for the indoor cultivation of cannabis. The images capture various sites which were engineered to control the environment in which the plants are cultivated. Nicholson’s photographs document almost laboratory-like conditions where the exposure to light, amount of water, supply of nutrients, air flow and venting are precisely controlled. The interiors of grow ops are usually dense environments in order to maximize the production of cannabis within a small space. Despite the production of a desirable biomass product and the traditional outdoor cultivation of crops, the plants growing in enclosed areas are taken from a natural environment and are subjected to engineered artificial conditions where the light, water and nutrients are supplied with almost scientific precision. Curator, Lubos Culen.

Cannabis cultivations and culture has varied extensively and geographically since its earliest human cultivation, thought to be around 12,000 years ago. Throughout its migration from Central Asia to East Asia, Eastern Europe, South Asia, Europe, and the Americas, the plant has consistently been used for fibers and its psychoactive elements and the seeds for nutrition.1 Supported by this long history, Tara Nicholson’s Cultivate calls attention to the liminal spaces of marijuana legislation, social awareness, and general understanding around cannabis cultivation and usage through a series of large-scale photographs taken in grow-ops throughout the interior and west coast of British Columbia. These images represent both the sophisticated and DIY functionalities of these operations, and additionally find parallels in the aesthetic and material dependence of the photographic medium on light. Catalogue text by Toby Lawerence.