| Summary: | In September 1969 a group of U.S. and Canadian artists gathered in Edmonton, Alberta, and lnuvik, Northwest Territories, to make and document site-specific works. The events that took place were part of "Place and Process," an exhibition of conceptual and process art organized by Willoughby Sharp, a New York based curator, and Bill Kirby, the Director of the Edmonton Art Gallery. This thesis examines how the exhibition unfolded, the artworks made, and the ways they were documented, and pays particular attention to how they were received in New York. Throughout, I argue that "Place and Process" and its afterlives question the concept of "Canada" as site in the late 1960s and reveal it to be an ideological and transnational project in formation, using the reliance of "Place and Process" on both U.S. and indigenous cultural sources to show that "Canada" in the late 1960s was on-going project in process. The lack of a coherent or consistent concept of what constituted Canada as site affected the conditions and outcome of site-specific works made there, and the way "Place and Process" has been historicised. This thesis offers the first analytical history of the exhibition and through it intends to probe the liminal border space between U.S. and Canadian art history.
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