Unedit my heart

Review of Shary Boyle's Canadian Artist at the BMO Project Room

2012-02-02T17:45:00.004-05:00

In January, Toronto artist Shary Boyle opened a new installation, Canadian Artist, at the BMO Project Room in Toronto.

The BMO Project Room is kind of a funny venue -- it's a small room located on the 68th floor of the BMO bank building on Bay Street in Toronto. It's cool in that it commissions new works from Canadian artists, and then, from what I understand, actually gives the work back to the artist at the end of a 10 or 11 month exhibition period. But it's also kind of weird in that it's only viewable by appointment. The staff, when I've contacted them, have always been pleasant and accommodating, but I bet the location and appointment thing does cut down on the usual art-world foot traffic.

In any case, I was excited to see Boyle's new work there. I wrote a little report on it (including a subsequent visit to Boyle's studio) that went up on the Canadian Art website today. An excerpt:

It all began with an invitation—a thick, heavy, gold-embossed missive that thudded into mailboxes last month advertising Shary Boyle’s installation Canadian Artist at the BMO Project Room in Toronto.

More than spelling out event details, it laid down a gauntlet—and maybe a gag or two.

“A really ostentatious invite that you can crack over your leg… When have you ever seen that in Canada?” asks Boyle over a cup of coffee in her Toronto studio. “And when have you ever seen something like that with the words ‘Canadian Artist’ on it?”

The answer, for this writer: never. Upon opening the invitation, I had laughed with surprise.

“It’s a joke,” Boyle says. “You look at the Serpentine or Gagosian or whatever—they always have those kinds of invitations. It’s about the status related to that cultural site.”

“The things that are made in our country don’t have that same status. They can be as important, interesting and skilled as anything happening in New York or Berlin or London, but … they aren’t lent that status. So I’m just putting forward a precedent.”

Boyle’s installation for Canadian Artist—also intended to be precedent setting—consists of an imaginary family tree (or, as she writes in an exhibition text, a “preposterous, yet semi-logical, system of ancestry”) for its titular character. It stretches back five generations, to approximately 1850. The ancestors’ faces, 44 in all, are presented as pale, unpainted chalkware reliefs edged discreetly with gold; only the artist’s porcelain visage is decorated with glazes. Straight, minimal lines of ribbon link the array in the space, while a related website (canadian-artist.ca) provides background material on each ancestor.

Read on at Canadian Art for the rest.

And to book a viewing of the work for yourself, visit telephone (416) 643-2609
or send an e-mail request to curator@canadian-artist.ca.

(Installation view of Shary Boyle's Canadian Artist by Toni Hafkenscheid and via Canadian Art)

Emanuel Licha Q&A Out in Today's National Post

2012-01-31T22:04:00.005-05:00

I really enjoyed Emanuel Licha's War Tourist series when it was showing at the Art Gallery of Ontario a few years ago. So I was excited to speak with him on the phone recently on the occasion of a two-venue Prairies show at Latitude 53 in Edmonton and Paved Arts in Saskatoon.

The resulting condensed Q&A from our conversation came out in today's National Post. An excerpt:

Q What started your War Tourist series?

A In 2004, I was living in Sarajevo and documenting a bombed house. A car arrived and one woman and two men stepped out. The men were journalists and started taking photographs. They stayed five minutes, then the woman handed me her business card, and I saw that she was a tourist guide. I was pretty naive then, because I didn't know there were tourists of war-torn areas, and that there have been for centuries. That night, I decided to abandon my projects. I felt concerned by the war, but obviously, being Canadian and never having been under a bomb attack, I felt it wasn't legitimate for me to speak about. But the next morning, I called the woman, and that became the first video in the series. It was like, "OK ... I'll be a tourist." Finding the idea of the "war tourist" was, to me, an answer to this problem of legitimacy, a ridiculous way for me to address my own situation vis-à-vis wars.

For more, check out the Arts & Life section of today's Post.

(Image from Emanuel Licha's R for Real courtesy the artist.)

Artists in the GTA: Faisal Anwar profile at Yonge Street Media

2012-01-11T21:16:00.008-05:00

The internet is, to some people, all about connecting. But to others, it can be about reinforcing distances between people as well.

I got to thinking about this while writing my latest profile for Yonge Street Media. It took me to Oakville, where I visited with Faisal Anwar, a Pakistan-raised artist who bridges interests in the web, theatre and social work. Here's an excerpt from the profile:

Some of Anwar's projects—like a 2010 Nuit Blanche piece that turned viewer texts and tweets from Toronto, Karachi and New York into leaves on a single, growing tree—have provided surprisingly poetic visualizations of local and global community. Other ventures have been technically prescient, like a 2004 video-game interface that required children to use broad physical gestures instead of sedentary button-pushing—a paradigm the Nintendo Wii used two years later to achieve mass-market success.

His current projects play with storytelling. Pluscity, a collaboration with artist Siobhan O'Flynn, seeks to make Twitter streams during big civic festivals "more meaningful to people who are experiencing that event" by visualizing them as flowers and planets. Throughout, Anwar has been interested in "the idea of how the audience actually participates in a narrative," whether that narrative is theatrical, social, technological or otherwise.

"I'm trying to work against the randomness of information. Yes, we can share everywhere [in a web 2.0 environment]. But then how do you get focus? How do you find a meaningful narrative around it? How do we generate a community around it?"

To find out more, read on at Yonge Street.

Let me also say that Anwar's wife, Tazeen Quayyum, is an artist too, and makes very interesting work that's more in the realm of painting and sculpture.

(Image of Faisal Anwar by Tanja-Tiziana for Yonge Street Media)

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-23T12:29:00.004-05:00

Happy holidays! I'll be taking an official break from today through to Monday, January 2, inclusive. All best for the new year.

(William Armstrong's 1835 winter scene on a Toronto bay from Wikimedia Commons)

Year-End List Time! My Top 3 Art "Things" of the Year at Canadianart.ca

2011-12-22T15:44:00.006-05:00

Aw, yeah, it's year-end list time! Today I got to join in the action with my top 3 art "things" of the year posted at Canadianart.ca.

All of my picks had to do with institutions. An excerpt:

1. Some Downward Pressure on Public-Museum Admission Fees

This year, I completed a rather unexciting transition—from being a writer whose main concern is art to being a writer whose main concern is art’s institutions, in particular our large, publicly funded museums and galleries. Over the past decade—despite museum policies that mandate as much equitable access as possible to their publicly held collections—major museums and galleries in Canada have tended to eliminate free access to such collections, at the same time implementing admission-fee hikes that well outpace inflation. In 2011, for whatever reason, that trend has, thankfully, started to stall (and even reverse somewhat). On October 27, the Royal Ontario Museum—until that point in time, by my calculation, the most expensive museum to visit in Canada—announced it was lowering its admission fees from $24 per adult to $15 per adult. On November 16, during a public talk in Toronto, National Gallery of Canada director Marc Mayer said he wanted to restore free permanent-collection access at the nation’s largest art museum. And on November 22, the Power Plant announced that admission would be free for one year beginning in March 2012 in honour of its 25th anniversary. None of these actions can come close to mending wholesale the relationship between public art institutions and the constituencies for which they were ostensibly founded. (And in highlighting these few nominal improvements, I recognize that I’m failing to cheerlead for the museums and galleries that have bothered to maintain free public-collection access and other free access over the years, from the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal to the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and beyond.) But it’s a small start to what I hope will be a more equitable and people-friendly art world of 2012.

To read my other two points, head to Canadianart.ca.

(Image of the Royal Ontario Museum admissions desk Copyright 2009 Royal Ontario Museum)

Spectacles, a good heart and (maybe) an iPad: David Hockney talks drawing tools in today's National Post

2011-12-15T16:10:00.006-05:00

I was really glad to see how much discussion sprang up this fall around the David Hockney exhibition at the ROM.

As Paddy Johnson pointed out in Toronto Life, the show can be considered, in many ways, a cash grab on the part of the museum, as it doesn't involve a lot of shipping (it's emailable) and doesn't feature Hockney's best work.

And as Richard Rhodes (counter)pointed out in Canadian Art, the show, in person, actually offers a quite nice little promotion for the continued vibrancy of drawing practices, whether in digital means or otherwise.

Given all the stuff this show has brought to the conversational surface, I felt very lucky to chat a bit with Hockney himself when he stopped by Toronto in October, a few weeks after his show opened.

The resulting condensed Q&A is out in today's National Post. My favourite bit is at the end:

Q Is there any art technology you’re hoping will be invented in the future?

A Well, I don’t know. But I’m not looking for some easy way out. I know that’s no good. In fact, most artists want to make things a bit more difficult for themselves as they go along, to challenge themselves. I first drew on the computer 25 years ago, and it was too slow, like drawing with a pen with no ink — frustrating. I also admit I had to use [the iPad] for quite a while to get good at it. The skill is in the practice.

Q You said earlier that looking is the key to drawing. Is there any technology people can use to get better at looking?

A Spectacles? Ha! A good heart, maybe? I mean, some people can see more than others, can’t they? Van Gogh knew he could, and he did see more than others. Picasso must have seen more than others. To look is a positive act, actually. Most people, generally, are just scanning the ground in front of them to make sure they don’t bump into anything. Not many people give much scrutiny to things. But if you draw, you do. I mean, I’m an absolute looker — I like looking, I always did. To me, the world’s rather beautiful if you look at it. Especially nature. People will tell you it’s a miserable world going to rack and ruin, but they’re not looking at it, I think.

To read the full interview (including Hockney's response to the implication that this is not his best work) head on over to the Post.

In the process of researching this Q&A, I have to say I really enjoyed looking at Hockney's website, which includes some quite fun videos of him at work on plein-air and large-scale projects.

And for those who haven't seen it yet, the show continues at the ROM until January 1, with the museum having Friday-discount pricing on evenings between Boxing Day and January 7.

(Charlie Scheips' photo of David Hockney drawing on his iPad © David Hockney)

Canada in Miami: Not-so-Cold Comforts at Canadianart.ca

2011-12-08T18:43:00.006-05:00

I went to the Miami fairs for the first time last week with a strange experiment in mind -- trying to see as much Canadian art as I could, or, phrased differently, to see how Canadian art is represented in this type of situation.

The lengthy data report from this experiment was posted today at Canadianart.ca. An excerpt:

Though there weren’t any Canadian contemporary-art dealers at ABMB this year, a small hub of contemporary Canadian artworks was present courtesy of Toronto artist-run centre Art Metropole, which since 2005 has shared a space in the fair’s bookstore section with New York City’s Printed Matter.

Artist multiples on display and for sale at the Art Metropole/Printed Matter booth included Maura Doyle’s Handmade Coins and Tickets molded out of clay; Lyla Rye’s metallic and mirror-like Cameo pin; Tibi Tibi Neuspiel’s Artist Sandwich sculptures showing the visages of Picasso, Beuys and Van Gogh sketched in what appear to be pieces of toast; the Fuck Death Foundation’s coffee mugs; Paige Gratland’s “feminist hair wear” The Sontag; and Sandy Plotnikoff’s Holidays Cancelled greeting cards.

This year, ABMB also served as the apropos launch platform for Art Metropole’s newest book, Commerce by Artists, which was edited by Toronto artist Luis Jacob.

“Commerce by Artists has done really well [at ABMB] for the fact that it’s so suited to this environment,” Art Metropole shop manager Miles Collyer said. “And it’s almost counter to commerce that’s going on at the fair, because a lot of the projects [in the book] are dealing with alternative forms of transactions between the audience and the artwork, or between the gallery and the artist.”

“It’s a nice kind of second sober look at commerce and what people may be coming here to participate in.”

It takes some clicking through (there's nine pages all told and a few slideshows) but if you're interested there are also reports of the Canadian dealers I did find at the other fairs if you read on--and reports on Canadian works at ABMB represented by European and American dealers, too. You'll find it all at Canadianart.ca.

A final note: I don't presume for this report to have covered all the Canadian art in Miami last week; I'm sure things were missed. But it was interesting for me to see what was there. Don't know if I'll ever do this at a show again, though!

(Image: A copy of Commerce by Artists alongside Cameo buttons by Lyla Rye and Handmade Coins and Tickets by Maura Doyle in the Art Met booth at Art Basel Miami Beach)

Telling South Asian Tales Old and New: Profile of Brampton's Sharada Eswar out on Yonge Street

2011-11-30T22:14:00.008-05:00

My most recent foray in profiling GTA artists for Yonge Street took me to Brampton, where I met up with a very busy professional storyteller and writer: Sharada Eswar.

Since immigrating from India with her family in 2001, Eswar—who previously worked in marketing and did storytelling and puppetry on the side—has really ramped up her activity in her chosen art. Here's an excerpt from the Yonge Street profile that provides a peek at her 2011 schedule:

In March, she and choreographer Nova Bhattacharya received a Toronto Arts Council grant for a project to re-imagine the Mahabharat from a female point of view. In April, her interviews with Sri Lankan refugees formed the soundtrack for No Entry, an installation at Coronation Park. In September, she wrapped a radio drama for Wychwood Barns' Theatre Direct, inspired by tragic Hindu hero Abhimanyu and chilling reports of the Toronto 18 wannabe terrorist group.

In December, she'll be doing carnatic singing in a Pharmacy Avenue studio for a Tamil-and-English adaptation of Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale. The remarkable project, presented by the community-arts group Jumblies Theatre, is the culmination of a three-year Scarborough residency involving dozens of Jumblies staff and hundreds of community volunteers. During the residency, Eswar has facilitated programming for the region's Tamil seniors. With Like an Old Tale, she's taking on the role of an actor, rather than that of a self-directed storyteller.

To find out more about Eswar and how she built her career in the arts, read on at Yonge Street.

And it's worth noting that that big adaptation of A Winter's Tale actually opens next week, December 8, in a big old TV studio near Pharmacy and Eglinton. It only runs for 10 days, coinciding with the 6th Canadian Community Play Exchange Symposium. For ticket info, visit the Jumblies site.

(Photo of Sharada Eswar by Voula Monoholias for Yonge Street)

Sweetness and (Projected) Light: Q&A on Watch Me Move at the Glenbow Museum

2011-11-30T21:51:00.013-05:00

The Lisson Gallery's Greg Hilty works amongst some of the most highbrow echelons of the art world. So when it came time to interview him about Watch Me Move, a show on animation art that was a big hit at the Barbican this summer and is now on at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary (its only North American stop) I had to ask him how the heck he got in charge of this megacrush on populist flicks from Pixar and Disney.

You can find out what Hilty said in today's National Post, where our condensed Q&A appeared. An excerpt:

Q You’ve worked at some of the most high-end galleries in the world. How is it you’ve created an exhibition that crushes out on multiplex fare such as Disney and Pixar?

A There’s overlap in my background as a museum curator specializing in points where the visual arts connect with other visual fields, like film. I’ve always taken the view that there’s great meaning and great relevance to be found in looking at art very broadly. Though I’m very clear about what’s good and what’s not good, I think it can be found in different places.

Q So how do you tell good from bad in animation? What makes one instance artful and another not?

A That’s a hard question. One indicator of animation’s maturity is it has been taken up by many people who call themselves visual artists rather than animators, like Francis Alÿs, Kara Walker, Nathalie Djurberg and Julian Opie. But no matter who’s doing it, I think there can be good clay animation and bad clay animation, just like there can be good painting and bad painting. I think animation has been limited in the past by many museums seeing it as a set of technologies. I was keen to look at animation, by contrast, as an approach to plumb the depths of human consciousness and scale the peaks of human imagination.

My favourite Hilty quote in the Q&A comes at the end, however:

"Sweetness and pleasure and delight are things that the art world sometimes, at its cost, ignores. It tries to be a little bit above all those things — and fair enough, there are serious things to engage with — but it’s a big world, and there are many emotions in the world and in people’s lives. I think one of the reasons for the good response to this exhibition is there’s a sense of recuperating the full range of human emotion in the visual arts."

Damn straight! As a huge fan of the movie Up! and (shame be damned!) a child-free (and, I'll add, cat-free) lady who actually requested seeing Puss in Boots on its opening weekend, I have to agree on that note about sweetness.

There's also some Canadian content I had to trim for lenght, like the fact that Hilty said the NFB did give the world some pretty interesting animation, especially that of Norman McLaren, whose Neighbours is included in the show.

For the entire interview, read on at the National Post's Arts section.

(Still from Toy Story 3 from the Telegraph)

Free Collection Admission at the National Gallery of Canada on the Way? Q&A with NGC Director Marc Mayer at Canadianart.ca

2011-11-24T16:14:00.010-05:00

Last week, National Gallery of Canada director Marc Mayer gave free public talks in Toronto and Winnipeg on an often-controversial topic in the arts: taxpayers’ money. In it, Mayer discussed misconceptions that the general public and art insiders alike often have about art, artists, art museums and the art economy. He also spoke about his wish to make art more accessible to all Canadians.

Today, Canadianart.ca published my condensed follow-up phone interview with Mayer. In it, we discuss the gallery’s budget (slated this year at approximately $58 million), where it comes from, and what he’s planning on doing with it in the future. The most exciting financial development for me is that Mayer says he would like to restore free permanent-collection access at the National Gallery. (I write "restore" because it did used to be free to visit the NGC collection, but today it costs adults $9 for the majority of the week, one free evening excepted.)

Here's an excerpt from the interview:

Leah Sandals: In your talk, you noted that Canadian taxpayers provide 85% of National Gallery of Canada’s funding. You also said that you would like the gallery’s permanent collection to be free for taxpayers to see, just like collections are in public museums abroad that have similar funding arrangements, like the Smithsonian and Tate. How are you going to make this free permanent-collection access happen at the NGC?

Marc Mayer: Well, it’s complicated, and we’re trying to figure it out. We’re actually trying to find someone to sponsor it. We think that makes more sense, that someone should take credit for that kind of generosity. And there are various sponsorship options, so that’s really what we’re looking at, because it’s a considerable amount of lost revenue. We think, of course, that [over the long term] there would be a gain in revenue, because more people would come to the gallery—but not in the first couple of years; it takes a while for people to get used to the idea that the permanent collection is free and that they can come anytime.

LS: The latest quarterly figures the gallery has posted online indicate that admission fees only account for a small portion of total revenues—2.2%—with much of that figure coming from tickets to special exhibitions rather than tickets to the permanent collection. So what are the obstacles, then, to restoring free permanent-collection admission?

MM: 2.2% is a lot of money on 58 million dollars. And we can’t afford to lose any money. So the main obstacle is the money. But we’re also part of a network of national museums; would our decision force them to [do something similar]? What is the ministry’s position on this? All those issues, we haven’t figured them out yet. But I do feel strongly that Canadians should have access without barriers as much as possible to the national collection, particularly those who bothered to come all the way out to Ottawa. So that’s what we’re trying to figure out.

Read on at Canadianart.ca for the rest of our exchange, which addresses Canadian vs. non-Canadian acquisitions, the gallery's new biennial, its re-involvement in the Venice Biennale's Canada Pavilion, MASS MoCA's massive show of Canuck art next year and more.

I was thankful that Mayer was willing to speak to these topics, often in a frank manner, and I'm grateful to the University of Toronto Art Centre and the Winnipeg Art Gallery for hosting his talks. Here's a few other thoughts on the talk and chat that I wasn't able to squeeze into the interview:

In his talk, Mayer said that the gallery is working on having an extended wall label for every collections object on display. To this, I say, hallelujah. A lot of people who visit art museums (especially new visitors) are often left hanging when it comes to being provided with some tools or information for interpreting the art on display. Or at least some context! Mayer said that one of his priorities on this front is to get a label for Barnett Newman's Voice of Fire, which has been one of the most notorious paintings in Canada for the past 20 years, but bears no trace of this context (or any other context, be it historical, formal or financial) in its gallery presentation. He also mentioned Newman's Yellow Edge in this label discussion, which I was especially glad to hear because at Speed Art Criticism this year, some earnest non-artster came up to me just really wanting to understand why the heck that work was in the National Gallery. Hopefully the label will offer some of that explanation to people!
Mayer also said during the talk that he's not just looking for art-historical context in these labels, but different kinds of stories or angles with which visitors may better understand (or inquire about) the art on display. I agree that providing multiple vectors of entry into artworks is a good idea.
On the more humorous end of things, Mayer said during his talk that the Group of Seven era "frankly hadn't interested me all that much until recently." He did go on to note, however, that many members of the public and the critics decried the National Gallery's acquisitions of Group of Seven works as a waste of taxpayer money a century ago, and that public outcry is to be expected of art-museum acquisitions, in a way, since the mission of contemporary curators at most national art museums is not to document the best-loved art of their time but rather what is likely the most game-changing art of their time. (Because some people rightfully decry the overuse of the word "game-changer" these days, I'll clarify that that's my word choice, not Mayer's.)
Mayer noted that at talks like these (and I would extend, of course, that in interviews like these) he is largely preaching to the converted. This made me think afterwards: how could he reach a wider audience and vice versa? There were jokes about interrupting a sports event, but it did make me think, again, of the Speed Art Criticism event at Nuit Blanche, which to me is a really interesting opportunity to meet a public that is art-interested, but not art-ingratiated.
I'll end this post with a quote from the talk that I found interesting: "Our greatest efforts need to be the creation of a much bigger audience for art, both new and old. We need to think much harder about how to do that, and focus our research and cogitation on the cause of connecting Canadians to their most ambitious culture. That's what the National Gallery is thinking about above all other concerns these days, I can promise you. Indeed, that is what the National Gallery is for." (I myself actually suspect Mayer is likely juggling many more concerns than just audience development, but I appreciate him making the point.)

(Image of National Gallery of Canada director Marc Mayer courtesy the NGC and via Canadianart.ca)

Power Plant announces Free Admission from March 2012 to 2013

2011-11-22T11:39:00.015-05:00

First the ROM's announcement of reduced admission fees, now this: The Power Plant has announced free admission for a full year starting March 23, 2012.

Here's the details from the gallery press release emailed this morning:

The Power Plant is pleased to announce the launch of the ALL YEAR, ALL FREE program in celebration of its 25th anniversary year. Due to the generous support of The Hal Jackman Foundation, the gallery will drop all admission fees for one full year commencing 23 March, 2012.

The launch of this new initiative is timed to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of The Power Plant, an occasion to encourage increased public access to the gallery, mark its achievements, celebrate its past successes, and build an exciting future....

The gallery is indebted to The Hal Jackman Foundation for making this yearlong program possible. Since 2005, the generosity of the Foundation has enabled The Power Plant to open its doors free of charge during the summer, making the gallery more accessible to thousands of lakefront visitors and tourists. The summer program has been overwhelmingly successful, enjoying an increase in attendance numbers by more than 400%, and reporting 77% of those attendees as first-time visitors.

I can't say that this is anything but a good thing--after all, I'm always happy to see private donors sponsor more free admission to art institutions--though it seems strange/unfortunate to me that we must wait for the initiative to begin in March.

I also wonder if a year of free admission is enough to really acculturate new audiences and publics to frequent visiting of the gallery--some say a few years of free is needed to make that happen at art museums.

(Also, the longer I think on matters of access, the more it seems vital to me that public Canadian collecting institutions make access to their permanent collections free, whether sponsors are available or not. It's the principle of the thing, you know?)

But getting back to the Power Plant (a non-collecting institution) I do have to say this comes as a very pleasant surprise. Kudos to the Hal Jackman Foundation for continuing to put arts access in their list of priorities.

For more information about the Power Plant's upcoming programs, visit their website.

(Image of the Power Plant's smokestack by Xavier Snelgrove via Wikimedia Commons)

Exactly that: Q&A with Ken Nicol out in today's National Post

2011-11-10T08:36:00.005-05:00

Ken Nicol is a master at divining order out of chaos — particularly chaos of the everyday-life variety. Whether he’s carefully sorting swarms of houseflies or arranging potato chips into tidy grids, this Toronto artist distills mathematical purity out of lo-fi dross. With his latest show, themed on the number 100, now on in Toronto, Nicol talked to me about his work. The resulting condensed Q&A is out in today's National Post. An excerpt:

Q Your current show is themed on 100. Why?
A I don’t know. I’m hoping to make a list of 100 reasons to do 100. I’ve been asking people for ideas. Someone said, “Well, 100 is really round, it’s not like 37, all pointy and stuff.” Ha! But 100 did come up with the Pringles I use, because it’s 100 chips in every can. And the show is on for 100 hours. So 100 kept coming up. And it’s a great tool, because it’s a good goal for something. If I claim 100 as a genre of mine, then I can know when to stop collecting things like my white beard hairs. It gives me a nice little parameter.

Q Was math a big thing for you in school? There’s so much in your art about symmetry, counting and sets.
A Generally I sucked at math in school. But I do a lot of drafting. I suppose it’s geometry I’m more interested in. Phi, the Golden Section number — that’s pretty neat. And as for grids, well, I mean, look at my heroes: Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre. Though I keep on buying Cy Twombly books, and I don’t know why.

Q Because your works can be so small and precise, I find they prompt me to acknowledge my own poor attention to detail. Does it bother you that people don’t always pay as close attention to objects as you do?
A It totally bugs me. I mean, you go to a Ken Nicol show — if you actually pay attention, you’re going to be rewarded. A lot of this stuff is easy to absorb, because it’s nice-looking and well done. But if you go a little bit further into it, there’s more.

There's definitely more, I agree! To read the rest of the interview, head to the Post.

Nicol's show Hundreds of Things, Volume 1 continues at MKG127 in Toronto until November 12. He also has a small show at Convenience Gallery that closes November 24.

(Image of Ken Nicol's 100 Pringles, Regular, Sour Cream & Onion, Salt & Vinegar, Barbeque 2011 Courtesy the artist and MKG127)

"I don’t know what there is in the colour green that makes you think hard": Grade 6 students review contemporary Canadian Painting

2011-11-08T13:32:00.011-05:00

The other day, I received a set of terrifically enjoyable art reviews. They were all written by Grade 6 students at a Toronto public school. Their teacher had assigned them to look at the semifinalists in this year's RBC Canadian Painting Competition and make a case for their favourite work. Some of the reviews are reproduced below, along with the works they refer to.

I chose the Untitled art painting first for the competition by Tristam Lansdowne. I chose it because I like how the artist made the colours balance and look eye catching. The background colours look like a peaceful background so when I look at it, it already looks like a clam and peaceful place. In the front the beautiful falls of water and the plant looks like it is a beautiful place with beautiful nature all around it. When I look at the picture it reminds me of my old unforgettable dreams in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, there was a war. After the war we went to Sri Lanka from Canada and saw the beautiful buildings half broken and saw the other beautiful half. I also like this painting because the artist uses emphasis. First the top is normal but in the bottom it has more information. These are the important and good reasons I chose Tristam Lansdowne’s Untitled for first place in the painting competition.

My first choice for the art competition is Blotto by Deirdre McAdams. This picture has a lot of colour and shapes. The type of colour it has matches very well with the shapes. I really like the placement of the shapes because of its rectangular figure and bright pink and orange colours. I admire that this is abstract art because there isn’t really a picture of a person to look at. It can be anything you want it to be! That is very interesting to me. That’s why Deirdre McAdams’ Blotto should win the art competition.

My first choice for this art painting competition is Ianick Raymon’s Decomposition 2. The first reason I chose this painting is because it reminds me of checkers and a movie that I saw. The second reason I chose this painting is because it looks 3D and 3D stuff is really cool. The third reason I chose this painting is because I like how the artist put the checkered pattern in the middle and the corners. It is really creative. These are all the reasons why I believe that Decomposition 2, by Ianick Raymon should win the competition.

My first choice for the art painting competition is Bitsy Knox’s work entitled The Improper Sister 1. The first and most important reason why I chose it is because I really like the shapes. I like the shapes because the triangle shapes seem to bounce. Another reason why I chose it is because the colours make me think hard. It makes me think hard because of the highly contrasted colours, especially the colour green, contrasted with the pink. I don’t know what there is in the colour green that makes you think hard. There are many shapes and lines in the picture. The biggest think is that the colours stand out very nicely. The bouncing shapes make it more interesting for me. These are the reasons why I strongly fee that the painting by Bitsy Know should win the competition.

I chose Amy Schissel’s art because I like how her art looks free with so many colours. The colours of the lines make me want to fly because there is no balance. I vote for her because she knows that art should have no instructions. Shapes don’t have to be shapes, lines don’t have to be straight. You can imagine what you can make from her shapes. That’s why I think Amy Schissel should win the competition.

My first choice for the art competition is Julie Trudel’s painting named Project CMYK, Test 44. The first reason is that I thought how she mixed all the colours and made something look like a black hole! Second, I like the texture of how it is mixed like one part looks higher than the other. Third, I like the cool swirls and make it look like a black hole or a colourful toilet. That’s why I chose this one.

I have to say my favourite is that last piece of writing with its "colourful toilet" analogy. Many thanks to the teacher of these students and to Jackie Braden at RBC for forwarding along these reviews. And good luck to these young writers in future!

For more information about this year's RBC semifinalists, visit the competition website.

(All images from canadianart.ca)

Muskrat Magazine's Rebeka Tabodondung: Looking at Media from a First Nations Perspective

2011-11-04T13:38:00.007-04:00

My most recent piece for Yonge Street Media, posted this week, looks at Rebeka Tabodondung, editor and curator of Muskrat Magazine, a new online Toronto magazine that focuses on First Nations perspectives.

Here's an excerpt from the middle of the article:

"I got the sense in early discussions that Muskrat wasn't going to focus on how 'deficient' First Nations people are— their disasters and problems—but rather focus on contributions they can make to broader society," says Deborah McGregor, interim director for Aboriginal Studies at the University of Toronto. McGregor contributed an essay to the debut issue tracing the Ojibwa re-creation myth in which the muskrat—among the smallest and most humble of animals—is the only one brave enough to dive into deep waters after a massive flood and bring up soil for a new land to be built.

The muskrat's parable of great ends from inauspicious beginnings is a powerful one for Tabodondung, who was kicked out of high school before graduating. At 19, while on an exchange program for indigenous youth from Guatemala and Canada, she had a revelation which changed the direction of her life.

"That was the first time in my life I'd ever heard of an indigenous perspective of history," she says, recalling the youth program's visits with Aboriginal groups in B.C. "I realized the Aboriginal experience of colonization in Canada is not a perspective that is included within the education system, within media and general Canadian consciousness. I began to understand the power of media and the importance of indigenous people to control their own stories, to tell their stories the way it happened to them."

Researching this piece was a good reminder for me on the power of media and of telling one's own story. It also introduced me to a compelling performance piece by artist Keesic Douglas. Last summer, Douglas canoed from Rama First Nation near Orillia to The Bay on Queen Street West, where he tried to trade his great-great-grandfather's Hudson Bay Blanket for beaver pelts. Here's a film on that performance from Muskrat Magazine's Youtube Channel:

For more information, visit the Muskrat site or read on at Yonge Street Media.

(Image of Rebeka by Tanja-Tiziana for Yonge Street Media)

Dealing with Resistance to Change: Notes from Day 2 of the Art, Science & the Brain Conference

2011-11-01T15:11:00.011-04:00

Following on yesterday’s post, today I’m compiling notes on a couple of sessions from Day 2 of the Art, Science & the Brain Conference organized by ArtsSmarts at the MaRS Centre in Toronto.

The presentations ranged widely over brain structure, pedagogy, curriculum, and educational institutions. Here’s the points that stood out the most for me in terms of thinking about contemporary art, contemporary art education and related programming at public museums and galleries:

- Change coming from within educational institutions, and other institutions, is thought by many experts as being in the highly-challenging-to-well-nigh-impossible range of plausibility. As speaker Stan Kutcher put it, “Changing a university is more difficult than moving a graveyard.” As a result, several speakers said, change on educational and other fronts must be initiated outside the established institutions. To me, this recalled the development in decades past of Artist Run Centres in Canada, an alternative exhibition model that grew outside of museums. And perhaps, in more recent years, it points to the growth of the web as a place for exhibiting art outside of the museum and ARC structure. Still, I wondered -- must all change come from outside? It's a depressing thought for me, even if it's a realistic one.

- Some educational theorists are excited about the idea of moving from a top-down, lecture-based model of teaching to an interactive and shared model of teaching. Again, it’s worth wondering how this could apply to art institutions today. Though many museums offer “interactive” features of one kind or another, the general feeling in many art museums is “we are conveying or presenting important art knowledge to the viewer,” not “we are collaborating with the viewer on generating art knowledge and experiences” or “the viewer might have something to teach us or share with us about art knowledge and experiences.”

- In terms of using new technologies, all the presenters agreed that integrating resources for training educators in those technologies was crucial. Many institutions provide the budget for tech equipment, but not the budget to teach educators (and perhaps, in the museum case, curators and directors) how to use it.

- Even fewer resources, at times, may be devoted to much-needed testing, whether it’s of paradigms old or new. As Kutcher pointed out, he has been trying to do research on the effectiveness of certain technologies in education and teen mental health, but has little comparative data, as the effectiveness of traditional educational and mental health strategies had not been thoroughly tested in the first place. In terms of art museums, this prompted me to wonder what ideas of value in exhibitions have become accepted as status quo through the centuries without any data on viewer learning to actually support them.

- Again, collaboration between divergent groups is key for moving forward in technology and education, including arts education. As Matt Thompson, a representative from Mozilla put it, “The geeks are getting it. We know now that the Internet is not going to save the world. But it’s the dawn of a more interesting age” where there are hybrids between technology and other fields are growing more useful applications. As an example, he discussed some tech-ed programs Mozilla had developed in intensive collaboration with teachers and curriculum advisors. The upshot here for arts institutions is, again, to reach out to teachers (and, as necessary, programmers) when looking to develop appropriate and useful arts-ed technologies.

Also, here’s a few of my thoughts on the conference in general:

-Next time, please allot more time to speakers and panelists, or focus the topics so that they can be addressed in the allotted time. Many of the topics at the conference could have had full days devoted to them. Instead, each panel speaker was given four to five minutes to cover that topic. I’m all for conciseness, but there’s a limit to condensing useful information. It’s also annoying to go see a single-speaker talk that runs out of time in terms of getting down to the nitty gritty. That’s partly the fault of the speaker, but could have to do with unclear timing expectations.

- In a conference that has a lot of buzz around “new ways of learning in the 21st century” I was left wondering why so few 21st century tools and approaches were being used in the presentations I saw. I’m talking about webcasting the talks and panels as a basic minimum, which didn’t happen. I’m also talking about revamping the traditional top-down speaker approach. There’s few things more annoying than hearing a speaker expound on the benefits of “non-broadcast, non-top-down models of learning” while they absolutely engage in broadcast, top-down modes of communication.

- Be sensitive to the ways a sales pitch can alienate your desired audience. I overheard at the conference that some attendees were annoyed with the sales-y ness of the presentation lineups. Next time, to improve its usability and integrity, the conference might want to consider providing some tips for educators that don’t require buying a book or software program or consultant time to put into action.

Overall, I found the conference an interesting experience, especially as a non-educator myself, and I’m sad I’m not able to attend this afternoon’s panel featuring Sally McKay of Digital Media Tree. Good luck Sally!

For more information about the conference, please visit 21c-learning.ca.

(Image of an old-timey classroom -- with the same layout as many new-timey classrooms -- from elearninggr14)

Learning through the Arts: Notes from Day 1 of Art, Science & the Brain

2011-10-31T17:09:00.005-04:00

Today, I attended a couple of sessions at Art, Science & the Brain, a conference on learning organized by ArtsSmarts at the MaRS centre in Toronto.

Here’s some of the key findings that came out of the talks for me in terms of learning through the arts. I've also noted, where possible, the potential implications for contemporary-art institutions like public museums and galleries:

- Teacher-Institution collaboration is the bedrock of a successful arts education program. This was reinforced in several sessions. Institutions can’t just create a program and put it out there and expect it to be used when teachers’ curriculum or other key needs are unaddressed.

- Institutions may wish, when possible, to consider supporting arts in the classroom, not just bringing students into the gallery. The Guggenheim Museum retains more than a dozen resident artists to go out into NYC public schools on 20-week programs each year. The Guggenheim program also requires three school visits to the museum, but most of the work is done in-class. This is likely an extreme example for the Canadian funding context, but worth considering – how do we follow up with kids in the classroom?

- Arts education programs like ArtsSmarts can enhance positive student behaviours and decrease disruptive ones in the classroom to a statistically significant degree. This finding is supported by an ongoing ArtsSmarts research study in Quebec public schools which has found the outcome to be true over a period of 2 years thus far. This is especially true, say teachers, for students with so-called "special needs." Personally, I think this is a remarkable finding as making the classroom an open environment for learning would seem to be half the battle in overloaded classrooms these days.

- Institutions need to be willing to work on basic logistics as needed. Cambridge Galleries found that teachers were interested in bringing their students to the gallery, but teachers found it was difficult to find appropriate and affordable transportation to do so. Luckily, Cambridge’s Education Officer managed to make a link to the local transit authority, which was delighted to handle the transportation as the 9am to 2pm window was typically a low-use period for them. Kudos to the gallery for working with the community on this solution to an unglamorous (but persistent) problem.

- Lessons learned in a visual arts program can benefit grades in other subject areas, anecdotally speaking. In one presentation about ArtsSmarts’ Quebec research project, it was noted that one teacher saw her students’ English Language Arts grades increase after the ArtsSmarts program. What she concluded was that her students learned a lot about creation and revision from the visiting artist, who would have students take a closer look at their watercolour paintings and revise them 4 or 5 times over the course of 4 or 5 weeks. As a result, students became more comfortable with the idea of producing and editing written work—rather than just working on writing one perfect sentence, they would write five good pages, then trim it back.

- Engaging multiple media enhances chances of learner success. The Textile Museum offers many hands-on, touchable experiences in its gallery, but it also has opportunities for students to follow up online and post their own views on artifacts through its Social Fabric site.

- Though no statistics are able to show so far that ArtsSmarts programs enhance student engagement, there is much anecdotal information to that effect, particularly where so-called "special needs" learners are concerned. One teacher told me, “I’ve dealt with kids who haven’t been to school for five years. But when they’re in this program, they don’t miss a day.” Pretty remarkable.

Also a few questions seemed to linger in the air during the day. Here’s a couple of note:

- Are current educational materials at Canadian museums and public galleries too dumbed down? This seemed to be the view of a few people at the conference. They would like to see more respect for the viewer offered in interpretive materials and texts.

- How can arts educational projects be funded consistently? It’s worth noting that the Guggenheim’s Learning Through the Arts program actually wasn’t initiated by the museum, though the museum has now taken it on. Currently, funding for these types of initiatives seems to be a patchwork, with more and more funding tied to “it better be good for the economy” outcomes.

- Is a conference of this sort too wide-ranging? Perhaps attendees would benefit from more indepth approaches to the arts or science or the brain, rather than all three.

- How is it that education has gone from being a core element of museums and public galleries to being a separate department, often with a separate space within the museum or gallery? How can the educational mandate of institutions be better integrated with their everyday activities and spaces?

- Are arts education programs such as ArtsSmarts most likely to be taken up by teachers who have high levels of student engagement in their classrooms already? Is there a temptation to test out these types of programs in classrooms that, in a way, need them the least, because a "good" class will better guarantee a "good" research outcome?

I hope to hit up a couple more sessions tomorrow and to post more notes then. For more information about the conference visit 21c-learning.ca.

(Image of an ArtsSmarts project from http://lmckenzie.edublogs.org/)

It’s about time: ROM reduces admission fees to semi-reasonable levels

2011-10-27T09:51:00.004-04:00

This morning, the Royal Ontario Museum is officially announcing that they are reducing their admission fees, which, until this announcement, were the most exorbitant in Canada and among the most expensive in the world.

The general admission fees are dropping to $15 for adults [previously $24], to $13.50 for seniors and students [previously $21] and to $12 for children over the age of 3 [previously $16].

As any frequent reader of my work would likely suspect, my reaction to this news is generally positive. Admission fees and affordability at museums has been an axe I like to grind, and this is a big step in the right direction. The adult admission fee has dropped by a third, and is finally almost in that movie-ticket ballpark I’ve recommended as a maximum in the past.

At the same time, those who care about museum access might also see some cause for concern in this announcement. As part of these changes, the ROM is eliminating its two free hours per week, which were Wednesdays from 3:30 to 5:30pm. (Inconvenient and tokenistic as a time slot, I’ll admit. But my preference in terms of these announcement would have been to see these hours expanded and moved to an evening during the week.)

On the more good-newsy front, the ROM is at least maintaining cheaper hours on Friday from 4 to 8pm, with admission fees during that time dropping to $9 for adults (previously $12), $8 for seniors/students (previously $10.50), and $6 for children (previously $8).

Yesterday, ROM Director and CEO Janet Carding chatted with me on the phone about this change to admission fees. Our edited exchange is printed below.

Q The ROM has said for years that there’s no money in the budget to reduce admission fees. Where did the money come from to do this?

A Well what we’ve done over the last few months as part of our strategic plan is we spoke to people who hadn’t visited us before or visited us in a while. And what we were hearing then was that the price was too expensive for people. We felt we needed to make a change, and people said to us that if we had a lower entrance price, more of us would come. We’ve reduced the [adult admission price] to $15 and we think the cost of doing that will be offset by the increased number of people who will come. I would rather have lots of people coming to see us at a lower admission fee than fewer people coming to see us at a higher admission fee.

Q How much of overall revenues do admission fees currently comprise?

A Well, last year 17% of our revenue was admissions. But that was including all of the admissions—admission to special exhibitions as well as to the permanent collection. What that doesn’t include is membership.

Q The ROM policies demand that the museum reduce economic barriers to the permanent collection to the greatest extent possible. Why not just make access to the permanent collection free and charge for temporary exhibitions, as many other museums do?

A Where we are right now, what we found is that we couldn’t afford making the permanent collection free without cutting temporary exhibitions. So it wasn’t a viable economic model.

It feels to me that my role is to create a museum that’s lively—that people have access to what we do. [At the same time,] I don’t want to reduce the quality of what we’re doing. I want to have more people coming.

Also, we found that even most of those visitors who were coming during our free hours were happy to pay something—they just felt $24 wasn’t the right amount. So we said, let’s make it cheaper for lots of people to come everyday.

Q And you eliminated free hours altogether. Why?

A We’re working on the basis that we’re going to be free to the people who need it to be free for them. So we’re increasing the number of tickets available in our access program by 50% to a total of 75,000.

Q Does that include distributing ROM passes at all Toronto library branches rather than just a few of them?

A No. We’ve focused on those areas that are particularly areas of need, the areas where people were least likely to be coming to the museum.

Q One thing I’ve found in researching this issue is that institutions often point to each other when setting fees. They say, “this fee is consistent with comparable institutions in the area.” So how do you expect this admissions fee change to impact structures at the AGO and the Ontario Science Centre and other museums in the area?

A Well the research that we did was for our visitors. We didn’t ask questions about other sites. I would expect everyone would be looking at it from the point of view of their audience. What I have done is I’ve made sure our colleagues knew [in advance] that we were making this announcement this week. So from my point of view it’s not about what’s right for everyone else, but what’s right for the ROM.

Q You came to the ROM from overseas museums [like the Australian Museum] where the admission fee structure was considerably more affordable. How did that affect your approach to the ROM’s admission fees?

A When I arrived, I knew that we were an expensive museum to visit compared some other museums. But what I wanted to understand was what audiences here felt.

The research we’ve done over the last few months has been helpful in working out what we need to be. And my interest is in being the best museum we can be.

To me, this is the first step in what I’d like to do over the next 3 to 5 years. When we get to 2014, [the ROM’s centenary year], I’d like people to being seeing the ROM as an essential destination… and affordability is a key part of that. So it’s about what’s right for the people here in Toronto and Ontario.

Q How much did the Ontario government recommendation of last year—that the ROM improve its economic access—affect this change of approach on admission fees?

A Well, we did a whole series of things in terms of preparing for that committee, and that included taking a look at whether our access program was working. I think one of the reasons we’re increasing the number of [access program] tickets to 75,000 is we feel that’s actually working. But we’re constantly looking for new partners to help us reach new audiences. So we’re delighted to work at the YMCA and the YWCA, for example. So I think preparation for the committee helped us.

----

A few more of my thoughts on this development:

- I’m all for museums staying financially solvent, but when will they stop treating the public as a customer and start treating them as a shareholder or client? The ROM’s funding is still 50% government grants, and it remains an agency of the provincial government. This admission fee drop is a big step in the right direction, but the elimination of free hours is not a good precedent to set in terms of a collection held in the public trust.

- I am wondering, as indicated in the Q&A, how other museums in the area might react to this. My ideal outcome would be that they reduce their fees as well. We’ll see what happens. I can also imagine them being very upset by this announcement from an internal perspective, since it does put pressure on them to reduce fees they may not feel ready to reduce yet.

- I would like to see museums, strangely, become a bit more self-interested on this front. When Toronto councilors threatened to shut local libraries, there were hundreds of people who turned up at city council to protest and thousands more who signed petitions online. Citizens feel that libraries, quite rightly, are theirs, because they can access them at almost any hour for free and they experience them as providing a vital public service. Because museums charge such high admission fees (and yes, $15 is still a lot to many Torontonians and Ontarians), they forego a large amount of that kind of popular emotional support.

- Also, I still don’t understand why the ROM didn’t at least set the fees at movie prices. In terms of market, if I can pay 10 to 12 bucks and go see a multimillion dollar production with a compelling narrative and emotional appeal (okay, yes, I recently saw Moneyball) that could, in marketing terms, well outshine paying $15 to see artifacts for which no narrative or context is necessarily provided. (I write this as an obvious narrative junkie, but I know I’m not alone in that prediliction.)

- Overall, just to underline, I'm pleasantly surprised by this announcement. A big step in the right direction. But still lots of work to be done!

(Image of the ROM from Design Lines Magazine)

Innocence Lost: Kurelek-related Q&A out in today's National Post

2011-10-25T10:47:00.013-04:00

I heart William Kurelek. And I'm very, very, very excited about the first survey in 30 years about him, which recently opened at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

It's accompanied by a terrific website, kurelek.ca -- please do take a look at that. (I'd love to see more exhibition websites like it from Canadian museums. Very comprehensive but also navigable and with many artwork reproductions.)

And lucky for me, the show is travelling to the Art Gallery of Hamilton in the coming year, so I'll also get to see it in person. (It will also be going to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria too.)

Andrew Kear, curator of historical Canadian at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, chatted with me generously on the phone about this new Kurelek show earlier this month. The condensed Q&A version is out in today's National Post print edition. An excerpt:

Q Many Canadians know Kurelek through his sweet, nostalgic books. But this show reveals his bloody, apocalyptic works. Why?

A One thing I think the exhibition does—and people may or may not appreciate this!—is that it removes the veil of innocence that covers a lot of the Prairie Boy’s Winter kind of work. I think you can’t return to those bucolic, nostalgic scenes with the same eye after you’ve seen paintings like This is the Nemesis. You start seeing an edge of underlying discomfort.

Q Where does that edge come from?

A Kurelek was concerned with nostalgia—he painted largely from memory. But his view of childhood was tempered by his experiences growing up. He was socially awkward to begin with. Then, he spoke Ukrainian for the first seven years of his life, which put a bulls-eye on his back when he went to a school in Manitoba where most of the students were English and Scottish. The Ku Klux Klan was active on the prairies through the 1920s, and his own father faced racism. So his view of childhood was not as sentimental as it may first appear.

A few Toronto-centric notes on Kurelek: he lived on Balsam Avenue in the Beaches neighbourhood for the latter part of his life and early in his career on Huron Street closer to U of T. While living on Huron, he created his Passion of St. Matthew series, and, because he was low on cash, sometimes traded paintings and odd jobs for his rent. Here's another snippet from the interview that relates to Toronto:

Q Many Toronto artists in the 1970s refused to visit Kurelek exhibitions because of his overt social conservatism. How did that affect him?

A Though Kurelek kept up a gregarious correspondence with various people, he was extremely socially set apart. It wasn’t just that his work was distinct from Robert Markle’s or Harold Town’s or Michael Snow’s. He didn’t out to the jazz clubs on Yonge Street or do the whole Yorkville scene. Partly that was because of his social conservatism, but also because he remained very awkward. He made it well known that he had a problem with Markle’s lascivious nude paintings. And while he won praise from some critics, like Robert Fulford, there were others, like Harry Malcolmson, he had famous controversies with. The interesting thing is that critics couldn’t not talk about him—even though they knew they were being preached at, and, of course, resented that.

For more, please check out today's print edition of the Post.

(Image: William Kurelek, Polish-Irish Fight, 1977. Courtesy the Art Gallery of Hamilton)

Art Markets and Stock Markets: Another RBC Q&A out in Today's Post

2011-10-21T12:41:00.002-04:00

I'm always being prompted to think about new things on the job--things that are new to me, anyway.

In chatting with RBC curator Robin Anthony this week, it finally came into my full consciousness that painting may not only be a safe market choice for private art collectors--it also could be considered a safe market choice for museums in terms of selling tickets to exhibitions and getting viewers through the door.

Here's an excerpt from our conversation, out in today's National Post:

Q Canada's biggest commercial art fair, Art Toronto, kicks off next week. What are you expecting to see there in terms of the market for these [RBC CPC finalists] and other artists?

A Having just come back from Frieze Art Fair in London, what we noticed was that most of the art dealers took a fairly conservative approach. There was a very noticeable amount of painting as opposed to photography or video. It may also be coincidental with that [Tate] Richter retrospective and with the just-opened Group of Seven show at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, which RBC was also involved with. My prediction at Art Toronto is that many of the booths will be exhibiting painting and perhaps take a little bit of a conservative approach, so that it will be work that's of a scale and size appropriate for private collectors.

Q Don't expect to see any massive murals for sale soon, then?

A Probably not as much as we've seen in the past. I think caution from the financial markets does transfer over into the art markets, but at the same time art offers people the chance to look at other vehicles of investment [besides stocks and bonds].

For more of Anthony's advice to collectors and artists in this tough market, read on at the Post.

Just Because

2011-10-21T12:39:00.002-04:00

Can't get this song out of my head this morning!

Time for Art: Patrick Bernatchez exhibits 1000-year Wristwatch in Montreal

2011-10-17T17:24:00.005-04:00

Why do I need Dave Dyment's A Drink to Us When We're Both Dead—that is, a bottle of 100-year-aged scotch to be released in 2018—to remind me of my own mortality when Patrick Bernatchez's BW Project—a wristwatch that makes one revolution every thousand years—is about to debut in Montreal at Galerie de l'UQAM?

Here's an excerpt from Bernatchez's website about the project:

BW consists of a wristwatch with a mechanism and form that have been created entirely from scratch. This object, which appears to be quite simple at first glance, proposes a different reading of time and immerses one in a more abstract measurement scale. The BW display is made up of a single hand that will take a thousand years to complete a full revolution....

The BW (BlackWatch) was designed and crafted in collaboration with Roman Winiger a renowned Swiss watchmaker. The works title BW is an initialized form of the watch itself and the respective surname initials of the artist and watchmaker.

You know what is dumb about my reaction to projects like this? There's always some nitpicking part of me that goes "Um, well, how are we sure it's going to actually happen? How will we know the watch won't break down or something?"

With Dyment's project, the 100-year timeline makes me think it's a little more plausible to execute. With a 1000-year timeline like Bernatchez's my sense of pragmatism starts to fail. But I guess that's probably the point! There's part of me that (incorrectly) thinks I can plausibly look 100 years into the future. 1000 years, not so much. Good luck, little watch!

Read on here for more info about Bernatchez's project and here for more info about his Montreal show, opening this Friday.

(Video of Bernatchez's watch from his website)

What I learned from the New OAC Arts Engagement Study

2011-10-13T17:09:00.005-04:00

Today, the Ontario Arts Council released the results of its latest arts engagement study. You can read the summary here and the full report here.

Here's what I found interesting in the study results:

Almost all Ontarians could cite at least one arts activity that they’d like to do more frequently in the future - and the number-one pick for arts activity they'd like to do more frequently was to "Paint, draw or make other original art." So to me it seems important that art institutions need get involved in helping adults and children actually engage in making art. This includes partnering with the school system to get kids making art at a young age.
Overall, the home is the predominant setting for engaging in music (89%), dance (51%) and visual arts (71%) activities. This is consistent with other research suggesting that the home is the foundational setting for arts activities of all sorts. So how can art museums and galleries reach into homes? Maybe by getting on board with online exhibitions as an endeavour that's just as seriously undertaken as producing beautiful catalogues that few people will purchase and fewer, read? Or, um, something?
Half of Ontarians visit art museums and galleries at some level, although half of all activity around museums is held within only 20% of the population. This is the steepest audience-distribution relationship among all arts activities in the study! To me, this also goes a long way to demonstrating how intimidating it might be for people not in that 20% to actually visit art museums and galleries -- could be easy to feel like an outsider.
As might be expected, ‘watch movies on computer, TV or DVD’ is by far the most prevalent of all visual arts, crafts and film activities, with 61% doing it ‘at least once a week,’ and another 28% ‘at least once a month.’ Somehow, this made me wonder why watching TV didn't count as a cultural activity in itself. There are a lot of crap movies out there, as well as some good TV. Just sayin'.
Reading in general exhibits the highest frequency and salience index scores overall. Salience for ‘accessing books through a local library’ is higher than frequency, suggesting that although not typically thought of as a creative act, going to the library to seek out reading material is a highly valued activity. The study suggests that, as a result, libraries are "a natural partner for arts organizations to increase outreach and expand programming." To this, I say, word. It's time for the NGC, the AGO, the ROM, the Power Plant and other publicly funded galleries to start considering how they can reach out through library branches. I've seen some workshops in the past, but I feel like more work is needed.
95% of Ontarians said they would like to be doing more arts activities than they are doing now. Well, that's kind of heartwarming. And I also like that the study has included "going out dancing" as an arts activity. I'd like to do more of that too.

(Generic I'm-learning-from-stats image via Hope for the Sold)

I'm Not Okay, You're Not Okay: Humanity Lookin' Dismal (yet Compelling) at Current U of T Shows

2011-10-11T13:25:00.007-04:00

Mon dieu! Homo sapiens doesn't come off well in a couple of University of Toronto shows this season. Still, I kinda liked them. I discuss this conflicted effect in my latest reviews for the National Post, which came out on Saturday. An excerpt:

1. Models for Taking Part at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
7 Hart House Circle, to Dec. 11
Humanity doesn’t come off well in Models for Taking Part. This is especially the case when considering two of the exhibition’s major works: Artur Zmijewski’s Democracies and Renzo Martens’ Episode III: Enjoy Poverty. Zmijewski documents protests and other mass events such as state funerals, sports rallies and war reenactments — mostly in his home country of Poland, but also in France, Germany, Israel and Palestine. Arrayed over several screens in a single room, Zmijewski’s videos are overwhelming, whether sonically (as reenactment gunshots ring out alongside requiem orchestrations), visually (as burning buildings lit by the Black Bloc meet “Feminazi” signs at an anti-abortion protest and national flags, well, everywhere), or psychologically (as each group’s attempt at “outreach” only seems to entrench disparate positions in its actors and bystanders). As a whole, Democracies — a work labelled, supposedly, for one of the greatest inventions of humankind — makes prospects for peace and understanding seem grim. This effect is deepened in Martens’ feature film, which traces a Congo journey exposing layers of injustice in a) global economies; b) global media; c) global aid organizations; and d) global art-making. No one, the artist included, seems to escape the film’s cynical gaze. Heartbreaking moments, like the deaths of malnourished children, take place very nearly onscreen, while stomach-turning scenes — like Martens suggesting that the Congolese should just learn to “enjoy poverty” because it makes the rest of the world feel noble — provide little relief. Nonetheless, both these works remain strangely compelling for their no-holds-barred approach to our species’ fascistic, hooliganistic and narcissistic tendencies. It’s also worth noting that the ethical implications of these works could be up for discussion at a special curator talk Oct. 11, at 6 p.m., and a panel on Oct. 12, at 6 p.m.

For details on Mark Boulos at the Coach House Institute and (the considerably more gentle) Angela Grauerholz show @ UTAC, read on at the National Post's Posted Toronto blog.

Also just FYI, this is the last At the Galleries column the Post will be running. As of October 15, they're overhauling their Toronto section, with the column eliminated as a result. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to do the column over the past three years or so, as I understand it's a privilege to have that kind of mass-media platform. But I'm also glad that individual art shows may have the opportunity to get longer or more in-depth treatments in future, and that a greater range of critical voices will be represented.

(Still from Artur Zmijewski's Democracies via the Barnicke Gallery)

Prize Pick: Q&A with RBC Painting Competition Winner Rebecca Brewer out in Today's Post

2011-10-03T11:25:00.009-04:00

Who says art doesn’t pay? Vancouverite Rebecca Brewer, announced as the $25,000 winner of the RBC Canadian Painting Competition last Tuesday, may need to ponder that question sooner rather than later. But first, she answered a few queries from me over the phone about Canadian guilt, palette psychology and the best canvas ever. The condensed Q&A is out in today's National Post. An excerpt:

Q Some say that in art school, there’s the painters… and then there’s everybody else. What do you think?

A My experiences have confirmed that many times. When I did my undergrad, I studied with two teachers; one was a sculptor and one was a painter. I’d always secretly be doing painting behind my sculpture class’ back, and vice versa. Now I’m doing my MFA at Bard College, and the painting department is definitely its own beast.

Q Bard has strong ties to the New York City art world. How important is it to be connected to New York when building a painting career?

A I think painting never died in New York, in a way. I feel really affirmed there compared to what my experience was in Vancouver. I think that Vancouver has started to blossom in terms of painting, but it’s only been over the past 5 years that I’ve noticed that happening. I feel I’m part of something much bigger since being at Bard. I really appreciate Canadian painting culture, but I’m pretty awestruck right now by the scope that there is in New York.

Q What are the differences between Canadian and American painting?

A I think it’s difficult to qualify statements about that! In Vancouver, for a while, there was the shadow of photoconceptualism and conceptual art practices. So conceptual painting seemed the natural fit, but somehow that created a bit of a backlash. I just feel it’s a lot less tortured in the States. When I interviewed at Bard, they asked me what the deal was with this big chip on my shoulder, and then the chair of the department said, “Everyone, remember, Rebecca’s from Vancouver!”—meaning, I’m going to have a chip on my shoulder from my experiences of coming up among the sort of naysayers who believe that painting is irrelevant and outmoded.

I should say that Brewer is currently working in both Vancouver and New York, and did clarify later that she feels lucky to enjoy support in both communities.

To find out more about the inspiration for Brewer's winning work, Beuys painting, and learn about her favourite painting of all time, you can read on in the print edition of today's National Post or online at the Post's website.

And many thanks to my fellow NSCAD alumnus Marco D'Andrea for his observations about painters and art school and prompting my own reflections on this matter. He's currently doing a degree at the University of Guelph if you'd like to track him down.

(Image of Rebecca Brewer's Beuys painting from Canadianart.ca)

Nuit Blanche: Alight, but for how Long? at Canadianart.ca

2011-09-29T16:41:00.005-04:00

Also on the Nuit Blanche front (as per the last few posts!) today Canadianart.ca published my Q&A with one of Nuit Blanche's big honchos: Julian Sleath, programming manager of special events with the City of Toronto.

The Q&A (condensed from a 15 minute phone conversation) looks at the difficult (to many observers) fiscal and political context Nuit Blanche may be taking place in this year. Here's an excerpt:

Leah Sandals: Given the $500 million-plus that the City of Toronto is looking to trim from its budget this year, the 10% reduction in spending demanded of all city departments, and the many recent recommendations to cut funds for city-owned museums and other municipal cultural programs, it’s a tense time for many in Toronto’s arts community. What are the challenges of mounting Nuit Blanche in this type of fiscal and political environment?

Julian Sleath: Challenges? We probably don’t really know, because we’re not party to those discussions so far. We as a team have, increasingly, a 24-month planning cycle. So we’ve hired next year’s curators already. We’ve had the commitment of a title sponsor from Scotiabank till 2014. And the Special Events team are working on that basis, that we’re here to stay. At this point, I’m actually seeking proposals for 2013.

LS: Yet because you work so far ahead, you and your team must have projected the possible impacts of our city’s deficit, and efforts to eliminate it. How have you dealt with that long-term factor?

JS: Well, in our department as a whole, we’re subject to the standard and ongoing operating efficiencies. Aside from the Core Service Review, every department of the City of Toronto is under an annual challenge to decrease its expenditure by an amount set each year by the city manager. And we continue to do that, in no small part due to those commercial and branding sponsorships that we obtain. We’re extremely fortunate that we have a number of partnerships in the form of commercial sponsorship that help us sustain the program and help us look forward to a long-term future.

Sponsorship and other outside funds are providing us with 73 percent of our funding this year. This includes Scotiabank, GMC Chevy and Timothy’s Coffee, as well as the various tourism-related grants we get through the Ministry of Ontario’s Celebrate Ontario program. In alternate years, we usually get money from the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund. We also get a significant grant from Tourism Toronto each year.

To read on for the rest, where Sleath discusses what more permanent arts institutions could learn from Nuit Blanche (I have to say I agree with him!) read on at Canadianart.ca. Also, just wanted to note I spoke with Sleath by phone on Monday, and I appreciate him taking the time to chat at such a crazy time for the festival.

(Image of revellers near Toronto City Hall during the 2009 Nuit Blanche, courtesy the City of Toronto and via Canadianart.ca)

Flightpath: A Nuit Blanche Q&A with Usman Haque & Natalie Jeremijenko

2011-09-29T16:28:00.005-04:00

Given the budgetary struggles at Toronto's City Hall this week, voters across the political spectrum are likely wishing some councillors would take a flying leap.

Well, a Nuit Blanche artwork being built just outside council chambers is inviting all Hogtown residents - elected or otherwise - to do just that. In Flightpath, residents will be able to soar across Nathan Phillips Square on cables some four storeys tall. On Tuesday, London architect/artist Usman Haque and New York engineer/artist Natalie Jeremijenko talked to me about this eccentric solution to deadlocked urban politics as they were setting up on the Square. The resulting condensed Q&A is out in today's National Post. An excerpt:

Q Flightpath promises to help Torontonians "reimagine the city." But to a lot of folks, it might just look like a bunch of zip lines and scaffolding. Which is it?

Usman: The point of this project is to explore ideas of mobility around the city.

Natalie: Yes, there's a big idea here about how we design our cities. Are they for efficiency? Are they for pleasure and wonder and play? There's a claim here that there is a place for playful reimagining - for pleasure-driven, wonderdriven engagement with possibilities for the future.

Usman: And the birds of Nathan Phillips Square were a very direct inspiration. As human beings, we experience the city in straight lines, you know? You walk down the street and go up an elevator, then you go across a floor and down another staircase. In Flightpath the city can be experienced in a completely different way.

Q Why debut Flightpath in Toronto? Did this "reimagining of mobility" result from a bad experience on the TTC or the Don Valley Parkway, perhaps?

Usman: Well, I think Toronto has a history of being creative or open toward reimagining the city from the perspective of the environment - often in a way that other metropolises are a little more reluctant to. And this project looks partly at emission-less transportation.

Natalie: It's absolutely the case that Toronto is an intellectual leader in green technology. There's the Carbon Zero initiative here, there's the sustainable buildings festival. When there were 20 food coops in New York City, there were 2,000 in Toronto. There's an urgency and openness here to meeting environmental challenges.

For more, I urge you to take a look at the Arts & Life section of today's National Post, which has some fun pictures of Haque and Jeremijenko setting up. There's a more disjointed version online as well, but given the layout it may be a bit harder to understand. You can find that here.

Also, I was really pleased to learn there will be a group sound-and-light piece happening as part of Flightpath. (It's discussed later in the interview.) Haque has done some pretty cool projects in that vein before, where a light projection is controlled by the public's voices. I'm embedding a couple of examples below. The first is from Yorkminster Cathedral in 2007 and the second from Santa Monica beach in 2008.

Primal Source (video documentation) from haque d+r on Vimeo.

Cool, eh? I'm looking forward to seeing this work on Saturday night.

(Image of Usman Haque testing out one of the Flightpath harnesses and wings by Aaron Lynett for the National Post)

Art Criticism in a Truck! All Night! Nuit Blanche!

2011-09-26T16:49:00.008-04:00

Art Criticism in a truck, people! This is what the Toronto Alliance of Art Critics is bringing you this Saturday (aka Nuit Blanche). It's all thanks to Leitmotif, an exhibition-in-trucks organized by curator Stuart Keeler and the Parkdale BIA. You'll be able to find the truck-o'-discourse in the parking lot of the Gladstone Cafe, 1181 Queen St W, ie. in the parking lot across the street from the Gladstone Hotel.

Here's the tentative critics schedule I've got - subject to change (+ indicates may be present intermittently):

7pm - 10 pm
Leah Sandals
John Bentley Mays
+ Otino Corsano
+ Murray Whyte

10pm - 1 am
Elena Potter
Katherine Dennis
+ David Jager

1 am - 4 am
Sky Gooden
Fran Schechter
+ Mary McDonald

4 am - 7 am
David Jager
Amish Morrell
+ Murray Whyte

I was on the 4-7am shift for the all-night project TAAC did last year, and I enjoyed the conversations had about art and criticism. I encourage anyone and everyone to drop by this Saturday for opinions and discussion on art and writing about art. Also feel free to bring artwork if you'd like us to discuss it in situ. Time limits may apply, but it would be great to meet folks face to face for whatever we can squeeze in. Questions or feedback about the way we practice (sometimes not so well in my personal case, see previous post) are also welcome.

For more information visit the Leitmotif Facebook page or the Leitmotif Nuit Blanche page and look for Leitmotif maps on the night of Nuit in Parkdale.

(Concept image via Leitmotif's Facebook page)

CORRECTION Three Painting-Show Reviews: Mark Crofton Bell @ General Hardware, Rajni Perera @ 129 Ossington, Dil Hildebrand @ YYZ

2011-09-23T10:12:00.005-04:00

CORRECTION - Sunday September 25, 2011 - As a reader helpfully pointed out in the comments below, there is an error in this At the Galleries column. The original text states incorrectly that Winnie Truong was the winner of the 2010 OCADU Drawing & Painting Medal. In 2010, Truong actually won the W.O. Forsythe Award from OCADU, and the correct winner of the 2010 OCADU Drawing & Painting Medal was Vanessa Maltese. I very much regret the error, and any confusion it may have caused. My editors at the National Post have been notified in order that a correction be run there as well. Again, my apologies for this inaccurate statement.

Sooooo many painting shows going on in Toronto right now! For my lastest National Post gallery column, up now at Posted Toronto and out in tomorrow's print edition, I look at three such shows I recently enjoyed: Mark Crofton Bell at General Hardware, Rajni Perera at 129 Ossington and Dil Hildebrand at YYZ. An excerpt:

Mark Crofton Bell at General Hardware Contemporary
1520 Queen St. W., to Oct. 8
The luminescent quality of Mark Crofton Bell’s oil paintings — and the dreamy, slightly surreal scenes they render — made Peter Doig’s internationally famed canvases an inescapable reference point for me while visiting Bell’s exhibition at General Hardware. Nonetheless, there is much to be enjoyed in Bell’s paintings in their own right. The thin layers of oil paint that he uses to build up each image convey a simultaneous sense of lightness and depth, a delightful combination that keeps you looking. Yet that considerable visual pleasure often gives way to a scene that feels slightly off — a hallway crowded with dogs, say, or a sky dark with swarming birds. This more sinister underpinning to Bell’s images is elucidated in an exhibition essay by Shannon Anderson, which explains that a colourful image of balloons on water is based on the story of a drowning victim, and that a puff of cloud above a lake, classic wilderness-scene material, at first glance, is based on a photograph of a North Korean explosion. Once I became aware of such sources, a tension was set up in myself between wanting to look longer, and wanting look away — particularly when it came to the cell-like images in the gallery’s basement. That dynamic was reinforced on the second floor in an assortment of Bell’s delicate watercolours, which are often more explicitly drawn from news photos of riots and other disturbing incidents. Whatever your take on Bell’s possible influences, his mix of wondrous technique and worrying content is a hard one to forget.

For the other reviews, plus a couple of other recommendations, read on at Posted Toronto.

Also, I came across a link recently that will be of interest to many who do arts reviewing -- it's by a PhD student studying the concept of "quality" in the arts and who's been researching how literary critics evaluate books differently in writing and in spoken word. The article, "Morals and Mean Reviews," by Phillipa Chong, is up at the Toronto Review of Books. Chong says she will soon be expanding her field of research into art criticism and movie criticism, and I look forward to seeing what her results yield!

(Image of Mark Crofton Bell's painting Double Phenomenon via Akimbo.ca)

The DIY Red Carpet Treatment: Q&A with Vincent Chevalier out in today's National Post

2011-09-22T15:04:00.004-04:00

Following on the celebrity-crazed heels of TIFF, I was even more powerless than usual to resist the charms of Montreal artist Vincent Chevalier's satirical twist on fame: The Red Carpet Treatment. With prior performances in Finland and Montreal, and a current one in Kitchener as part of CAFKA, I think Chevalier's cheeky gesture is definitely autograph-worthy. Chevalier took some time to chat with me on the phone about the project this week, and the condensed Q&A is out in today's National Post. An excerpt:

Q How does your project The Red Carpet Treatment work?

A I'm in Kitchener for 10 days, until the 26th. And for those 10 days I will be walking on this piece of red carpet, which is about my height and my width. Everywhere that I go for that period in outdoor space - doorstep to doorstep - I move forward by putting the carpet in front of me, then taking two steps, then turning around and picking it up, then putting it in front of me, taking two steps, turning around and picking it up, then putting it in front of me, and so on. In indoor spaces, I roll the carpet up and put it in a little bag and walk normally. So I'm always arriving on the red carpet in every place that I go.

Q Wow. Why did you start this project?

A I'm interested in the way that celebrity is taken for granted and given a lot of attention. Obviously, there's also a lot of capital and labour that's put into the whole production of celebrity; there's a whole slew of people working to put that red carpet down for the Academy Awards - people who "don't have names, don't have personalities." The only personalities that shine through are those of the people on the red carpet itself. I wanted to create something that collapsed the privilege and the labour of all that into one gesture. So I'm the producer and the product of my own fame. This is my fourth day in Kitchener and people have already begun to recognize me.

For more--including info on a possible evolution of the project-- read on at the Post. Check Chevalier's website for images from past performances too. And to catch Chevalier in person, check out the streets of downtown Kitchener until September 26th. Again, his presence there comes courtesy of CAFKA, the Contemporary Art Forum of Kitchener and Area.

(Image of Chevalier performing The Red Carpet Treatment in Finland in 2009 from his website)

Richard Barnes Q&A out in today's National Post

2011-09-20T09:53:00.008-04:00

American photographer Richard Barnes has spent more than a decade photographing in museums, and prompting questions about their role in contemporary culture. Some of the striking results are on display at Bau-Xi Photo in Toronto until September 24. (A comprehensive view of his projects is also on display in his book Animal Logic, available nationwide.)

Last week, Barnes spoke to me over the phone about some aspects of his practice. The resulting Q&A is out in the print edition of today's National Post. An excerpt:

Q You’ve been photographing in museums for some time now. Why?

A When I was a student just out of college, I was the photographer for an archaeological excavation in Egypt. Over years of doing that, I started to become interested in the trajectory of what we were taking out of the ground and where it eventually ended up. That led me to photographing in the Cairo Museum, which is an amazing place. Slowly, my interest turned to natural history museums. How we define ourselves through collections, whether they’re individual or national, is something I find fascinating. And the fact that most of what we collect in museums ends up in deep storage—that 90 percent is hidden—is fascinating to me as well.

Q Where did you take some of these photographs?

A Man with Buffalo was taken in Ottawa at the Canadian Museum of Nature; I was working with a Missouri man who goes around the world and does restorations of dioramas. Academy Animals with Painter was taken in San Francisco at the Academy of Sciences. They’d had a fire and were repairing smoke damage, and I happened to be there to photograph something else when I walked by and thought, “My god, that’s curious—animals all covered in plastic.” That was the start of this project. Overall, I’m interested in the theatricality of museums, in the things that are choreographed for you as you walk through, especially dioramas. They’re quite moving for me.

Q How are they moving, exactly?

A Well, I find it paradoxical, the fact that we go out into nature and kill an animal and bring it back and reanimate it behind glass. It’s odd. And dioramas are magical. When I looked at them as a child, and now as an adult, I’m still taken in. I know these animals are dead, but for me, in a sense, they’ve come back to life.

To read the rest, seek out today's Arts & Life section of the National Post.

A very cool thing coming up for Barnes: National Geographic will be publishing his photos of what he calls "living dioramas"--Civil War reenactments. He photographed these reenactments with Civil War-era tintype technology, but, since his first rounds looked too much like what he called a "Civil War trove" he made sure to include images of contemporary spectators on the later rounds of the project. I got a peek at the photos and they are very cool. I advise keeping an eye out for 'em!

I also like the way that Barnes, later in the interview, insists on the validity of what a viewer brings to an artifact, rather than simply giving over to the meaning that has been "choreographed" for it.

(Image of Barnes' Man with Buffalo via Bau-Xi Photo)

"I'm fascinated with the problem of art in the suburbs": Trevor Copp profile now up on Yonge Street

2011-09-15T18:52:00.006-04:00

My education in different art forms and different parts of the city continued this August with some visits to Kitchener and Burlington to meet Trevor Copp, founder of Tottering Biped Theatre, one of the first--if not the first--contemporary professional producing theatre based in the City of Burlington.

Copp loves avant-garde theatre but also loves living in the suburbs/small cities surrounding Toronto. So he decided to bring the former to the latter.

An excerpt from the resulting article, published yesterday on Yonge Street:

At first, this August evening in Burlington's Optimist Park seems like a typical suburban midsummer night's dream: Two adult slo-pitch teams compete on a diamond, a passel of dog walkers stroll lawns and a few errant balls thwack softly into tennis-court nets.

But in a two-storey cinder-block building at the edge of the park, history is being made.

Inside, First Dance, one of the first—if not the first—professional contemporary plays to ever originate in Burlington, is premiering to a rapt audience. The chatty audience hushes as the house lights dim to reveal a man shaving—a ritual interrupted by the arrival of another man who carefully proceeded to dip, twirl and lift the first while shaving off the rest of his stubble.

Moving from this intimate moment to scenes set in salsa clubs, small-town backyards, Algonquin lakes and 1980s-era World Wrestling Federation matches, this funny, poignant play is far from typical summer stock fare. Tracing the story of a young gay man trying to determine a suitable "first dance" for his upcoming wedding, the production deals with same-sex marriage, homophobia, the politics of ballroom dance and (yes) real life in the suburbs.

"I've become fascinated with the problem of art in suburbia," says Trevor Copp, the performer and co-creator of Tottering Biped Theatre (TBT), which brought First Dance to fruition. "Suburbanites allocate their sense of culture to the city. They feel like we're just an adjunct of the city, that our life is just sort of a surrogate thing, a temporary life between commutes. And I have a problem with the sense that our stories are not legitimate."

For more, read on at Yonge Street Media.

(Image of Tottering Biped founder Trevor Copp and First Dance co-creator Jeff Fox via Yonge Street)

TIFF Art Thoughts up at Posted Toronto

2011-09-09T16:42:00.005-04:00

TIFF is very celebrity friendly, but it's also got an art angle in its Future Projections and Wavelengths programs. Today, Posted Toronto (the Hogtown-centric blog of the National Post) published my art recommendations for the fest. An excerpt:

There’s serious, yet seriously enjoyable, works at Future Projections this year — many by Toronto artists. At the top of the heap is Elle Flanders and Tamira Sawatsky’s terrific Road Movie, showing at 51 Woleseley St. Demonstrating that there’s often more than two sides to every story, Road Movie’s layered look at life in Israel and Palestine unfolds across six screens on three wall-like structures. Though some might find the premise heavy-handed — one side of the “walls” features stories from travels with Israelis, the other side tales from journeys with Palestinians — this duo weaves an experience that is elegant and unexpected.

Also strong is Nicholas and Sheila Pye’s show Light as a Feather Stiff as a Board at Birch Libralato (129 Tecumseth St.). The Pyes may have split romantically, but their collaborative art practice continues to chug along here with a characteristically dreamy brew of sensual and painterly psychic dramas. In the central work, The Flower Eaters, one artist eats a rose, while the other plucks petals from their mouth — a mythical, ancient-seeming premise remade Gen Y style.

Finally, veteran filmmaker Peter Lynch’s Buffalo Days gives the ROM’s gloomy Spirit House (100 Queen’s Park) some much-needed, well, spirit, marrying views of Alberta landscapes with an evocative soundtrack of Blackfoot drumming. Also promising: When David Rokeby’s electronic installations work (like his light cube at Telus House) they’re wondrous. When there’s technical glitches, not so much. Fingers crossed for his effort at the Drake Hotel (1150 Queen St. W.).

For more (including James Franco and Mr. Brainwash) read on at Posted Toronto or look in tomorrow's print edition of the Post's Toronto section.

(Installation view of Elle Flanders & Tamira Sawatsky's Road Movie by Tom Blanchard and via the National Post)

Framing Canada's Farm Workers: Q&A with Meera Margaret Singh

2011-08-29T16:46:00.009-04:00

Goldarnit, I really like Meera Margaret Singh's photographs. She has some up right now at Harbourfront Centre--part of a commission to document the Ontario Greenbelt. Singh tackled the project by doing portraits of migrant workers, immigrant farmers and women farmers in the Greenbelt.

Part of what I like about these portraits is they do an excellent job of making me consider the individual histories behind occupational roles--kind of like August Sander in reverse, mebbe?

So I was happy Singh was able to take some to time to chat with me about this Farmland series a few weeks ago. The resulting condensed Q&A came out in last Thursday's National Post. An excerpt:

Q: When you were commissioned to photograph the Ontario Greenbelt, you decided to focus on female farmers, immigrant farmers and migrant workers. Why?

A: My first degree was in anthropology, and I love working with portraiture and with people. I’m also interested in suspension, whether it’s physical or psychological, and in displacement. So when I started researching and realized how many migrant workers were living in the greenbelt — people who spend eight months here and then re-adapt to their homelands each year — I gravitated toward that. And when I actually started cold-calling farms, I was introduced to immigrant farmers, and some of those were really powerful women. So I branched out. Overall, I wasn’t interested in doing an exposé or a documentary; I was interested in pulling people aside from work and interrupting that routine for a period of time.

Q: In your images, I see these people quite forcefully as individuals, rather than as workers. Who’s the individual in your photo Patricia?

A: Patricia was shot in this big greenhouse for begonias and cacti. When I went in, the light was so beautiful. There were predominantly Mexican workers, but also women from Cambodia, Vietnam and Southeast Asia, and a few Jamaican workers, too. I saw this very shy woman who, at the same time, had this strength in her. I work very intuitively; I can really be drawn to somebody and not understand why. Patricia didn’t even make a lot of eye contact. But the moment I was one on one with her, it was like she became this goddess or something! I was really happy that her strength came through. And then the moment the camera was put away, she went back to her routine. I like these odd, out of the ordinary moments.

For more details, read on at the Post's Ampersand blog. For more images of Singh's work, check her website.

(Image of Meera Margaret Singh's Patricia courtesy of the artist)

Artists in the GTA: Nothing but the Besque

2011-08-29T16:40:00.006-04:00

Catching up on publications I missed while on vacation, on Wednesday Yonge Street Media published my profile of Mississauga-raised hip-hop artist Besque. An excerpt:

He's toured with Grammy-winning reggae artist Sean Paul, opened for Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon, and released albums on three continents. But as he gears up for a fall of singles releases, Juno-nominated hip-hop artist Besque (formerly known as Arabesque) is still happy to call the GTA home. "I know it's so cliche, but there's no place, really, like home," the Mississauga-based Besque says over the phone during a recent trip to New York City. "Touring, I'd visit all these homogenous societies. You come back to Toronto and you feel the mosaic -- there's nothing really like it."

Besque has been spending parts of his summer in the stark opposite of blingy, marquee-name environments: namely, nonprofit organizations serving the poor and homeless in New York, Washington and Toronto's own Moss Park. The aim is to create a video and brief documentary for "Not Enough Love," one of Besque's fall singles.

"[Not Enough Love] is basically looking at poverty and how people have become so desensitized to the homeless," he explains. He hopes the video and doc will show some of what's most impressed him in these places -- "the bond between the [shelter] volunteers and the folks that they're serving. They have strong relationships, even genuine friendships, which I've found pretty incredible."

To find out more about Besque's fusion of play and politics (including his fun tribute to 80s TV), read on at Yonge Street.

(Image of Besque by Ryan Couldrey via Yonge Street Media)

Do You Believe Money Has Succeeded in Devaluing Art? (Excerpt from Good News 3)

2011-08-29T16:11:00.008-04:00

Back in the spring, some members of Instant Coffee asked if I was interested in contributing to their pamphlet Good News 3. The contributions were to be themed around the following question: Do you believe money has succeeded in devaluing art?

I said yes, I would like to contribute, and I recently received a copy of the finished pamphlet, which was distributed at The Fair in Vancouver and I'm told is also available at MKG127 and Art Metropole in Toronto.

Here was my long-winded answer to that question:

“Do you believe money has succeeded in devaluing art?”

I find questions like this to be a bit funny.

First, maybe it’s my training as a copy editor, but it niggles me to see “money” characterized as an active subject—a kind of independent body that acts on art of its own accord, or even, alternately, as a dumb piece of matter like water, which acts according to certain immutable laws. (Try to ask, “Do you believe water has succeeded in wetting art?” and you might get a sense of the annoyance these kinds of all-encompassing questions raise for me. Granted, it’s far from an airtight—or watertight—comparison, as I admittedly never get antsy when I hear Cyndi Lauper crooning “Money changes everything,” a statement with even broader implications. I’m open to criticism on this point.)

Second, the question’s lack of specificity is another thing I find annoying. Whose money? What art? What values? In what context? There are so many ways to have and spend money, so many ways to have and make and obtain and appreciate art, so many ways to value life, art, thoughts and (yes) money in the world. Really? You want to reduce it to this? Well, okay.

Third, given my own context—that of an art school grad still paying off student loans, and likely to into the future, as I work freelance-contract-cheque to freelance-contract-cheque in this wonderful creative economy—I often find it amusing/alienating when people imply that the problem in the art world is too much money, or too much power accorded to money by virtue of there being so much of it thrown around. That money-flush situation is a reality very, very far from the place/subculture/ring of the art circus where I (now a writer and editor) and my close friends and colleagues happen to live. In my experience, artists and writers (even successful artists and writers) are people who by and large struggle to make ends meet, who juggle multiple jobs to keep a roof over their heads, who must rent instead of buy (at least in Toronto). Not that that’s a tragedy of any kind; I don’t mean to wring out a tearful sob story here and imply that artists and other creative professionals are at the very bottom rung of the economy or are in dire need of help. Compared to domestic workers and service workers, artists often have some social capital and, if they chose to go to art school, often have the security of some middle-class (or yet loftier) family background to act as a safety net. All I’m trying to say is there are many different subcultures to this thing called “art” and in the one I live in, a surplus of money and the power it might wield isn’t typically something one has to worry about.

Fourth, as might be apparent from the above paragraphs, I really don’t have the expertise or experience needed to accurately answer this question. I feel embarrassed about that given that I’m a supposed expert on art, or at least a person who passes for same every once in a while. So I can see that one of the reasons I find this question “funny” or “niggling” or “annoying” or “amusing/alienating” is that I really have no good way of answering it. Put a piece of art in front of me and I can try to empathize and emote with it and/or its maker (and sure, throw in some judgment or snark as well) to the tune of 300 to 500 words; put a question like this in front of me—something that implies a knowledge of history, of markets, of current events, of recent and faraway auction results—and there’s not a whole lot I can productively say.

I do know this: that I continue to be concerned with the way that increasing admission fees at our public museums and art galleries, paired with disappearing free hours for permanent-collection access or weekly evening access, is contributing to a situation where a whole new generation of Canadians likely has little option but to devalue art, just as art institutions devalue them.

Such high admission prices, after all, demonstrate an institutional devaluation of public access to public art collections. In my view, this in turn reflects an institutional devaluation of (a) the idea that anybody and everybody can look at or learn to look at art in a way that is rewarding or helpful to their own enjoyment and well-being; (b) the notion that public collections, by virtue of being held in trust for the public, deserve to be seen freely by the public; and (c) the thought that public arts institutions have a duty (even if it’s a self-interested one) to be engaged in public arts education. Museums and galleries sometimes like to complain that they are being abandoned by an increasingly unpredictable, uneducated and uninterested public. I say, who first abandoned the public and showed a lack of interest in their rights or needs?

So… given this reality of diminished institutional interest in providing public access to art—a situation that contributes to a lack of public understanding of all the diverse ways art can be valued emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually—perhaps it is little surprise, ultimately, that questions like the one heading this missive are of increasing interest. After all, when people are given no other ways to value art, money is an easy (and sometimes the sole) metric left standing.

A concluding note: I file this reply with some fear that I will come to regret it, either because it lacks rigor, or reason, or reality, or some combination of all of the above. I do know that I would have spent more time on this reply if I was being paid to pen it. Maybe that’s another essay—either about art, or just about me—for another day. Or maybe it’s exactly the same thing. Feel free to let me know what you think at leahsandals@hotmail.com.

To read interesting (and more concise) responses by Michael Turner, Caitlin Jones, Rosemary Heather and other respondents, you're gonna have to shell out 6 bucks, buster, at Art Metropole and other outlets.

(Image of Instant Coffee's Good News Issue 3 by yours truly)

On Vacation!

2011-08-19T12:23:00.009-04:00

Posting has been so slow here at Unedit My Heart this summer that ya'll probably assume I've been on vacation.

Sadly, no.

But I'm on very real do-nothin'-'cept-fun vacation from August 20 to 28 inclusive. Nothing will be posted and no comments moderated until the 29th. Happy summer!

(Image of Toronto Blue Jays game -- lazy hot dog eatin' and beer swillin' not included -- by yours truly)

A Few Reviews, aka Let's Talk About Things I'm Generally Sensitive About @ the Design Exchange, Power Plant, TIFF & More

2011-08-12T17:52:00.013-04:00

Sometimes I think I should do away with the term "reviews" altogether in relation to the writing I do and just call these pieces of writing something more accurate: Let's Talk About Things I'm Generally Sensitive About. The latest edition of my At the Galleries column for the National Post (online now and in print tomorrow) brings up a few of these Things: Staycations, Canada, Outdoor Stuffs, Distance (Physical and Otherwise), Wall Texts and Catholicism.

More conventionally speaking, the column discusses the following shows: Play>Nation at the Design Exchange, Rearview Mirror at the Power Plant, Fellini and My Name is Raj at TIFF and, in a recommendational way, Magic Squares at the Textile Museum.

An excerpt:

Rearview Mirror: New Art from Central and Eastern Europe at the Power Plant - 231 Queens Quay W., to Sept. 6

This exhibition left me with an uncertain feeling. On the one hand, curator Christopher Eamon tries to make the case that new art from Eastern Europe resists any idea of the region as a cultural monolith. On the other hand, all the exhibition’s works seem to fit into a theme: distance between past and present, “here” and “there,” or “us” and “them.” Whether spun humorously (as in Dusica Drazic’s Young Serbian, where a young woman dances to a cover of David Bowie’s Young Americans alongside a bleak, rainy highway) or soberingly (see Igor Eskinja’s tape-gun sculptures of gallows), this sense of distance predominated for me. Granted, artists worldwide make careers of juxtaposing disparate objects, images and contexts, so the uniformity I observed may simply be a reflection of this international trend. Also, there’s plenty of strong works to view, like Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tkacova’s film of a cheery baton troupe marching along a drab, Soviet-style bridge. Still, I’d hoped for a bit more rigour — even if it was just acknowledging that Ukraine-born artist Taras Polataiko, showing a series of compelling monochrome paintings, has worked in Canada for two decades. Omissions like that make me wonder what other details have gone unsaid for the sake of an interesting-sounding thesis.

Read on for the rest at Posted Toronto, the National Post's Hogtown-centric blog.

(Image: A still from Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tkacova's Manifesto of the Futurist Woman (Let's Conclude) Courtesy the artists and Christine Konig Galerie, Vienna and via the National Post)

Greg Girard Q&A out in today's National Post

2011-08-04T09:14:00.004-04:00

Vancouver-raised photographer Greg Girard has won much acclaim in recent years, with The Independent touting his Phantom Shanghai as one of the top 10 photography books of all time. With a new series on Hanoi showing in Toronto, Girard took some time last week to chat with me. The condensed conversation is out in today's National Post. An couple of excerpts:

Q You’re known for photographing Asia, where you’ve lived for the past 30 years. But just this week you moved back to Vancouver. Why?

A I felt it was time to make work in other places. And having been away for almost 30 years, I realized how exotic the West has become to me. In a way, I find it as inspiring to be here now as I did when I first moved to China. I think this happens to anybody—when you’ve been away from home for even a week, you come back and for a little while, you see things just a bit different. Maybe the longer you’ve been away, the longer those first impressions of your home stand out.

...

Q Throughout your career, you’ve used intensely coloured light to alter our views of cities. Do you actively pursue that?

A That’s fair to say. When I started taking photographs as a teenager, I started experimenting with what film did at night. Things look very different at night: colours against a black background are emphasized. In those days, most of my visual inspiration came from movies. A lot of films from the 70s, like early Scorsese movies, had this even tone, even when things didn’t end well. You were left with this flat or slightly down ending, even if it’s blue sky, middle of the day. I was drawn to that and tried to emulate those colours. I still work mostly on film that’s balanced for daylight, and when you’re using it in artificial light, it takes on unpredictable colour shifts. I try to bring what I know technically together with this narrow window between dusk and nightfall.

One thing that was trimmed from our Q&A along the way had to do with Girard's amazing Half of the Surface of the World series, which will be showing at the International Centre of Photography in New York next year. Here's what was cut:

Q Another of your series, showing at New York’s International Center of Photography next year, focuses on US military bases in Asia. What drew you to this subject?

A In the mid 1970s, I’d just moved into a very small apartment in Tokyo—my first time living overseas. I was listening to the radio and at midnight The Star Spangled Banner started playing and the announcer’s voice said, “You’ve been listening to American Forces Far East network.” I thought, oh right, they’ve had American bases here since the end of World War Two. The announcer would talk about things going on at the bases, like a high-school car wash or bake sale—these very suburban American events taking place on the outskirts of Tokyo. It was this odd sort of dislocation feeling, because you think you’re far from home, and you are, and you’re hearing all these intensely familiar things. I started the project then. More recently, I wrote letters to the Pentagon and got clearance to photograph big bases throughout the region in-depth. I think it’s one of those worlds hidden in plain sight, and in that sense, it’s probably connected to other things I’ve done.

Girard's Hanoi-related show is up until August 21 at Monte Clark Gallery in Toronto, and his related book, Hanoi Calling, is available at booksellers. At Monte Clark you can also see some images from early in his career in the mezzanine area.

(Image of Greg Girard's Buildings on Bat Su Street via Monte Clark Gallery)

At the Galleries: Morrow Avenue

2011-07-29T13:50:00.005-04:00

Some fun shows up at Morrow Avenue right now, like Lyla Rye @ Olga Korper, Dennis Burton @ Chris Cutts and a summer group show @ Peak Gallery. My reviews of these are up at Posted Toronto, and will be out in this Saturday's National Post. An excerpt:

1. Lyla Rye at Koffler Gallery Off-Site at Olga Korper Gallery
17 Morrow Ave., to Aug. 20
Lyla Rye’s Swing Stage is a must see — make that a must swing? — of the summer. Its webs of steel chains suspend a large, glossy black platform a few inches off the floor of Olga Korper Gallery. Slip off your shoes, step onto the platform and you’ll experience something akin to a bouncy-castle version of conceptual art as the chains sway your strides in unexpected ways. Wall texts outline Rye’s aim: namely, to call attention to the gallery space itself, which was once an industrial foundry. To underline this point, Rye has arranged the chains to mirror the building’s roof struts, and she’s provided a catalogue of the old factory’s wares, as well as a video projection of the locale past and present. (The projector wasn’t working when I visited, but I didn’t feel the lack of it — the material force of the structure is the main draw here.) Overall, Rye’s mix of context and content reminded me of how we’re forever treading on the past — if not on the shoulders of giants, then on the tiptoes of regular ol’ working stiffs like the hundreds of folks who produced electroplating supplies, generator sets and walrus hides (!) on this very site just 100 years ago. We might use the same space they did, Rye’s magnum opus suggests, but we’re forever at least a few unstable inches removed from their reality.

Read on for the rest at Posted Toronto.

(Image of Lyla Rye with her Swing Stage courtesy the Koffler and via the National Post)

Jade Jager Clark Profile out on Yonge Street

2011-07-29T13:42:00.004-04:00

Continuing a newish endeavour for me--profiling people who are not visual artists, but work in dance, music, literature, etc.--my article on young Brampton dance-studio owner Jade Jager Clark is up at Yonge Street Media. An excerpt:

The low-slung industrial parks around 410 and Steeles in Brampton might initially seem the world's least hip-hop-esque environment. With shops like Safety Superstore and Metro Fence operating amidst chirping sparrows and whining weed wackers, it's hardly the stuff of Jay Z's Manhattan-centric hits or Will Smith's South-Beach odes.

But look closely at the one of the area's pinecone-smattered cul-de-sacs and you might recheck your head. Bram Court is home to Jade's Hip Hop Academy (JHHA), a youth dance school that's winning prizes with owner Jade Jager Clark's self-defined commitment to "authentic hip hop."

Recently, Clark sat on the floor of the academy's multipurpose room, showing 8- to 11-year-olds highlights from Rize, a documentary about the gritty South Central LA origins of Krump. The film's patois of "ghetto ballet" and drug-trade trauma contrasted starkly with the room's decor, which featured reams of shiny trophies, a tray of construction-paper crafts, a large bin of Duplo blocks, and a Rock N Roll Elmo doll.

"It's very important for even young students to see parts of these films," Clark tells me later, "because to do anything you need your foundations. You need to know where it comes from to truly appreciate what you're doing."

You can read more, and see some pretty fun pics, at Yonge Street.

(Image of Jade Jager Clark with some of her students from Yonge Street Media)

My Most Leadingest-Questionsest Q&A Ever: John Currin on Sexism & Second Thoughts

2011-07-21T08:55:00.005-04:00

I know I tend to ask leading questions sometimes in my interviews. While you can get a good, interesting answer from an open-ended question, there's sometimes particular things I can't help thinking about in regards to a given artist or artwork, and I let my personal curiosity get the better of me.

That's kind of what happened in my Q&A with John Currin, out in today's National Post and online at Post blog the Ampersand. Currin was nice enough to chat with me on the phone in advance of his survey opening at the DHC-ART Foundation in Montreal June 30. Around that time, the Anthony Weiner thing was still a bit in the air, so I asked him about it, as well as sexism in general.

Here's an excerpt from our condensed exchange:

Q You’ve admitted in past interviews that your paintings are sexist. Why do you continue with them?

A Well, I’m bothered by [the sexist aspect] more now. I didn’t used to be. It shouldn’t bother me, I suppose, because I want to make a good painting, that’s the only thing I care about. And if the painting has sexist imagery, I don’t think that affects the goodness or badness of the painting. But it does affect my emotional state, and it’s started to bother me more and more.

Q Why does the sexism bother you now, after 20 years?

A The obvious thing to say is that I have a daughter now. But I don’t believe that’s really the reason. I think it’s more that I’m not as young. When you’re a young, attractive man, it’s easier to get away with that kind of stuff. Now, it’s more embarrassing. Overall, my work’s not changing, it’s just the way I feel about it that’s changing.

To get his angle on Weiner, as well as my most leading questions likely ever, read on at the Ampersand.

A tidbit I had to trim along the way: Currin was looking forward to seeing the show himself, as there were some works in it, like Rachel in Fur and Bea Arthur Naked, that he hadn't seen in about 10 years in his estimation.

Here's a link to a pic of Bea Arthur Naked, by the way. I had no idea Currin had painted such a thing until I started researching this story, and I think it's kinda great.

Also trimmed by me along the way: I asked Currin what he thought of Tina Fey's Bossypants book cover, because it kind of reminded me (in a less sexualized way) of his Big Hands, which showed in New York in fall 2010. Because the book came out in Spring 2011, I asked him whether he thought the cover designer might have seen the painting and borrowed from it. He said that he hadn't thought of that, but he felt certain the poster for the movieThe 40 Year Old Virgin borrowed from his painting The Producer. He also admitted, though, "God knows I've ripped off way more from movies and fashion than they could ever rip off from me. Big deficit there."

(Image of John Currin's Stamford After Brunch via the National Post)

At the Galleries: Mink Mile & Yorkville

2011-07-18T22:31:00.003-04:00

In my most recent reviews for the National Post, which came out on Saturday, I focus on the Mink Mile/Yorkville area. Here's an excerpt:

1. Bollywood Cinema Showcards at the ROM
100 Queen’s Park, to Oct. 2
I saw this exhibition and submitted my corresponding review before the horrific events in Mumbai took place this past week. Those who see this show in coming weeks will no doubt see it with a darker pall of associations, just as I myself will when I see it again. That’s a shame because, in a lot of ways, the exhibition design is right on, as pink, orange and yellow walls play off the saturated tones of Bollywood movie posters from the 1950s to the 1990s. To me, these artifacts generate a pleasure similar to that of peeping pulp-fiction covers — whether you’re looking at design or at plot, there’s a whole lotta drama going on. On a more brainy front, helpful texts hint at the way India’s movie heroes changed as the nation’s circumstances did. One of those circumstances, of course, has been the colonial and post-colonial interplay between Indian and Western cultures, and it’s eye-opening to see stories such as Tarzan and King Kong get Bollywood makeovers, as well as to learn about movie plots more endemic to India, like arranged-marriage conflicts. A sweet little film about a Mumbai poster collector that closes the exhibition does a good job of suggesting what these showcards might mean to locals, and a tiny related exhibition on India’s centuries-old painted-photography tradition is also terrific. That leaves any complaints to perennial ROM-related ones: a steep entry fee, a labyrinthine layout and a tendency to lean at times on borrowed, amateur-amassed collections.

Other shows looked at include Jun Kaneko at the Gardiner Museum and a smattering of commercial dealer shows in the Yorkville Ave/Hazelton Ave area. Read on at the Post for the details.

One show that I trimmed along the way is a photo exhibit at the Japan Foundation about the Grand Shrine of Ise. The photos didn't really grab me as standalones, but they were a great way to enter the fascinating, truly mindblowing aspect of this shrine: it is completely destroyed and rebuilt every 20 years. That includes all the artifacts in it. Wild.

Oh, and the ROM is screening a neat-looking doc on the disappearing art of hand-painted Indian billboards on July 21--this Thursday, and it's actually free!

(Image of one of the Bollywood Cinema Showcards in the ROM's exhibition via the National Post)

Writing as Process: A Good Reminder from Ryad Assani Razaki in Yonge Street

2011-07-15T18:33:00.004-04:00

Though I usually cover visual arts, I've been given an opportunity recently by Yonge Street Media to profile a few people in the GTA succeeding in other cultural genres. This experience is a bit intimidating for me, because as much as I sometimes love to slag ye olde art worlde, it's also a place of comfort for me.

In any case, my first profile for Yonge Street, focusing on Parkdale-based scribe Ryad Assani-Razaki, went up this past week. Here's an excerpt:

Jameson Avenue's 1960s apartment buildings, packed with new Canadians, are home to many stories on migration. But only one of its residents has won a $20,000 provincial prize for telling these tales.

That's 29-year-old Ryad Assani-Razaki, a native of Benin who settled on Jameson in spring 2008 and whose first book, Deux Cercles, won the Trillium Award for Best Book Published in French in spring 2010. The short stories in Deux Cercles are sensitive portrayals of the frustrations of immigration, and Assani-Razaki's anticipated first novel Le main d'Iman, due out in September, promises to more deeply explore these themes.

Sitting at the wobbly kitchen table cum writing desk in his tiny, tidy second-floor studio apartment, Assani-Razaki -- fluent in Yoruba, Fon, French and English -- talks energetically about his writing and its origins.

"I started seriously writing stories when I was 13," he says. Then as now, the driving motivation remains personal. "I just like writing stories for myself. Writing makes you feel good, makes you understand things, makes you release things and that's why I write, mostly. I think the process of writing is more important than the product."

Assani Razaki knows of what he speaks--he wrote his award winning short story collection for himself, and only sought a publisher on the urging of friends. Since writing is often a deadline driven job for me, speaking with him was personally a helpful reminder of the creative side of the process I often forget about, or perhaps have neglected.

A few fun facts that I trimmed for length along the way:

-Toni Morrison and Jhumpa Lahiri are among Assani Razaki's favourite authors

-One bonus of getting nominated for the Trillium was that Assani Razaki got to meet Margaret Atwood, also nominated for an award last year. Assani Razaki was thrilled by this, as reading Atwood's poetry (and writing his own) was part of what helped him learn to speak English when he landed in North America almost 10 years ago. (That was to go and do an undergrad degree in computer programming in North Carolina.)

-Well this fact is in the article, but it's worth reiterating: Assani Razaki works as a computer programmer by trade, and enjoys the balance he gets in terms of doing both writing and programming. He says he wouldn't like to write full time, as then one only ends up writing about writing.

Do read on at Yonge Street for the rest.

(Image of Ryad Assani Razaki on Jameson Ave from Yonge Street Media)

Q&A with Sarah Anne Johnson in the National Post

2011-07-08T11:46:00.005-04:00

Last month, when she opened her new series, Arctic Wonderland, at Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto, Winnipeg artist Sarah Anne Johnson was nice enough to sit down with me and chat about this work.

Johnson is always experimenting with different ways to expand the limits of photography--or at least that's the way I see it--and in this latest series that involved experimenting with painting, embossing, and silkscreening on her photographs, as well as using, oh yes, Photoshop. She's had a lot of recognition for her work, including showings at the Guggenheim Museum and Fondation Cartier and being a finalist for this year's $50,000 Sobey Art Award.

A condensed version of our conversation was published in yesterday's National Post. The Post also has a nice online version posted on its arts blog the Ampersand. An excerpt:

Q Your new show offers an unusual mix of celebration and desolation. Why?

A On some Arctic trips, artists are expected to make really serious work, because it’s horrible what’s happening to the world and we need to get the message out and all that. So I had this idea that I wanted to take pictures of the artists posing as cheerleaders. Because that’s what we are in a way, we’re like “Go, Arctic, go!” I was also thinking about hope and the problem of hope. One day I feel total doom and gloom, like, “That’s it, we’re going to hell in a handbasket,” and the next day I’m like, “No, we’ll sort it out somehow” — which logically, I don’t believe, but hope is this blind feeling of “Yay, humans!” I was also thinking about the human tendency toward, “Let’s get these big ideas and barrel ahead without always thinking of the consequences.” So there’s fireworks and celebrations, but look, these people are going to drown in their own confetti soon! Just because we’re a brilliant species and we can do all these things doesn’t mean that we should.

Q Your self-critical approach to this Arctic trip mirrors your self-critical approach to photography — you’ve always thrown something into the mix to point out the limits of what photos can do. Are you aware of that?

A Oh, completely. I feel great frustration with representing ideas through photography. Because photography can show you what something looks like, but I’m interested in using it to illustrate a whole experience. And the whole experience isn’t just what it looked like, it’s what you learned from it, it’s how it changed you. And a lot of that stuff happens after you take the pictures. When I got home, I didn’t look at these Arctic pictures for five months so I could distance myself and just see the photograph for what it is — this rectangular, two-dimensional flat thing on the wall — and then go, “OK, this is my blank canvas. Now how do I get in there and express all the stuff I learned?” That’s when I started painting them.

For more, read on at the Ampersand. To view images from the show (like the crazy confetti ones she talks about further along) head to the Stephen Bulger Gallery website, or, heck, to the gallery itself--the show is up until July 16.

80s Retro, for Good & for Bad... Reviews of This is Paradise & other Cameron House related shows

2011-07-01T19:30:00.004-04:00

The 1980s Cameron House art scene is getting a big tribute at Toronto
galleries this summer. I highlight a few of these exhibitions in today's National Post Toronto section. An excerpt:

1. This is Paradise: The Cameron House and 1980s Toronto at MOCCA Mainspace
952 Queen St. W., to Aug. 21
People’s reactions to art are always diverse and subjective. This effect is sharpened when an exhibition tries to portray an art scene of the recent past, splitting viewers into camps: those who experienced the original scene and those who didn’t. Since I fall into the latter group, I enjoyed this exhibition as I might a long-lost family photo album — an opportunity to see things I’ve only heard about. So I liked seeing examples of the Cameron’s raucous parties and viewing recognizable early works by Evan Penny, Joanne Tod and Peter McCallum. I also enjoyed “discovering” artists and works I wasn’t previously aware of. Tony Wilson’s Art in the Background, a terrific painting of two self-conscious young women, captures art-scene awkwardness with great immediacy. Tim Jocelyn’s proudly queer textiles reminded me of the late Will Munro. And Isaac Applebaum’s Lovers and Fighters, a photo series set partly at the Lansdowne Boxing Club, shows gritty city history while reaching towards romance. Granted, there are problems. It seems uncouth for co-curator Rae Johnson to include two of her own (energetic but not so well painted) triptychs, as well as multiple paintings by other artists that are based on her. The wall and brochure texts are also heavy on gush, short on explanation. Overall, though, this is a welcome attempt at capturing a largely undocumented local history. It also, unexpectedly, has a strange kind of currency; the twentysomething boho life it pays homage to — one of partying, late nights, revolutionary ideas and, most importantly, the certainty one will never grow old — offers much for anyone who is young, or who’s been young, to relate to.

2. This is Paradise: From the National Gallery of Canada Collection at MOCCA Sidespace
952 Queen St. W., to Aug. 21
The National Gallery of Canada provides a different — and more widely sanctioned — take on 1980s Toronto art heroes in its sidespace at MOCCA. This smaller exhibition is bookended with works by General Idea, the local art trio that went on to international fame in the 1980s thanks to an incisive, deconstructive approach to art and media. Where the Cameron House scene seemed to buy into romantic ideas about artists, General Idea always seemed to be questioning notions of glamour, revolution and representation. Sandra Meigs’ drawings here of smokers and drinkers packed into anonymous bars echo that critical tone, as does, admittedly, Barbara Cole’s Tomorrow, a large photo of a young woman at the Cameron that opens the mainspace show. Together, these artworks raise key questions: Are bars where people go to drown their sorrows, or to drown their dreams? Are our watering holes havens from harsh reality, or merely holding pens?

For more, read on at Posted Toronto, the GTA blog of the National Post.

(Image of Barbara Cole's Tomorrow, which opens MOCCA's mainspace show, via the National Post)

"Art in the 21st Century" talk July 10 at Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition

2011-06-27T14:14:00.004-04:00

The Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition is celebrating its 50th birthday this year. As part of it, I'm happy to say I'm part of a panel taking place Sunday, July 10, at the fair. It's themed on Art in the 21st Century (thank god there's only been 11 years of that century so far!) and also features artist Alexandre Castonguay and Textile Museum of Canada director Shauna McCabe. Here's the full details:

Art in the 21st Century – Exploring the Creativity in Today’s World
presented by the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition
Sunday, July 10th 2:00 – 3:00 PM
Toronto City Hall Rotunda
Free admission
The 21st century is becoming known as the Digital Age and as contemporary art practices advance as does the art. Alexandre Castonguay, artist and Professor at L’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Shauna McCabe, Executive Director of the Textile Museum of Canada and Leah Sandals, professional art writer and editor will discuss the challenges faced when displaying contemporary art, the role of the audience and whether the notion that new movements or organization are being developed to showcase these works.

As is typical with these things, it's a pretty big topic for an hour's discussion, but I look forward to joining in the discussion. My two cents to myself: Sandals, you might do better in the digital age if you tried updating your blog more than once every two weeks. Ah well.

The Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition runs at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto on Friday July 8 from 10:30am to 7:30pm, Saturday July 9 from 10:30am to 7:30pm and Sunday July 10 from 10:30am to 6:30pm. Admission is free. For more information visit www.torontooutdoorart.org.

(Image of a past Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition from BlogTO)

In Which I Learn a Little Something about Surrealism, First Nations Art and Jacques Hurtubise

2011-06-10T15:36:00.006-04:00

One of my favourite things about the line of work I'm in is learning new things. Since doing a few little preview-y items for Canadian Art's website in the past few weeks, I've learned a little bit I didn't know before about Surrealism's First Nations connections (as is noted in the Vancouver Art Gallery's current exhibition The Colour of My Dreams) and about Jacques Hurtubise, a hard-edge abstract painter who's best known for his 1960s Montreal work but been churning eye-popping, print-influenced paintings in Cape Breton for the past 30 years. An exhibition about Hurtubise--one also shouted out by Artforum--is currently on at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax.

(Image of Jacques Hurtubise's kinda nutty Léocephale, 1991, via Canadianart.ca)

Apology: On My Own Particular Idiocies

2011-06-09T22:18:00.005-04:00

Reader, I was chagrined today to realize I had made quite a mistake in one of my reviews that was published last week, and I am posting now to own up to my own particular idiocies.

In my National Post review last week of Maya Hayuk and Jen Stark at Show & Tell Gallery, I wrote that I preferred Stark's work to that of Hayuk because there was no large installation by Hayuk on view. Specifically I wrote, "I’m disappointed that Brooklyn’s Hayuk, who’s done stunning murals and installations from the Bahamas to Bonnaroo (check them on her website) is represented here by such standard, smallish formats. So until someone invites Hayuk back for a large-scale project, it’s Stark’s out-there, hippieish quirks — from intensive handwork to starburst wall hangings — that have more staying power in my mind."

Well reader, I realized today that someone in Toronto HAD invited Hayuk to do a large-scale installation, and that is up and running now, just as it has almost fully since the Show and Tell exhibition opened. This Hayuk installation is at the Drake Hotel.

I realize in retrospect this confusion might have come about because I saw the Show & Tell exhibition while the mural by Hayuk was just in development at the Drake. Nonetheless, by the time the review was published, the mural was already up for a couple of weeks.

I apologize to Hayuk, Show & Tell, the Drake and anyone who may have been misled or confused by this omission.

Also on the idiocy front, I let my email get overloaded today and yesterday, so it went on the fritz this afternoon from about 3pm to 8pm. If anyone was trying to send materials during that time, best to resend.

Back now to our irregularly scheduled programming!

(Image of scolding figure from Shatterbox)

Philip Beesley Q&A out in today's National Post

2011-06-09T14:43:00.004-04:00

Toronto architect Philip Beesley is one of those particularly Canadian art heroes--celebrated abroad, but rarely getting to exhibit domestically. That's changing this week as Beesley--the hit of last year's Venice Architecture Biennale--opens Sargasso, a sprawling interactive installation, at Toronto's Brookfield Place as part of Luminato.

Earlier this week, I spoke with Beesley as he was setting up his installation. Today's National Post has the resulting condensed Q&A. An excerpt:

Q Your installations have been hailed as a cure for what ails architecture. What's the problem you're fixing here?

A When I was a student, I was taught the perfect building would be a sphere: minimum possible enclosing envelope--because glass and windows are expensive, right?--and maximum enclosing volume. But that kind of form, where you try to be as enclosed and bounded as possible, is also the kind of form that says, "You have as little to do with your neighbours as possible." Nature might agree some of the time that that's a good form; look at clamshells or armoured animals.

On the other hand, though, what about dandelions or sea urchins or snowflakes? That's the opposite kind of form, which has a maximum extension of envelope. It's the opposite idea, and one I'm pursuing. So instead of a world populated by individual, closed forms where "I know who I am, you know who you are, I got my territory, I got a fence between me and you," this is a very optimistic idea which imagines that things are profoundly tangled together--that there are many gentle boundaries between things rather than one absolute fence.

Read on for Beesley's reponse to critics and the answer to "What's your favourite building?" at the National Post.

Beesley had a lot of interesting things to say; as usual, I didn't manage to squeeze them all into the article. Here's a few extras:

1) Did you know Beesley has a tech person for this project who used to be a roadie with Van Halen? Yup!

2) In response to possible criticisms about this project being "frilly," whether physically or societally, Beesley also pointed out that the project is in a way radically efficient, as it fills quite a massive space with materials that pack down to just a few boxes.

3) And just to clarify, these installations that Beesley does have a speculative or exploratory quality. He knows they couldn't build a city now, but the hope is some discoveries made in the process could contribute do functional city materials and spaces in the future. And his studio still does "actual buildings" as well. You can read about these, like a Niagara Credit Union, on his website.

Finally, I'm embedding below Vernissage TV's look at Beesley's much-talked-about Venice Architecture Biennale installation of last year. It gives a close up view of some of the types of things strung high above passerby's heads at Brookfield Place.

Beesley's installation continues at Brookfield Place to June 18.

(Image of Philip Beesley's Sargasso just before it opened at Brookfield Place in Toronto by Brett Gundlock via the National Post)

Steven Shearer Venice Biennale Q&A out in today's National Post

2011-06-06T10:02:00.007-04:00

Following three days of press previews, the Venice Biennale opened to the public on Saturday, including Vancouverite Steven Shearer's installation at the Canada Pavilion. A few weeks ago, Shearer spoke with me on the phone—from a walk on the Vancouver seawall, natch—about his preparations for the world's biggest art event.

A condensed version of our exchange is out in today's National Post. Here's an excerpt:

Q How does it feel to be representing Canada in Venice?

A I don't feel like I'm representing a nation. To make something about being a Canadian person... I don't know how you do that other than just do what I've done, be an artist based in Canada. And at many points, I never even thought I'd be an artist. I had social anxiety and for a long time wanted nothing more than to be left alone in my parents' basement making drawings and playing guitar. The fact that those kinds of activities are what pushed me out into the world... that's about as big of a transition as I can handle.

Q So what are you doing in Venice?

A I wanted to respond to the Canada Pavilion's space, and also to some anxiety that exists about its small scale and lack of prominence. So I decided to create a false front for it and put one of my poem murals on it. This way, at least from one point of view, the Canada Pavilion appears to be as big as the German or British ones. I also liked putting this large thing out in front to point out how intimate the Canada Pavilion is. It's not a great pavilion for big, dominant works. It was made to show paintings, drawings and small sculptures. So inside, I decided to do that. Overall, I was interested in celebrating the space rather than trying to negate it.

You can read the rest in today's print edition of the Post, which has some nice pics of Steven's work. A more fragmentary text version is also online today.

One of the things I learned from this interview was the influence Shearer has realized that his mom and uncle had upon his work. As he discusses in the last A of our Post Q&A, both of these influences introduced freeing ideas about gender and art to him.

One thing that I didn't squeeze into the condensed interview was my exchange with Shearer about whether his mom and uncle would be in Venice. He said his uncle is deceased and his mom unfortunately can't make it, which I find sad, of course. Shearer said he did try to get some works by them into the catalogue, but it didn't work out. In any case, I appreciate Shearer speaking to these early influences. He explained that he did create a small exhibition of their works with some of his works a few years ago at the Apartment, a domestic-home venue in Vancouver. You can read more about that exhibition on the Apartment's blog.

Also, just to be clear, Shearer is also one of those artists who thinks that once you understand where your work is coming from, it loses some of its spark in terms of inspiration. So I'm curious to see where he'll be going in the future with his art.

(Image of Steven Shearer's The Fauves from Canadianart.ca)

UPDATED John Eisler, Maya Hayuk, Jen Stark & Freegums Reviews in Today's National Post

2011-06-04T12:57:00.005-04:00

UPDATE June 9 - Reader, I realized my description of Hayuk's work in Toronto in my reviews is inaccurate. Read on here for my apology post.

Today is the last day to catch John Eisler at Diaz Contemporary. I review the show in today's National Post, along with a few other fun abstract-art shows: Maya Hayuk and Jen Stark at Show and Tell and Freegums at Narwhal. An excerpt:

3. John Eisler at Diaz Contemporary
100 Niagara St., to June 4
Local John Eisler puts a more cerebral spin on abstract-art tendencies [than Hayuk, Stark and Freegums]. His massive, glossy wall sculptures, constructed of layers of low-fi materials such as corrugated plastic, metal shelf supports and hardware-store chains, amp classic tensions between flat image and deep space, resolution and dissolution. While being generally enjoyable to look at, these wall works also remind me of something of-the-moment in Canadian art: Their play with symmetry and almost-figuration makes me think of Luis Jacob’s They Sleep with One Eye Open (shown this winter at MOCCA and soon to be installed, we keep being told, in the Dufferin Underpass). And frankly, it’s hard for me to see gold-coloured chains in a work these days and not think of Montrealer-cum-New-Yorker David Altmejd, who’s also used them to famous effect. Perhaps because it comes across as more original, the highlight of the show for me is a series of much smaller folded-paper works in Diaz’s back gallery. Though each is subtitled “model for future weapon” (threatening, no?) these whimsical structures strike me as a string of unusual kites — something for the imagination to sail away on, whether the weather is fine or cloudy.

You can read on at the Post for more. FYI I made reference in to the AGO's Ab Ex show in my lede, but didn't intend it to be the headline! Like I say in the review, these works do not fall under the same art-historical rubric.

(Image of John Eisler's "model for future weapon" installation via Diaz Contemporary)

Ann Temkin Abstract Expressionist Q&A in National Post Today

2011-05-31T10:09:00.007-04:00

As many now well know, this past weekend saw the opening of the only international stop for MoMA's "Abstract Expressionist New York" at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. The show is scaled down from the original—about 75% the size of the central MoMA outing "The Big Picture," I was told, and also lacking the collary exhibitions "Rock Paper Scissors" and "Ideas Not Theories" (though some materials from these latter two shows were integrated into the AGO display).

Last Wednesday as the exhibition was previewing to the press, I got to speak with Ann Temkin, MoMA's chief curator of painting and sculpture, about the show. The resulting condensed Q&A is out in today's National Post. An excerpt:

Q Are Abstract Expressionists really all that special? Abstraction has existed for centuries in indigenous and Islamic art, and expressiveness is something we look for in most art.

A One of the things you're bringing out is that Eurocentric attitudes are what dictate us thinking of this movement as unique. There are links the artists would've very much acknowledged to non-Western or ancient art that had this same kind of ambition to express the soul. So you could say one of the things that's important about this movement is, in fact, its non-uniqueness in a global sense. What these artists were aiming for was something that, for what would've been thought of as "primitive" peoples at that time, would've gone without saying—that art expressed their deepest, profoundest beliefs, fears and wishes. What these artists were doing was marrying that to a European artistic tradition, which was something on canvas that got stretched and put on a wall.

Q So is a better term needed than "Abstract Expressionist"? The direct translation ain't helpful.

A These artists struggled quite a bit with that question and they all had their various, equally inadequate suggestions. Our acoustiguide in New York opened with clips of artists saying things along these lines—"Well, I'm not an Abstract Expressionist!" "My paintings aren't Abstract Expressionist." "What is Abstract Expressionist? It means nothing to me."—just to set the stage that it's not a very useful term.

Later on we discuss Rothko's fear of fame, how to look at an Ab Ex painting and more. To read the rest, I encourage seeking out a print copy of the Post, as there's a reproduction of a really nice Joan Mitchell painting in the spread. For a text-only version today, you can also check out this link over at the Post.

(Image of Joan Mitchell's Ladybug 1957 from the AGO and MoMA)

About Time: Toronto Graffiti Summit Tomorrow Night @ Drake Hotel

2011-05-30T15:16:00.007-04:00

Last month in my OpenFile article on the development of Toronto's new culture plan, I made reference to members of the public who questioned how Toronto can be taking art, and particularly public art or youth arts, seriously when its mayor himself has taken to the streets to eradicate graffiti.

After all—in my view, at least—graffiti can range from wonderful public art to nuisance vandalism. It's not always helpful to blackball it outright. Or it would at least be helpful to set some more useful terms of reference than "anything made on a publicly viewable wall with a spraypaint can."

So it's with some interest that I see the upcoming Toronto Graffiti Summit that's happening tomorrow night at the Drake Hotel. The summit will bring together representatives from the city (like Councillor Michael Thompson, who headed the culture plan push, and Councillor Cesar Palacio, who's taking the lead on the graffiti file), members of the graffiti community and administrators for youth arts mural programs to discuss the issue. NOTE: There will also be a webcast for those who can't attend in person. Here's the rundown from an event site:

Graffiti 'vandalism' is a problem. Unwanted graffiti has a detrimental impact on neighbourhoods. The cost to businesses to clean-up unwanted graffiti can range from $100 up to $10,000 for a heritage building. What is the best strategy to stop this vandalism? How do we get all the stakeholders on board? Successful community approaches have been employed with such programs as Vancouver's "Restart" and Philadelphia's award winning "Anti-Graffiti Network" both of which engages youth to create murals. Hear from a range of perspectives from your community that include a community services; the arts community; a graffiti artist, business people; and city officials.

The Town Hall will be divided into two segments:

Speakers: 7:05pm - 7:45pm
Panel Discussion: 7:55pm - 8:55pm
Location: The Drake Hotel, 1150 Queen St., Toronto, ON, M6J 1J3 www.thedrakehotel.ca

Registration: 6:00pm - 7:00pm - 'First-come, First-Served'. Registration is 'free' of charge.

Welcome: 7:00pm - 7:05pm - with Councillor Cesar Palacio, City Council lead on new graffiti strategy.

Speakers: The following speakers will make '5' minute presentations:

Syrus Ware, Program Coordinator of Youth Programs, Art Gallery of Ontario

Syrus will provide credence to the art form & its importance to modern art.
Paula 'La Bomba' Gonzalez-Ossa, Graffiti Artist & Youth Programming Coordinator

She will provide a street artist perspective and how marginalized youth can find positive outlets.
Terrence Rodriguez, Program Coordinator, Pro Tech Media Centre

The media centre is a successful example of a skills building alternative outlet for high-risk youth.
Djanka Gajdel, Property & Gallery Owner

She will put forward a personal testament to the hardship caused by graffiti vandalism.
Jim Hart, Executive Director, Municpal Licensing & Standards Division

Jim will speak to the topic of enforcement and what it means in the City of Toronto.
Devon Ostrom, Founder & Coordinator, Beautifulcity.ca

Devon will present possible solutions to fund and provide for alternative outlets.
Claire McWatt, Representative, Toronto Youth Cabinet

This will be a summarization of the outreach work of this city group.
Karin Eaton, Executive Director, Mural Routes

Karin will speak to the successful engagement of street artists to beautify the city.

Panel Discussion: 7:55pm - 8:55pm - Audience can ask questions of the panel.

Host & Producer:

Stefan Lialias, Executive Producer, Direct Engagement Inc.
Panelists:

Shawn 'Zion' Jones, Owner & Graffiti Artist, The Bomb Shelter
Jeff Melanson, Special Advisor on the Arts for Toronto Mayor Rob Ford
Robert Sysak, Executive Director, West Queen West Business Improvement Area
Michael Thompson, Councillor Ward 37 Scarborough, City of Toronto
Media Interviewers:

Natalie Alcoba, Toronto City Hall Reporter, National Post
Julie King, Publisher & Managing Editor, CanadaOne.
Sean Stanleigh, Editor of Your Business, The Globe & Mail

As with any of these sorts of all-in panels, I have some skepticism about them getting through all these speakers and topics in the time allotted. Still it's great to see some collaborative discussion on this issue rather than a divisive taking-of-sides.

(Image from Toronto's famed Graffiti Alley--introduced to me as a tourist attraction when I first came to the city--from Spacing Toronto)

James Nizam Q&A in today's National Post

2011-05-25T08:29:00.006-04:00

For the past number of years, Vancouver artist James Nizam has generated a unique body of work in abandoned homes and buildings. For his Anteroom series, he made rooms in these homes into camera obscuras. For his Dwellings Series, he lit these spaces with flashlights. And for his Memorandoms series, currently showing at Birch Libralato in Toronto as part of the Contact Festival, he created sculptures out of architectural and furnishing elements that remained at social housing project Little Mountain prior to its demolition in 2009.

At the beginning of the month, Nizam was generous in speaking with me as his show was being installed in Toronto. The resulting condensed Q&A is out in today's National Post. An excerpt:

Q You built these sculptures in Vancouver's Little Mountain housing complex just before it was demolished in 2009. How did you proceed?

A I didn't have a design governing what I was doing. I was just taking materials and working almost like a kid with Jenga. My basic restrictions were stacking, leaning, assembling and letting materials dictate the form. I think the most successful ones came out really quickly; they kind of border on collapsing themselves. Thinking about the structure that they're actually built in—this social housing block that's sitting there, towering and about to be knocked down—I kind of like that there's a mirroring between the form and something that's about to unbuild itself.

Later in the exchange, Nizam talks about the current state of Little Mountain—an empty lot. Though he most definitely sees his work as open ended and relatively neutral—ie. intentionally *not* taking a pro or anti stance when it comes to the demolition—I'd have to agree with him that this particular zero status of the housing project is sad, given that hundreds of people were relocated to make some new ostensible development happen.

In any case, it's worth keeping an eye on Nizam to see what he does in future. Besides one future project mentioned in the Q&A, he's also looking at carving up a house on stilts in a Vancouver-area harbour. When we spoke, the house was for sale for $1, provided the buyer was willing to move it to make way for a new development. Since that scenario seems unlikely, he hopes to work with the developer to make slits in the house frame to create a kind of "reverse sundial" and photograph the light that streams through the resulting space before the house is demolished.

More information about Nizam is also available through his Vancouver dealer, Gallery Jones.

I should also do a hat tip to Canadian Art managing editor Bryne McLaughlin, who brought Nizam's Little Mountain work to my attention.

(Image of James Nizam's Helix of Shelves from the Memorandoms series via Canadianart.ca)

Fred Herzog Q&A out in today's National Post

2011-05-24T09:51:00.007-04:00

For 50 years, German immigrant Fred Herzog snapped pictures of his adopted home, Vancouver, without finding much recognition. Since 2007's survey of his work at the Vancouver Art Gallery, however, all that has changed. He's now well known as a great portraitist of Vancity, and has lots to prove it: a recent show and book release in Berlin; a current show at Toronto's MOCCA; and an exhibition opening in June at the National Gallery of Canada.

Earlier this month, I got to chat on the phone with Herzog about his work. The condensed Q&A that resulted is out in today's National Post. An excerpt:

Q What does it feel like to be in such demand after having worked for 50 years in relative obscurity?

A It's been astonishing. I always thought, "What I'm doing has to be to the standards of the best art." But I hadn't been successful showing it in galleries. Part of the problem was I never had the money to make big prints in addition to having a family. It hits me now that if I'd had this much success earlier in life I wouldn't have had as nice a life. The reason for that is life does not thrive on attention -it thrives on experience.

The web link for the Herzog isn't working at the moment, so I urge you to seek out a copy of the paper for more.

(Image of Herzog's Man with Bandage from his dealer Equinox Gallery)

Long Weekend Reviews: Joanne Tod, Max Streicher & Alex McLeod @ Harbourfront

2011-05-20T11:04:00.007-04:00

Starting on Victoria Day weekend, let's face it: nature usually beats out culture around these parts. Torontonians head in masses to the water and the wilderness (pseudo or otherwise) be it at the Hanlan's Point clothing-optional beach or Huntsville-area cottage country. My personal goal for the summer is to get outdoors more often, for sure.

Luckily, some culture can still be squeezed in along the way to the shore at Harbourfront, where the free York Quay exhibitions always make for an easy drop by. Today, I review three at Posted Toronto; they'll also be found in print in tomorrow's National Post Toronto section. Here's an excerpt:

Joanne Tod at York Quay Centre
235 Queens Quay W,. to June 12
The first Toronto showing of Joanne Tod’s Oh Canada — A Lament reads a bit differently now from when it opened in April. Featuring 154 painted portraits of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, it’s hard to look at this now and not have Osama bin Laden’s death, or its military-strategy implications, come to mind. Still, the power of Tod’s portraits reaches beyond recent events. Most fascinating are the personalities that come through in each of the artist’s five-by-six-inch panels. These faces (and Tod’s skill at rendering them) suggest many temperaments: goofy, shy, stern, wistful, confident, churlish, wary, friendly, self-satisfied, romantic, alert and more. Interspersed with these faces are painted fragments of the Canadian flag, a gesture that’s heavy-handed, but that underlines centuries-old questions: How do individuals decide to trade their lives for a country? Is this trade a fair one, and by which measures? How do we honour these individuals when they don’t return? Tod explains in a wall text that her uncle, a private in Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry and an aspiring artist, was killed in Sicily two months before the end of the Second World War; his photographs and letters, inherited recently, are what prompted her to start this ongoing project three years ago. Though Tod’s not the first Canadian artist to attempt a memorial project for our soldiers, she is one of the most accomplished ones to do so, and her interest in the loss of individuals — like the uncle she never met — makes her project stand out. Chillingly, room left at the project’s edges reminds us there are more losses likely still to come.

For reviews of Max Streicher and Alex McLeod's shows at York Quay, read on at Posted Toronto.

(Detail of Joanne Tod's Oh Canada A Lament installation from Harbourfront Centre)

Do Not Adjust Your Monitor! Jen Stark Video & Font Fix Experimentation

2011-05-17T11:19:00.009-04:00

"Believer" by Jen Stark / Music by Dan Deacon from Jen Stark on Vimeo.

I had some fun this weekend looking at the op-arty stuffs of Miami's Jen Stark at Show & Tell. Though Stark's part of the show (the other half features Maya Hayuk) is dominated by drawings and paper sculptures, I thought the above animation was the best thing there. It's almost even better without the music—if you're a visual person like I am, that is. Just dial that volume all the way down. Interestingly, Stark started out in animation before seguing into object-based art. I think it shows, for sure.

On a related optical note, I recently realized that the font I've been using here on the blog can actually be larger. So I may be experimenting with that a bit. Just wanted to let you know it's not your eyeballs or your 'puter playing tricks on you.

Oh, but if you are interested in your eyeballs playing more tricks on you, I recommend dropping by Alvaro Illizarbe's installation at Narwhal. Lots of concentrically-drawn shapes pressed up against each other, wallpapered all over the floor and the walls. There's some related wall works hung in this crazy context. You can also buy a similarly printed T-shirt if you want to go all camouflage-style. Here's an example:

(Jen Stark video embedded from her Vimeo page; image of Narwhal's Alvaro Illizarbe installation from their website)

On Cultivating the Art Habit

2011-05-16T12:02:00.016-04:00

From what people on the other side of the fence tell me, attendance is more unpredictable than ever before at museums and galleries. Though many factors are likely responsible for this, I want to encourage institutions to keep considering the potential impacts of:

(a) my dead-horse-I-like-to-keep-flogging, high admission fees;

(b) the demise of arts education for children in both the public-school realm and the civic-service realm (this demise is exacerbated, I would argue, by those high admission fees, and by the lack of interest institutions seem to take in any government policies other than institutional-funding ones).

Along the latter lines, I came across some interesting insights on developing the "art habit" this weekend. These insights came purely by happenstance; my husband teaches music to young children, and he had borrowed some books on the topic from the library. (Thanks library!) One of these, At the Beginning: Teaching Piano to the Very Young Child by Rhoda Rabin, had this to say in the chapter "Art and the Art Habit":

What is the "art habit"? It is the love for and practice of art, the incorporating of formal expressions of beauty into the life of an individual, in our case, the young child. Our objective with early piano lessons is to develop the art habit in children, and to make the piano as natural a part of life as the telephone or the bicycle.

The cornerstone of teaching music to the young child is the absolute belief that young children can be accomplished artists: accomplished not in terms of the size or complexity of their repertoire, but in terms of their ability to produce beautiful sounds and respond to beauty, in learned as well as instinctive ways. Is it naive or overly romantic, this idea of the child as artist? Experience shows that it is not. Whether or not a child is precocious in other areas of his or her life, he or she can make music and experience the extraordinary dimension this power lends to a young life.

Young students are as deserving of the finest artistic instruction as conservatory students are. From the first moment the child touches the keys, we are teaching art—not "art readiness."

In quoting Rabin, I don't mean to imply that arts education is the be all and end all.

But I do think that arts institutions like museums and public galleries would be wise to pay serious (and not just nominal) attention to it, especially given that the National Endowment of the Arts has stated that "Arts education in childhood is the most significant predictor of both arts attendance and personal arts creation throughout the rest of a person's life."

Wondering how Ontario is doing on this front? Better than in the Harris era, but still not great, according to People for Education's 2010 Annual Report:

Less than half of Ontario's elementary schools have specialist music teachers on staff. A further 28% have itinerant music teachers who may be in the school a few times a week for programs such as band or strings, or acting as the music teacher. Only a very small proportion of music teachers are full-time, and generally in very large schools.

There are even fewer schools with specialists in the other arts. In schools with grades 7 and 8, only 18% report having a visual arts teacher, and 8% have a drama teacher.

Students' access to rich arts programs often depends on the abilityof their parents to fundraise, or, in secondary school, the flexibility of students' schedules and their capacity to pay fees.

Most schools rely heavily on parent fundraising to support the arts. This year, over 40% of elementary and secondary schools reported raising funds for the arts. Last year, 23% of secondary schools charged fees for music classes and 54% charged fees for art classes. Students who attend schools in more affluent areas, where fundraising amounts tend to be higher, are thus more likely to have access to arts enrichment.

I really think that if museums and galleries are worried about attendance in the long term, they need to focus on arts education for youth and adults, and reconsider their admission fees and programs in light of developing the "art habit" as well.

(Image from The Great Musician blog)

Jamasie Pitesolak preview at Canadianart.ca

2011-05-13T12:53:00.016-04:00

I had never heard of Cape Dorset artist Jamasie Pitseolak until recently, but when I saw images of sculptures related to his just-opened solo show at Marion Scott Gallery in Vancouver, my interest was definitely piqued: An Easy Rider–worthy serpentinite motorcycle that flaunts the head of an Inuit sea goddess. A stone-carved Fender guitar whose ivory inlays include an ice-floe evoking polar bear. A portrait of a Nunavut artist comprised of an inukshuk-decorated chair and a caribou-antler camera.

Fun stuff! So I chatted with him on the phone a bit this week and wrote up a previewy thing that went up at Canadianart.ca yesterday. An excerpt:

“When I started carving, I was doing traditional pieces,” says Pitseolak over the phone from his home in Cape Dorset. “I felt at that time I wasn’t really connecting with my inner soul, if you will. So I started doing electric guitars, and from there it kind of snowballed. I guess I wasn’t seeing myself excelling doing those traditional pieces because everyone is doing it, you know?”

Of course, there are other Cape Dorset artists doing "nontraditional" work that has been picked up on the "down south" contemporary-art radar: Annie Pootoogook, whose revealing domestic-scene drawings made her winner of the 2006 Sobey Award; Shuvinai Ashoona, whose fantastical montages were recently shown in the Canadian Biennial; and Samonie Toonoo, whose dark sculptures were the toast of Toronto last summer. And the current survey Inuit Modern at the AGO traces the diversity of this genre.

Still, Pitseolak's work does stand out from "traditional" Inuit carving. There's also a couple of quite sombre works in the show, which is a suprise given his usually humorous and lighthearted take. I found these prints very raw and painful to look at, and also very important. To learn about those, read on at Canadianart.ca.

Only a few images were in the article, so I'm posting more below:

Jamasie Pitseolak's Peter Pitseolak's Chair

Jamasie Pitseolak's Dad's Guitar (he says this is a couple of feet long, not full-size; he doesn't play guitar, but his dad does)

Jamasie Pitseolak's Lace Me Up

Jamasie Pitseolak's Two Barrel Shotgun

Jamasie Pitseolak's My Second Grader

More images are viewable at Marion Scott Gallery and Spirit Wrestler Gallery.

(Lead image of Jamasie Pitseolak's Sedna Chopper via Canadianart.ca; all images courtesy of the artist and Marion Scott Gallery)

Maslen & Mehra Q&A out in Today's National Post

2011-05-10T10:53:00.005-04:00

Contemporary art often has a reflective quality, but this tendency comes right to the fore in Mirrored, a photo series by British duo Maslen & Mehra. For this series, the team (otherwise known as Tim Maslen & Jennifer Mehra) places human-shaped mirrored sculptures in spectacular landscapes before snapping a picture. Last week, just before their first-ever Canadian solo show was about to open as part of Toronto's Contact Photography Festival, the artists chatted with me about their practice. A condensed version of this Q&A is out in today's National Post. Some excerpts:

Q How did your Mirrored series begin?

Jennifer Mehra: We did a residency at the Eden Project in Cornwall, where giant biomes inform people about how we're related to nature. We wanted to play with little interventions in the biomes, but not actually leave anything permanently in there. So we were making mirrored sculptures and photographing them and taking them away. Then we thought, well, we're going to this location next, let's take these sculptures with us.

Q What are the sculptures based on?

Jennifer Mehra: A lot are based on anonymous pictures that we've taken of people in cities. But others are appropriated. The one in Hot Stream, Waimangu, New Zealand, is from an Issey Miyake catwalk....

Q Both of you spent a lot of time in Australia. Is there anything particularly Australian about your art?

Tim Maslen: I would say an awareness of landscape. I grew up in Australia and I always felt even though you're in the city, you hop in the car and drive for two hours and you're literally in the middle of nowhere: vast space, vast sky, vast landscapes. To then take that experience of growing up and be living in a metropolis like London or Berlin or New York ... personally I have this yearning to be back in nature but I don't like camping! Ha! So there's always this dichotomy that's going on. That's interesting and I think a lot of people feel that in the lives they lead.

It's also worth noting that as part of Contact's new cross-Canada programming, Maslen & Mehra also have a billboard at the Halifax Ferry Terminal to June 4. Their exhibition at Toronto's General Hardware Contemporary also runs until that same date.

Interestingly, the duo told me their next foray will be more into sculpture and museological conventions—reproducing or riffing on displays of busts from the Victoria and Albert Museum.

(Image: Maslen & Mehra's Hell's Gate Death Valley 2005 Courtesy the artists and General Hardware Contemporary)

Recommended: Elaine Gurian's A Case for Eliminating Admission Charges at Museums

2011-05-09T12:05:00.011-04:00

As ya'll likely know, one of my pet peeves/issues/dead horses I like to flog relates to the severely unaffordable museum admission fees we see in Toronto, and, increasingly, in the rest of Canada. My concerns around this issue have been exacerbated by the fact that many of the access measures that used to offset high admission fees in Canadian museums, like free evening hours or free access to permanent collections, are disappearing.

The reasons this decreasing access concerns me are manifold: first, the mission statements and policies of many public museums promise to maximize or at least prioritize public access; second, the charitable status of these institutions in part rests on meeting such an access mission; third, these barriers to access effectively, in my view, decrease public support (and eventually, taxation supports) for museums and the arts over the long term; fourth, the public actually owns many of the permanent collections that they are being charged through the nose to view; fifth, I believe the arts can play a crucial role in the health of some individuals and communities, and I want to encourage the wellness of our general population. I could go on, but won't.

Given my passion for these issues, I'm surprised that I haven't come across the writings of museum consultant Elaine Gurian sooner. In 2005, Gurian published an eloquent essay in the American Association of Museums' Museum News on the issue. It's called "Free at Last: A Case for Eliminating Admission Charges in Museums." I certainly recommend it for a read over at the AAM site. Here's a few excerpts:

If they remain oriented toward their paying customers, museums will never become the town square that we are so fond of talking about. Drop the charges.

I have reluctantly but unequivocally come to the conclusion that general admission charges are the single greatest impediment to making our museums truly and fully accessible....

To be clear, I am not calling for the removal of all charges to all activities. Quite to the contrary, I believe that to maintain fiscal solvency, museums will have to look for additional fee-for-service opportunities to increase their “per capita” income. I am, however, suggesting that there be free admission to the core functions of the museum, including permanent installations, and perhaps access to ancillary services such as reference centers, libraries, and study storage....

The reasons for a thorough reorganization of museum finances are not primarily monetary but philosophical. I am convinced that charging admissions fundamentally alters the nature of museums and categorically changes their functions and orientation.

Museums cannot argue that they hold the patrimony of all if only some can afford to see it. They cannot argue that they are the meeting ground, town square, forum, and safe civic space if only some citizens—those who pay—can take part. And they cannot argue that they are a resource for those eager to learn if the learner must first determine if she can afford to learn. There is a fundamental disconnect between the mission statements we write and the act of imposing an entry fee.

The operational arguments for establishing free admission are many:

-The admission process as the first experience is off-putting and adds to resistance by non-users.

-The ways that individuals make use of free venues is entirely different from the ways they visit places that charge. Imposing a charge makes the museum experience a special and occasional one rather than an easily repeatable one. It is the ease of entry and potential of repeated use, I contend, that converts institutions from “nice to have” to “essential” on the civic scale.

-Some have complained that the charges imposed by many museums are now exorbitant. The aggregate cost for a young family of four is sufficiently daunting that even traditional museum goers with modest incomes—some of our most motivated visitors—cannot come as often as they might wish.

-A need to offer reduced admission costs is recognized by museums that promote various free or reduced admission schemes. However, taking advantage of this requires forethought and planning and so tends to be used primarily by more experienced and organized visitors.

-The argument is offered by some cognoscenti that charges help keep attendance down, which they prefer. This is antithetical to our professed desire to allow all who wish to attend to do so.

Again, you can read the rest over at the AAM site. Gurian has also posted updates to her view on her own website, which are also worth a read.

As an aside, the last point listed re: the "cognoscenti" resounds with something I heard Swiss artist Pippilotti Rist says in The Colour of Your Socks, a recent documentary on her work. To paraphrase: Art can be like a fetish to some people; the more the majority of people don't understand it or don't like it--the more exclusive it is--the more this first group comes to love it. Movies are different; they speak to a wide range of people. Everybody "gets it." I'm trying to do something in the middle.

I guess my point is that our museums really need to do more "in the middle" too.

(Image of Canuck cash from CanadianFreeStuff.com)

A Contact Crawl: Guy Tillim, Lynne Cohen, Ed Burtynsky & Abel Boulineau

2011-05-06T12:52:00.006-04:00

A few CONTACT reviews and recommendations of mine are now up at Posted Toronto and will be out in print in tomorrow's National Post Toronto section. An excerpt:

Guy Tillim at the Design Exchange, 234 Bay St.
This show is a stealth heavy-hitter — quiet to start but it builds into a knockout to the gut. South African photojournalist Tillim begins with photographs of once-grand, now rotted buildings in Ghana, Benin, DR Congo, Angola, Mozambique and Madagascar, images that initially evoke oft-repeated themes of Modernism and its miscarriages. But as Tillim’s big ger picture grows with photos of discarded monuments, dilapidated government offices and done-in courtyards, one begins to feel the heavy weight of history borne by Africa and its people — a weight so logically obvious as to seem ridiculous mentioning, but one that, unmentioned, often seems insensible in the West. Redeeming and redoubling this heaviness are civic workers who peer out of Tillim’s photographs, people who soldier on, tenuously refashioning the frames of past occupiers into something hopefully honourable and new. One image in particular is a heartbreaker: a room in Lubumbashi’s City Hall where a tiny handwritten sign on morals — what to have, what to hate, what to fight for — stands as a small mark of resistance in a massive colonizer-built room. Highly recommended.
Also in the neighbourhood: Alain Paiement at Allen Lambert Galleria (181 Bay St.); Robert Longo at Metro Hall (55 John St.)

For capsule reviews of Lynne Cohen @ Olga Korper, Ed Burtynsky @ the ROM, and Abel Boulineau @ the AGO, and more picks, read on at Posted Toronto. And on a non-CONTACT related note: The revolving door for the north entrance at Metro Hall has been transformed into a music box by Janis Demkiw, Corwyn Lund & Duncan MacDonald. Very fun and totally worth a whirl while you're checking out the Robert Longos. Up until May 22.

(Image of Guy Tillim's City Hall, Lubumbashi, DR Congo 2007 from 21st Century Blog)

Elizabeth Milton Gets Ready for her Auditions this Week

2011-05-05T16:03:00.007-04:00

Vancouver artist Elizabeth Milton is getting ready to do a talk-show-centric residency at Western Front this week. I talked to her about it for a brief Canadianart.ca item out today. An excerpt:

Vancouver artist Elizabeth Milton will kick off her own version of Inside the Actors Studio this week as she transforms Western Front’s Grand Luxe concert hall into an ersatz audition space. During the course of this May 9 to June 25 residency at Western Front, Milton and a team of amateur and professional actors (one of which is her mother) will play out scenarios inspired by a variety of phenomena: theatre protocols, job interviews, psychotherapy sessions, celebrity confessionals, reality television, prime-time talk shows and more. Related sets will be constructed too, and these, along with a resulting video, will go on public display at Access Gallery from June 25 to July 31.

“I’ve always been interested in the constructs of theatre and theatricality drawn from pop culture in my work,” says Milton over the phone from Vancouver. Her recent video collaboration with Vancouver actor Tara Travis, The Actor Cries, shows Travis performing different flavours of crying—crying as a soap opera character, as a comedy character, and so on. And her video triptych St. Theresa’s Basement, created with fellow artist Sheila Poznikoff, features amateur actors preparing for their church group’s annual Christmas pageant.

The Actor Cries was shown at Platform's Cabin Fever show in Winnipeg last fall, and St. Theresa's Basement in the group show This is Uncomfortable at Gallery TPW last summer. More info over at Canadianart.ca.

(Project sketch of Elizabeth Milton's Auditions from Canadianart.ca)

Toronto Culture Plan now Available to Public in Advance of May 4 City Hall Meeting

2011-05-03T10:21:00.003-04:00

The City of Toronto's new culture plan is now available to the public in advance of its May 4 presentation to the City's Economic Development Committee. You can download a copy at the Live with Culture site. Here are the major recommendations of the report:

ensure a supply of affordable, sustainable cultural space.

ensure access and opportunity for cultural participation to
all citizens regardless of age, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation,
geography, or socioeconomic status.

support the development of creative clusters and emerging cultural
scenes to capitalize on their potential as generators of jobs and
economic growth.

promote its cultural institutions, festivals and other assets to
enhance its position as a Creative City regionally, nationally, and
internationally.

Keep pace with international competitors by making a firm
commitment to sustain Toronto’s cultural sector and position
Toronto as a leading, globally competitive Creative Capital.

More detailed subgoals for each of these recommendations is listed in the report. For example, one recommendation on access is to have a rotating cultural "hotspot" in city neighbourhoods. As far as I can tell it would be kind of like the "creative capital" program that operates nationally, designating the celebration of culture of a certain region for a year or two at a time.

I haven't had a chance to look at the report indepth, and probably won't until Friday, but I encourage everyone to check it out as it is basically a major document on the City of Toronto's arts planning policy, and the basic argument for Mayor Ford that the arts should have its funding sustained while everything in the municipal budget goes under review for the chopping block.

(Image of the cover of the new culture plan from Live with Culture)

A Worthy Question at Artinfo: What Does "Emerging" Mean, Anyway?

2011-05-02T17:39:00.008-04:00

There's much important news to discuss today: Osama Bin Laden's death, the Canadian election, etc. I'll assume that readers of this blog have voted or are planning to vote (though if you haven't, please do! Also, you may want to use this Michael Maranda–recommended matrix of where the parties stand on arts as a reference point), so it's time to turn to the *really* big question of the day: What does "Emerging" Mean in the Art World, Anyway?

I had been thinking about this off and on since a gallery owner took exception a few months back to me referencing one of their artists as "emerging" and questioning, in that context, what might happen when the artist "matures".

Lucky for me, some helpful research by Julia Halperin at Artinfo has saved me from actually doing my own post on this point. I was referred to the feature through always-also-helpful Art Fag City. Here's an excerpt of some of the definitions Halperin received:

"Between unknown and overexposed?" - Roger White, artist and co-founder of the journal Paper Monument

"Any artist who has a gallery but is not yet fully supporting themselves with their work." - Becket Bowes, artist

"An artist you may not have heard of or an artist you may have heard of. An artist under 35 years old, unless s/he has been in the biennial, unless that was basically his/her first major show, unless the work is at a price point above $50,000? No auction record? A young artist; an old artist who never had a solo show; or an old artist who has shown a lot, but in venues you don't recognize." - Sara Greenberger Rafferty, artist

Halperin also speaks to auction house representatives and academics. Their responses are worth reading over at Artinfo.

Overall, I look forward to what other commentary this new AI column on terminology brings up. Especially "contemporary"!

(Image of dictionary from Kingdom of Style)

Suzy Lake Q&A Out in Today's Post

2011-04-29T08:47:00.009-04:00

Since her inclusion in WACK Art and the Feminist Revolution a few years back, the work of Detroit-born, Toronto-based artist Suzy Lake is enjoying a well-deserved resurgence. Following showings in the last few years in California, New York, Italy and Turkey, Lake is the focus of a much-anticipated survey exhibition at UTAC opening next week as part of CONTACT. Word is the AGO is also prepping for a big Lake show in the next few years, one that may tour as well.

A few weeks ago, I got to talk with Lake in her studio about this recent flurry of exhibition activity and her 30-plus years of production so far--as well as her connections to Cindy Sherman, who was a colleague during the artists' upstate New York days. The results are condensed into a Q&A in today's Post. An excerpt:

Q Your early artworks resemble those of Cindy Sherman, who started later and went on to worldwide fame. How do you feel about that?

A Oh, the Suzy-Cindy thing? Well, it's almost like a market question, although it's probably not intended to be. Cindy has always, right from the very beginning, gone out of her way to give Eleanor Antin and I credit as being her influences. The thing is, Cindy as a person and as an artist is one thing, but Cindy as a commodity in the art market is a different thing. People don't want to know that there's a precedent to her, because of her value. I went to New York too early: My work that influenced her was thought of as being narcissistic and uninteresting -"women's work" as an accusation, not an adjective. So timing is everything. Ultimately, my work and her work are more different than people assume. And sure, sitting in Canada you always wonder, "How far could I have gone if I didn't go to Canada?" But those questions are irrelevant; they come up on a bad day when you're feeling sorry for yourself. I was teaching, I had a family, I loved making work. And now that I've taken early retirement to be in the studio full time, it's like, well, timing is everything, you know? All of a sudden people are interested in seeing what happened between then and now, and I couldn't be busier. So I think I'm a lucky duck, really.

Check out the back page of the Post's movie section today for some great images of Lake's work, and more commentary about her career. If you can't get a hold of the print version, the text-only version is available today online as well.

Lake's show at UTAC opens May 2 and runs to June 25, while a smaller show at Paul Petro opens May 6 and runs to June 4.

(Image: Suzy Lake, On Stage, 1972-5. Performance/photography. DVD Courtesy of Paul Petro Contemporary Art; Prints Courtesy of the artist..)

Reece Terris' Wow-Inducing Art Bridge

2011-04-28T22:41:00.005-04:00

Today for Canadianart.ca, I helped write up a previewy-type item about Sitely Premises, an interesting-looking spring show at the Surrey Art Gallery. The exhibition focuses on West Coast artists who have used the space around detached single-family houses (usually their own) to create work.

Writing this thing pushed me into full Reece Terris fan territory, as it prompted me to view a video of the bridge he built between his own house and a neighbouring one in 2006. Here's some pretty cool documentation from Terris' website:

Bridge (2006) from Reece Terris on Vimeo.

Of course, I'm not the only one in the Terris fan club. The guy's receiving a VIVA Award this year, and his crazy recentish apartment installation at the Vancouver Art Gallery got tons of press. My pressing question now: When will he do an installation in Toronto? I'd love to see this happen.

Must-Read: George Zimbel's Copyright Crusade w/ the NY Times

2011-04-26T15:29:00.007-04:00

Last month, through what is perhaps the most unlikely of means—a conversation with one of Toronto's city councillors, Michael Thompson—I became aware of the work of well-respected photojournalist George Zimbel. (Zimbel is Thompson's father-in-law, and Thompson cited him in an interview as anecdotal proof that culture, beyond being a creative realm, is also a business realm.)

Anyway, shortly after that conversation with Thompson I started perusing Zimbel's site and came across an absolute must-read: A Freelance Photographer vs. the New York Times. This copyright-related correspondence is a bit of an oldie (1999/2001 era), but a total goodie—nuanced, well-argued, persistent, passionate, and sporting a hell of a kicker. (No wonder it was reproduced in the Columbia Journalism Review soon afterwards.)

Because I'm now scared of copyright infringement myself, I'm not going to reproduce any of the correspondence here. But I highly recommend it for a read over at Zimbel's site.

If you enjoy the exchange, you may also want to note that Zimbel is due to give a talk in the Toronto area this week. He's chatting at the McMichael Collection in Kleinburg on April 30 from 11am to 12:30pm. Tickets cost $30 for the public, $15 for members—a bit steep in my view, but given Zimbel's experience, tempting. The talk is to focus on Zimbel's iconic Seven Year Itch pics of Marilyn Monroe, but it would still be a great chance to ask him questions about life as a freelance photographer in general. For more information, visit the McMichael's event page.

(Image of the New York Times building from VentureBeat)

Papier 11 in Pictures (Plus a Few Just MTL-Related Snaps)

2011-04-25T16:29:00.023-04:00

My Papier 11 roundup last week compiled some of my thoughts on the annual Montreal works-on-paper fair. (In a nutshell: I'd love to see Toronto adopt some of Papier's strategies, like free admission, a nice tent setup and an outdoor kiosk component. But is this actually possible, like ever? Given Toronto's general citywide prediliction to unaffordability? Dunno.)

Anyway, to flesh that out a bit, I'm posting some images of some things I enjoyed at Papier 11—this is a far from comprehensive attempt, but hopefully helpful to those who didn't get to drop by at all. Also included at the end are some things I found interesting in Montreal beyond of the fair. So without further ado:

Here's some of the outdoor kiosks that were out on the sidewalk in advance of and during the fair. They featured reproductions of select works at the fair. I would love to see something like this at a Toronto fair reaching out to a public audience.

More outdoor kiosks. It's worth noting they could be a bit better constructed; bottom edges were cracking apart by Sunday.

A view of the fair's tent from the kiosks.

One entrance to the tent (there were two in total). I liked the reinforcement of the paper theme in the entrance design.

This was in my last post: part of Adrian Norvid's large drawing at Galerie Joyce Yahouda. Apparently it is to be part of an upcoming public art project in Montreal called Metro Lines, curated by Renee Baert.

The Papirmasse wall at Maison Kasini's booth. If you subscribe to Papirmasse, you get art like this in the mail for just $5 a month.

Jon Rafman's Matisse David - this isn't the exact image that was printed for the fair, but you get the idea: one sculptural or architectural icon wrapped in the "wallpaper" of another iconic artist or graphic. All done digitally as part of his Brand New Paint Job project. At Art 45's booth.

Patrick Lundeen's faces made out of Mad-Magazine back-page fold-ins at Galerie Push.

I should know what these are/who made them/where they were, but I don't. Feel free to chime in! They are basically lotus flowers that look like they're floating in cardboard boxes.

Unique foldout books of drawings by Mauricio Limon at Laroche/Joncas.

Big drawing by Patrick Coutu at Galerie Rene Blouin.

One of many spraypaint-on-art-poster works by Mathieu Lefevre at Galerie Division's booth.

A very small, 3-inch-wide drawing by Kelly Wallace at Michael Gibson Gallery. He had a lot of big drawings with similar themes, but I really preferred the small ones.

Self-explanatory... well, almost: Micah Lexier's I Am the Only Micah Lexier at Birch Libralato's booth. The formula for this one was that the word for row 1 could only be 1 letter long, the word for row 2, 2 letters, etc.

Some members of the group En Masse continue their collaborative drawings on canvas at Galerie Pangée's booth.

And... the official Papier 11 washroom trailer!

Like I said previously, this a far from comprehensive look at the fair. I also really enjoyed Marion Wagschal at Battat Contemporary, Nadia Myre's beadwork photos at Art Mur, and Landon MacKenzie's watercolours at Art 45, the Chih-Chien Wang focus at Pierre-Francois Ouellette, Shuvinai Ashoona at Feheley Fine Arts, Stephen Andrews' prints at Paul Petro, Nadia Moss' Balint Zsako-esque drawings at Galerie Push, Jocelyn Philibert's photos at Galerie [SAS], Maclean's ART/ARRET interventions and Michael Merrill's drawings at Galerie Roger Bellemare, the big print names like Karel Appel at Jean-Claude Bergeron, Mark Igloliorte's diptychs and Jerome Ruby's crazy drawings at Galerie Donald Browne, Jamie Angelopoulos' big drawings, Susi Brister's photos and Valerie Blass' collaborative collages at Parisian Laundry, the Carl Beam–dedicated booth at Art Kanata, and last but not least Michel Campeau's darkroom photos and book at Galerie Simon Blais. I couldn't believe I had never seen the Campeaus before.

On a purely Montreal note, here's a few more pictures from my visit to the city:

A Bill 101 protest at the McGill campus gates. I was surprised such a protest still existed given it's been some 34 years since the bill was passed.

Military/paramilitary folks kitty corner to the Bill 101 protest. (There was also a long line of police cars at the ready, which is what attracted my attention in the first place.)

What's a better advertisement for a jazz bar than... a somewhat grubby Panda Band diorama? I can't think of one.

Only in Montreal? Fromage graffiti.

Finally, a little public-art witticism. This Duchampian bicycle wheel contraption was locked up to various bike-rack-type environs during the couple of days I was in La Belle Ville.

Distillery-Area Reviews: Owen Kydd, Mandy Keeping, Daniel Hutchinson

2011-04-25T14:17:00.006-04:00

With new galleries popping up as far west as the Junction, the east end seems more remote than ever to some art scenesters. (Case in point: the person this weekend who told me it's been years since he went east of Yonge. I get it.)

But the east end is still well worth a visit, as my reviews in this past Saturday's Post indicate. They cover Owen Kydd @ Monte Clark, Mandy Keeping @ Pikto and Daniel Hutchinson @ G Gallery. An excerpt:

Owen Kydd at Monte Clark Gallery
55 Mill St., Bldg. 2, to May 1
In these video portraits, Vancouver’s Owen Kydd continues to draw out the decisive moment, allowing us to look at people and places for several seconds rather than just 1/100th of one. Created along two sometimes down-at-the-heels strips (Vancouver’s Kingsway and Los Angeles’s Florence Avenue), Kydd’s videos find beauty in many things we might otherwise miss: a bungee cord-covered painting, strawberries scattered across a scratched wood tabletop, a lush tree spied through a bare window. Communing with Kydd’s artworks (particularly the Kingsway, Home series) produces the intense sensation that life is beautiful, if you only take the time to look at and appreciate it. He really has a knack for showing how worn our world and its people might be, but also how alive and how vibrant. Granted, some could quite reasonably query if it’s ever really this sunny in Vancouver, whether physically or philosophically. Others might opine that it’s all a bit too precious. Personally, I don’t mind Kydd holding my vision still for a few moments while the world marches on. One video focusing on a petal-losing Camellia (a plant that supposedly blooms just one week per year in Lotusland) underlines Kydd’s point: Life is falling away every moment, people. Let’s enjoy it — and maybe actually even see it — while it lasts.

Read on at the Post for the Keeping and Hutchinson reviews.

One thing I noticed from this outing: when I really, really like a show, I tend to try and think of (or acknowledge) how other people might also object to it. With shows I feel less exuberant about, I actually let go the critique thing a little more. Don't know quite what this is about, but I'll be watching this tendency a bit more from now on.

(Still from one of Owen Kydd's Florence Avenue videos from Canadianart.ca)

Art Museum Directors call for National Museums Policy in Canada

2011-04-21T08:24:00.006-04:00

Many may have already seen this, but given the policy request, I thought I would post. Last week, the Canadian Art Museum Directors' Organization (CAMDO) released a statement concerning the 2011 federal election. No parties were named (damn!) but I thought it was notable it calls for a National Museums Policy. Here's the statement:

CONCERNING THE 2011 FEDERAL ELECTION

A strong culture is fundamental to the health of every nation and its people. It is the basis of our sense of right and wrong, fairness and opportunity. Culture is founded in education and one of the most important ways people engage as citizens and participate in their communities. Canada's public galleries and art museums are stewards of Canadian culture and, through their collections, programs and exhibitions, essential to its ongoing production and evolution. We therefore call on political representatives of all parties to confirm their support for the following seven principles, which are essential to a secure and thriving cultural life.

1 Freedom of Expression – This is the foundation of all culture. Artists must be free to create and public institutions free to support and present their work without fear of favouritism, bias or prejudice.

2 Open, Transparent and Accountable Government – Our public institutions rely on government to be open about its goals and policies. Support programs for culture and the arts must be transparent so they can be properly understood and accessible. Accountability is fundamental to ensure fairness.

3 Philanthropy and Private Investment in the Arts and Cultural Industries – The independence and financial security of the arts requires diversification as well as increases to the funding base to keep pace with the remarkable growth of the cultural sector.

4 Domestic and Foreign Market Development – A successful market can only come about if artworks can be shared with Canadians from coast to coast to coast and promoted outside Canada.

5 Copyright – This essential framework must fairly balance the rights of creators with the rights of the public in order to ensure the richness of Canadian culture is available for the benefit of all.

6 The Canada Council for the Arts – Founded in 1957, the Canada Council is the figurehead and model for arts funding throughout the country. Its capacity to play this essential role is compromised if it does not have access to sufficient funding to fulfil its mandate.

7 A National Museums Policy – Leadership is needed to guide research, conservation, travelling exhibitions, public learning awareness, and promotion of our heritage, and the development of programs to secure the financial conditions of creators and the institutions that present their work, including Canada's public galleries and art museums.

It's a pretty neutral statement in my eyes, but again, interesting to see from a policy perspective.

(Image of Canada's Parliament from Defense Industry Daily)

Papier 11 Roundup: 5 Things You Never See in Toronto

2011-04-19T23:11:00.009-04:00

This past weekend, I went on a junket to Papier 11, the annual Montreal works-on-paper fair. Having had my trip paid for by the organizers, I'm inevitably going to be biased when subjectively assessing the event. (Secret scoop: I quite enjoyed it.) But I can objectively tell you Papier 11 had 5 Things You Never See In Toronto (At Least At A Professional Art Fair):

1) A tent as venue

2) An outdoor display to draw passerby into the fair, or give them some non-thresholded experience of it

3) Free admission for the public

4) Free, professionally produced book/catalogue handed out to all members of the public

5) Free coat check for all members of the public

It's a measure of either my lack of sanity or my city's that that it was really the free coat check that pushed me over the edge into totally, head-about-to-pop-off flabbergasted. Or, as one Ontario dealer put it, "Welcome to subsidized culture!"

More subjectively speaking, here's what I enjoyed about Papier 11:

-Accessibility: It was really nice to see the fair so busy and open to newcomers. It had a friendly feeling.

-Seeing works on paper by artists who I thought of as "people who don't work on paper." I'm talking drawings and prints by people like Shirley Wiitasalo, Stephen Andrews, Renee Van Halm. These offered a nice mix of surprise and familiarity.

-Seeing works I hadn't yet seen in person, like stuff by Jon Rafman and Marion Wagschal

-Seeing a focus on works on paper, period. I grew up loving books and I studied photography in art school, so guess what? I'm pretty much predisposed, folks. Deal with it.

-Innovative approaches. Gallery Joyce Yahouda hosted a different "solo show" in its booth every day. The first day I went, it was a huge drawing by Adrian Norvid. The next, several prints by Milutin Gubash. I also enjoyed the booth for Maison Kasini, which set up a pegboard advertising its Papiermasse mail-art subscriptions (just $5 per month!)

-The size: Lots to discover without being overwhelming. About 40 dealers overall.

-A public opening as well as a VIP opening. Whatttt?????

Here's what some dealers told me they liked about Papier 11:

-Everyone gets the same size booth. I have never, ever, considered this point. Ever. But it seems to be a big deal to dealers because many of them mentioned it to me in conversation.

-Low cost to participate. Word was booths were around $2,900 as opposed to the $7,600-ish "discounted NEXT section" rate at Art Toronto and the $11,000-ish "standard" rate at Art Toronto. (Note these figures were estimated by dealers, not the fairs themselves.)

-Proximity to other galleries. Being located close to the Belgo Building and the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art was considered a boon by many dealers, especially (of course) those Montreal ones located in the Belgo. They could just direct clients to check out solo shows there.

-The tent. Some dealers said they preferred a nice tent to being stuck in, say, the Toronto Convention Centre, as the tents mimic Frieze and other famed fair setups.

-The colleagues. Many dealers said they preferred being in what they considered a well-curated "smaller" fair rather than a "larger" fair with many galleries they might consider to be amateurish.

-And not so much liked as simply noted: The fair opened at 10am each day rather than 12 noon--a rare thing, though hard for some hard-partying dealers to handle. A signal of difference, though, for sure.

Here's what some of the problems or areas for improvement might be:

-Two words: Washroom. Trailer.

-Integrating some print or works-on-paper-focused artist-run centres, which could amp the educational side

-Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing other galleries from across the country, though I know it's a stretch to get there from Halifax and Vancouver.

-Also--and this is a borrowed dealer observation--if the show wants non-Quebec galleries to participate again in future, it may have to try ensuring that attending collectors don't just collect Quebec art. Apparently this is a big focus for collectors who reside in Quebec, and it's understandable because the province is home to so many rad artists, but it makes it difficult for outside galleries to participate.

Outstanding questions emerging from this trip, at least for me:

-What might Toronto's big art fair look like if it was organized by a professional association (like Papier organizer AGAC) rather than a profit-driven corporation?

-Could a better venue be found (or built, or tented) for Toronto's big art fair?

-Could an outdoor component ever be developed for Toronto's big art fair?

-Would free admission for the public (and not just "VIPs") ever be a possibility for Toronto's big art fair? Dealers are being charged a fair bit for booths already, so I speculate as to how much the door really brings in.

-How much does a fair really need to charge for a booth? How are those levels set or evaluated?

-How much more is Quebec funding the arts than Ontario? (I know this is a question that likely has an answer, I just haven't looked it up yet.) Is that level of funding sustainable?

To find out more about Papier 11, visit its website.

(Image of Adrian Norvid's massive drawing at Joyce Yahouda's Papier 11 booth by yours truly)

Arts and the Election: Où ça?

2011-04-18T22:57:00.004-04:00

There was an interesting article in the Montreal Gazette this weekend about arts and the federal election—a topic I hadn't seen discussed much this time out. It's certainly worth a read, as it polls some major arts advocacy orgs on their views re: the election. An excerpt:

Blindsided by $45 million in budget cuts before the fall 2008 federal election, the artistic community across the country and especially in Quebec vowed to drive Stephen Harper's Conservatives from power.

In the end, Harper won, the artists lost, and the cuts went ahead. Now, better organized both at the provincial and national level, the artists want their message heard more than ever.

But compared to the outrage of 2008, they're going about in a very polite, very Canadian way.

Without much fanfare, Quebec's Mouvement pour les arts et les lettres, which represents 14,000 artists, asked all five major federal parties to outline what they have in store for culture if elected.

The Quebec group wants to know where the parties stand on three issues: more funding for the Canada Council for the Arts, more funding for promotion of Quebec arts abroad, and anything else that'll have a "positive effect" on arts and culture.

Deadline for answers: the end of Friday. Results so far: unknown.

Read on for the rest at the Gazette.

A few other links that might be of interest on this front:

Cube Gallery in Ottawa is holding a local candidates panel (sans Conservative candidate) tomorrow, Tuesday, April 19 at 6:30pm

The artist group Department of Culture has put out a call for election-related projects and posted a whack of resources on their site

Happy, er, polling!

(Image of 2008 arts election rally by Dave Sidaway for the Montreal Gazette)

Protest in Pictures: Q&A with Sharon Hayes out in today's Post

2011-04-15T11:15:00.007-04:00

Over the past few days, it's been great to see the 1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei protest initiative come together in cities around the globe. This makes it an especially timely moment (as if protest hadn't been a big theme of 2011 already) to take a look at Sharon Hayes' In the Near Future, a series just opened at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver. In this series, which I enjoy every much, Hayes takes historical protest slogans to the streets around the world.

Last week, Hayes took some time to chat about In the Near Future on the phone with me. The resulting condensed Q&A is out in today's National Post. An excerpt:

Q Why did you start staging protests as art?

A There's two reasons. One had to do with my feeling, at the beginning of the second Bush administration, that street protest had lost its power to move politicians and publics. The other reason had to do with intersections between history, politics and speech. When I started this project, I'd just finished up another where I went onto the streets of New York leading up to the 2004 presidential election and asked people questions. One of the questions was, "What's the first political image you remember?" An 18-yearold man said that the first political image he remembered was of a black-power salute from the 1968 Mexico Olympics, a time he hadn't lived through. I became interested in how images allow us to access past political events we never experienced ourselves.

Q All the slogans you held were from past protests. Can you explain where some came from?

A Sure. I did this project in several cities, and the English-language slogans were mostly from New York and London. One from London was "Organise or Starve," which was from the late 19th-century labour movement in England. The other was "Votes for Women," from women's suffrage. The third of the London signs, "When is This Going to End?" was from a series of protests against police brutality that happened in Brixton, a London neighbourhood of people of African descent. In terms of New York actions, one was "Ratify the ERA." That's a contrast to "Votes for Women," because the ERA was never fulfilled. "Who Approved the War in Vietnam??" is a more obvious anachronism. There's also "I Am a Man," a slogan from the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers' strike. And there's one slogan -actually the first one I held up in New York -that says, "Actions Speak Louder than Words." For me, that's the funny ambivalence of the protest sign. Are these words or are these actions? In essence, they're both.

Read on at the Post for a bit more of what we discussed. There's also some really nice images of her work in the print edition.

Hayes has also done a lot of other interesting work around politics, speech and protest: Revolutionary Love, which took place during the 2008 election outside of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, and My Fellow Americans, a 10-hour performance where she read aloud all 36 of Ronald Reagan's Address to the Nation speeches. (These are just two examples of many.)

Interestingly, in some of her more recent work, Hayes focuses on a figure who acts as a "recorder" of public speech rather than a speaker. You can find a video of one of those related performances over at Art Review.

If you want to find out more about where Hayes is coming from, I highly recommend this 20-minute talk from a Creative Time conference in 2009:

(Image of one of Hayes' London actions from the Guardian)

Enjoying: Latitude 53's Writer in Residence Program, and Taking on Art's PR Problem

2011-04-13T22:05:00.008-04:00

A couple of (related) things I've enjoyed seeing of late:

1) Latitude 53's Writer in Residence Program

It's not often I see writer-in-residence programs at artist-run centres, but Edmonton's Latitude 53 has bravely entered the fray in the last few years with one, and I commend them for it. I find it even more impressive, in the Canadian ARC context, that they put their writers to work not on catalogue or brochure essays, but on blog posts that are widely accessible. I would love to see more programming like this from ARCs and other public galleries alike. Here's how they describe their program:

The writer in residence program is a new initiative from Latitude 53 that builds upon the mandate of Latitude 53 to provide a forum for dialogue about contemporary visual culture throughout communities. Situated as a six-month residency the writer engages Latitude 53 programming, the greater Edmonton-regional community and beyond through critical writing. The writer in residence will create a minimum of three writings a month on visual culture and may choose to coordinate, create, or incite critical dialogue about visual culture through other complementary programming activities as well.

Anyone else know of other programs like this in Canada? I'm often ignorant.

2) Latitude 53's New Writer-in-Residence Vows to Take on "Art's PR Problem"

In her first post for the latest L53 residency, artist and writer Anne Pasek has vowed to take on "art's PR problem." She has a few choice observations on this that resounded with me:

This crisis, as I see it, arises from several loci. Our art education has not caught up with the conceptual turns of contemporary art. Just as we would struggle miserably through the novels of Borges and Falkner were it not for the guidance of our teachers, the gestures of Yves Klein, Zhang Huan, or Frank Stella can seem pretty incomprehensible if we don’t have the pillars of philosophy, visual literacy, and history to fall back on. With the exception of a few innovative art education programs such as that of the Art Gallery of Alberta, I see this education as everywhere lacking.

Secondly, a lot of artists can’t write and don’t speak up. It may seem like a particularly cruel double-standard to expect artists to be both visually and literarily coherent, but all the bad artist’s statements out there really do art a disservice. While I understand the desire to avoid over-determining a viewer’s experience with didactics, I also see a profound cowardice in shrugging one’s shoulders and absolving oneself of responsibility for the interpretation of art once it enters the public sphere. More often than not this is laziness or poor form on the part of the artist and it does everyone a disservice when a viewer walks away feeling completely frustrated or confused. Please, artists, write good statements and speak eloquently about your art, or else you perpetuate the continual infantilization of artists in the world today.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the disconnect between art and the public also emerges from our lack of a coherent answer to the questions of What is art? and What can it do? This is where I really want to focus my residency for, as impossible as it is to answer these monolithic questions, they still beg a response in the form of continual and fluid speculation. When we have some expectations for the art we see- and when we as viewers are as engaged in the search for answers as the artists producing the work before us- then not only will we see some amazing things, we’ll also have a larger, more inclusive community. And that, I believe, it to everyone’s benefit.

Sure, Pasek's is a lofty goal, but having recently written about a meeting where the goal was proclaimed to make "Toronto the cultural capital of the world, not just the country" and where, in terms of this goal "failure is not an option,"my hyperbole-meter is wrecked at this moment in time.

My one (constructive) criticism at this point (and it is admittedly a matter of pot... kettle... black) would be to urge Latitude 53 writers to embed more links in their posts. If education on art is the issue, perhaps directing people to some helpful sources could, well, assist in alleviating a bit of that problem? Just sayin'.

(Image of mega-awesome keyboard in which one can only type the word "blog" (or perhaps, "glob") from Voices.com)

Different Pictures for New Culture Plan: Report on Final Creative Capital Initiative Consultation up at OpenFile Toronto

2011-04-12T11:10:00.008-04:00

Toronto's Culture Plan is being revamped at high speed this spring. Where the last 2003 plan took two years of consultations to write, this 2011 plan, to be released May 4, took two months.

The plan is worth considering for anyone in the cultural sector of our city as it lays out priorities and goals for municipal spending in the arts over (in my estimate) the next four to ten years.

As I found out at the final culture-plan consultation (officially called the Creative Capital Initiative consultation) on Thursday, April 7, the methamphetamine-esque pace of our new plan is driven by a need to get it in before council starts its budget process next month, as well as a service review this week. Both of these processes will determine, in the words of Councillor Janet Davis, “what will get axed and what survives," so the case for culture needs to be made for councillors before they get down to voting time.

You can find out more about what happened at that final consultation in my report recently posted over at OpenFile Toronto. An excerpt:

How can Toronto be a creative city if Mayor Rob Ford has launched a war on graffiti?

How important can the arts be in Toronto’s future if its new culture plan has mostly been written before youth are asked for input?

How vital can the arts be as an economic driver when many workers in the sector are poorly paid and possess little job security?

These were among the concerns expressed by some of the more than 100 people who attended the Creative Capital Initiative consultation at Toronto City Hall on April 7. It was the last of 11 such public meetings, and the only one aimed specifically at youth. The consultations, to gather recommendations for the city’s new culture plan, started in early February.

Councillor Michael Thompson, who led the push on the culture plan and is head of the Economic Development Committee, where the finalized culture plan will be unveiled May 4, says the speediness of the process also reflects his desire to prioritize culture at the city.

As Thompson told me in an interview, "This is not about lip service [for culture]. If it was, we would not ask that this matter comes forward in a very short time frame. I know they talked before about 'we could have something in a year's time,' and I just said 'I don't have a year. We don't have a year.'"

Thompson is bullish on culture as a business. When I asked him about people who might disagree with him, and say that art is sacred, not necessarily a commercial endeavour, he said, "I say they're entitled to their opinion... and they're wrong."

Thompson also pointed to the success of his father in law, photographer George Zimbel, as proof that can artistic success and business success can be intertwined. On his website, he also states more general facts and figures: "Toronto's cultural sector employs nearly 133,000 people and annually generates $9 billion in GDP... Between 1991 and 2007, creative occupations grew at more than twice the rate of the general labour force."

If you want to have input into the (mostly written) culture plan, tomorrow (April 13) is the cutoff. You can comment at http://www.livewithculture.ca/category/creative-capital-initiative/ or, I was told at the meeting, email rdavies@toronto.ca with your concerns.

More info on what happened at the consultations is available on the Creative Capital Initiative website and at Praxis Theatre, which helpfully solicited tweets from arts orgs during the last two consultations in the process.

(Image of CCI Consultations on April 7 by Nick Kozak for OpenFile)

Goodbye Museums, Hel-lo Markets! David Moos to Leave AGO for Own Collector Consultancy

2011-04-11T18:57:00.009-04:00

The always with-it Murray Whyte revealed on his Toronto Star blog today that David Moos is leaving his post as curator of contemporary art at the AGO. The Globe and Mail followed later in the day with a brief item.

In both items on Moos' departure, the curator indicates that he is leaving to do independent consulting for art collectors.

As Whyte reports, "No cloak and dagger, that I know of, but I spoke to David this afternoon, and he'll be serving as a private art advisor (his words) to local patrons in furtherance of acquiring significant international contemporary works both for institutional donation (like his old bosses) and their own collections. He called it a "missing piece of the puzzle" here, and a role that needed to be filled."

And as the Globe follows up, "In a brief interview, Moos said his job switch has been “in my mind for some time . . . [In the years ahead] I see myself as working very closely with a select group of collectors to build collections of international and Canadian art at the highest level.” Such a level is “uncommon in this city and this country, but is, when one travels internationally, not so uncommon . . . It’s an exhilarating moment.”

What resounds for me in these comments is some kind of refrain on the art world in general: the idea that if you want to go after the best art and the big guns, you should be working on the markets/sales/dealer side of the art world rather than the nonprofit/institutional side.

I don't know if that's what Moos meant, and I'm certainly not naive enough to believe that the markets end and the museums end of the art world are totally separate. But that resonance still exists for me, as it's clear that public museums, especially ones in Canada, are only capable of collecting so much given the fact that their budgets are more limited than that of corporate or certain individual collectors.

These ideas also remind me of some questions that came up around It Is What It Is, the recent-acquisitions-cum-national-biennial show at the National Gallery of Canada. I really enjoyed that exhibition and did find it representative of contemporary Canadian artmaking--in fact, I recommend ya'll give it a look before it closes April 24--but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't thinking to myself "Is this really the best in Canadian art? Or is it simply the best that our national public institution can afford?"

There's also a bit of a national diss in Moos' comments in saying that collections of international and contemporary art of the highest level are "uncommon" in Toronto and Canada.

Ah well. As frequent readers of this blog know, I'd just be happy if we could see our national and local collections of art more readily, so we could evaluate said situation for ourselves.

One more recurring idea this departure touched off for me: that there's more "freedom" in the private-art-world side than in the public-art-world side, ie. that public galleries have many more guidelines and checklists and hoops to jump through about what they should and shouldn't be collecting or exhibiting or advocating for. I can imagine that freedom would make a jump to the private side more attractive for many public-institution curators. In this type of realm, I often think of Jessica Bradley, who once worked at the AGO and the National Gallery of Canada but then got into art dealing.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see who steps into the role over at the AGO. And see what Moos does next, too, and whether it agrees with him as much as he predicts it might.

(Image of the AGO from its website)

Loved: Betty Woodman @ the Gardiner, Marian Bantjes @ Onsite at OCAD

2011-04-08T15:13:00.004-04:00

Let's face it, people. There is a lot of crap going on in the world that's depressing. Earthquakes, wars, violence... those are three topics that will conquer my inner sense of sunniness pretty much any day of the week.

So, given the amount of pain floating around in the global ether, I'm capable of being especially awed by works that leave me with a renewed sense of joy and hope.

In the past few weeks, I've taken in two such shows that especially evoked this effect: Betty Woodman @ the Gardiner Museum and Marian Bantjes @ Onsite at OCAD. My reviews of these (plus one of Sanaugaq, an intellectually illuminating little show at UTAC) are up at Posted Toronto and will be out in tomorrow's National Post print edition.

An excerpt:

Betty Woodman at the Gardiner Museum
111 Queen’s Park, to June 5
Betty Woodman is one of those rare artistic geniuses who melds critical insight, masterful skill and joyful exuberance. Her ceramics both elevate and deconstruct the high-art legacies of Matisse and Picasso, cracking their old-school paintings open with longstanding tensions between image and object, art and craft. Woodman’s knack is best demonstrated by her wall-long Ceramic ~~Paintings~~ Pictures. Their colourful depictions of flowers in vases are full of classic Matissean “luxe, calme et volumpte.” But the vases in these paintings aren’t just pictures — they’re actual vessels sitting just in front of the canvas, split in two as if to underline the supposed boundary between image and object. Even cheekier are Woodman’s small porcelains named after art-historical greats: Chardin is a platter with messy, loose gold slashes; Manet is a teacup in cobalt, turquoise and green; Picasso is a plain white plate. My favourite work, Odyssian Dreams, has dozens of painted clay shards hung on a wall so that the negative space between reads alternately as body and as vase — to me, a tart twist on the outdated notion of a vessel (or ye olde ur-vessel, woman) as an emptiness simply waiting to be defined. As with most shows at the smallish Gardiner, the main shortcoming is not being able to see more works. Nonetheless, in a troubled world, Woodman’s work is a balm — a reminder that beauty and progress can still exist, and maybe even coexist.

I realize that part at the end about women and vessels is more me than the artist, and a bit out there. But it's honestly what I got to thinking about on the spot as a result.

Also, if you love the Woodman works like I do, you may want to check out this audiocast of her lecture at the AGO earlier this year.

Read on at Posted Toronto for the Bantjes and Sanaugaq details.

(Image of some of Woodman's Ceramic Pictures from Frank Lloyd Gallery)

TO Culture Leaders Get Own All-Star Cards, T-Shirts

2011-04-07T16:19:00.006-04:00

Over the past week, a couple of initiatives have called out their must-know Toronto culture workers, producing all-star cards and T-shirts along the way.

Big on the cards front is Praxis Theatre, which has helpfully assembled pseudo-tradeable info on the Creative Capital Initiative advisory team—the group that will be advising Mayor Rob Ford on upcoming culture plans. Museums consultant Gail Lord, Toronto Arts Council head Claire Hopkinson and TIFF's Cameron Bailey all make an appearance. Fun stuff, with some definitely useful info on how each person is positioned as a culture-policy influencer in TO.

And on the T-shirts front is the City of Toronto itself. After announcing 12 local cultural champions at its Celebrate 27 launch last Thursday, it's worked with Joy Apparel to put the faces of these good folks on T-shirts. Included are poet Lillian Allen, late artist Doris McCarthy and performer Natalyn Tremblay, among others. A lot of them are lesser known names to me, and I enjoyed learning about them. You can check out the champions' line art and accomplishments/bios over on Celebrate 27's site.

More swag for Toronto art? Was that in the 2003 culture plan? Dunno, but I appreciate the deets from Praxis' cards and the recognition of hardworking folks on those city-made Ts.

(General image of trading cards--no art one's tho, dammit! from Dtobias on Wikimedia)

Forget art! You made those shoes???

2011-04-06T21:32:00.006-04:00

For a while now I've been hearing great things about clothing designer Natalie Purschwitz's Makeshift project. Currently featured in the Vancouver Art Gallery's "We: Vancouver" exhibition, Makeshift involved Purschwitz only wearing what clothing, footwear and accessories she could actually craft herself for an entire year.

Up until recently, I felt kind of "meh" about the project. Like... you're a clothing designer, how hard could this project really be? But then I looked at Purschwitz's blog, where she recorded in fair depth her outfits for each day from September 2009 to September 2010, and I was astounded. This was definitely one of those projects I needed to experience in volume in order to be impressed by. And I guess that would be the same for many others.

Also... shoes???? I was actually not aware until today that shoes were part of Purschwitz's plan. Shoes seem really, really hard to make. And I bet that they actually are. (This incredulosity of mine is exacerbated by the fact that I have some foot and hip problems, requiring me to buy expensive and unstylish nearly orthopedic footwear, and the prospect of walking around a large city in whatever horrible cardboard flipflop I might be able to craft for myself makes me want to give up on life. (Double parenthetical: I also realize how ridiculous it is to say that given how few people in the world actually have shoes, period, so I can see my own extreme privilege factor. Nonetheless I continue feel such dramatic statements are true.)) So, anyway, I really enjoyed seeing what footwear the artist ended up piecing together, like the bright blue boots that seem to be folded out of three or four different planes, and held together by grommets and ribbon or something. Her early posts on footwear failures are also interesting.

To sum up, this is just a little post to chime in and say, yes, that Makeshift project sure is just the darnedest. And that sometimes you (ahem) have to browse a few dozen posts to figure that out.

One last thing that struck me about this project... during it, Purschwitz was using something called "Parking Spot," an unconventionally funded artspace provided by patron of the arts Scott Hawthorn for a year at a time. (You can find out more in Makeshift's September 30, 2009, post.) Hadn't heard of this space or model before. Whoda thunk it?

(Image from Natalie Purschwitz from Day 360 of her Makeshift project blog)

Last Chance to Input on Toronto's New Culture Plan April 7

2011-04-05T14:25:00.006-04:00

This Thursday, April 7, offers the public its last in-person chance to help develop Toronto's new culture plan, which will be brought to bureaucrats in May. Since February, there's been almost a dozen meetings on this new culture plan, most of them focus grouped around certain topics like "sustainable space and cultural entrepreneurship" and "screen-based industries."

This final April 7 meeting at City Hall will focus on youth and youth-focused organizations. In terms of topics, I hope this is widely viewed as a "last but not least" scenario. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, "Arts education in childhood is the most significant predictor of both arts attendance and personal arts creation throughout the rest of a person's life."

In other words, arts institutions, this is a big one to listen up on and contribute to!

If you can't make it to the meeting, the organizers say they will be considering comments left at http://www.livewithculture.ca/category/creative-capital-initiative/ into account as well.

And if it's a transcript you're looking for, the good folks at @praxistheatre will be using the Twitter hashtag #creativeTO, as they did at a March 28 public meeting, to record the event as well.