
In 2008, Montrealer Benoit Aquin--who had the unglamorous job of shooting for local alt-weeklies from 1989 to 2001--won the $75,000 international Prix Pictet in photography and sustainability for his documentation of Chinese dust storms. With that series of work now showing at Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto, I sat down for a brief chat with Aquin. Today, the National Post published our condensed Q&A. Here's an excerpt which actually kind of surprised me--on culture as a sustainability issue:
Q Is there anything else you'd want people to think about when looking at these pictures?
A Well, I wish our governments would invest more in cultural institutions and in art, because I think it creates strong bonds between people. And I think those bonds protect us from chaos. Think of Haiti, or Somalia -- these are places where cultural institutions were underestimated. I worked in Haiti recently. When I see our governments cutting into culture, I don't think it's very lucid.
Q So culture is a different kind of sustainability issue?
A Yes, it's very important. Chaos can appear very quickly, and things can change very fast. If there is creativity and bonds between people, it may take a better direction when something hard happens.
Image of one of Aquin's dust bowl pictures from photographie.com
Thursday, March 11, 2010
From Rice Bowl to Dust Bowl: Q&A with award-winning photog Benoit Aquin
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Micah Lexier's Provenance Project: Dealer Non-Drama?

One of the more unusual art projects I've seen this year is Micah Lexier's Provenance. For it, Lexier got a dozen commercial galleries to exhibit one of his arrow-sculptures in their back rooms. The reason this struck me as unusual was that usually an artist only shows with one commercial dealer at a time--sharing of artists does occasionally happen for group shows, but something on this scale is very rare to nonexistent.
Today the National Post published my brief Q&A with Lexier on his project. Here's an excerpt:
Q Usually an artist shows exclusively at one commercial gallery in a given city. How and why did Provenance, which is displayed at multiple dealers this fall, come together?
A I think this project is, in a way, unprecedented. It started because I recently moved back to Toronto after living in New York for nine years, and I just felt at home like I never had before. It was kind of a zeitgeist moment for me. After years of being a younger artist, playing. I got to a point where I felt like I knew all these people, and liked them. I also like variations on a theme, and I like to connect and collaborate. So, corny as it sounds, this project was partly about identifying a community.
Overall, I really like the project; I do think it achieves its goal of marking a community of interest--or at least an "I was here" of a sort. More pics:





Top image of Lexier's Provenance arrow at Angell Gallery; then Provenance at Stephen Bulger Gallery, Diaz Contemporary, MKG127, Le Gallery, Christopher Cutts and Olga Korper. Both photos by Toni Hafkensheid
Friday, July 24, 2009
Out today: Q&A with Scott Conarroe

According to news reports, VIA rail is about to strike today, putting thousands of train passengers across the country in limbo (including yours truly). The lineups won't be a pretty picture.
Still, photographer Scott Conarroe's images of railways are decidedly more enjoyable. Today the National Post published my Q&A with Conarroe on his just-opened Toronto show at Stephen Bulger Gallery, the product of many months of criss-crossing North America. Here's an excerpt:
Q You're on the younger side, while railways are a pretty old form of transport. Why did you do a project on them?
A Railways aren't old, they're classic. [Laughs.] I started this project because a lot of my pictures had train tracks in them anyway. So I figured it must be something that I'm interested in exploring.
Then I took a cross-country trip and saw some trestles that had been wrecked in forest fires very close to where the forest fires are right now in Kelowna, B. C. I saw handcart enthusiasts who came from all over the States to Saskatchewan because it has miles of unused railway. They'd put their handcarts on the track and pump along to the next stop while their friends would follow in the RV. I saw the new High Line park in New York City, this starchitect-redesigned railway turned into a park. So it looked like there was all this fascinating stuff going on on top of old railways, and that it could be due for an inventory.
In his writing for the show, Conarroe mentions his dad telling stories of taking tires off his car and riding the rails to barn dances, and his grandad making him a bracelet out of squished copper pennies. That personal connection is discussed a bit further along in the article.
Image of Scott Conarroe's Trailer Park, Wendover, UT 2008 from his website
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
A World that seems Off: Motorola's Mateo Guez Collabo

A quick note on a current exhibition that baffles me/concerns me somewhat. For the month of May, the window of Camera, the bar and screening space attached to Stephen Bulger Gallery, has been taken over by something called "Off World." When you walk by, you see the large window covered with black vinyl. In a few places (maybe 8 to 10 or so) the black vinyl has been cut away to reveal a cellphone screen unfurling images of kids scavenging and playing in Smoky Mountain, a slum/refuse site in the Philippines.
The project is a collaboration between Motorola (one can see their logo on each small screen) and artist/filmmaker Mateo Guez. There is a special mobile-tech aspect in that the images can be downloaded to one's own phone via Bluetooth (or as I like to describe it, magic). The images can also be downloaded from the "Off World" website, with new sets of images uploaded weekly.
The whole thing makes me a bit uncomfortable. Uncomfortable, I guess, about these kids not being compensated by Motorola for their participation in this whole sponsorship thing. (You think at least they could've given them a phone or something, though I'm sure that would seem similarly in poor taste.)
It also actually makes me uncomfortable that these are images people can take with them on their phone, a discomfort again related, perhaps, to the privilege of having this technology to tote around pictures of people whose yearly income probably doesn't even total the cost of said mobile device.
At the same time, I can reason the other way with myself--like well, these are images of extreme poverty, and they should make you uncomfortable. Or, well, at least more people know now about these kids and their situation--isn't that a good thing? And don't people tote around/possess newspapers and magazines full of horrific images, for which the subjects are not compensated one iota? How is it different or worse toting around the images on a phone?
Still, I feel somehow that this dialogue, internal or otherwise, is not really justified by the means. Ideas? Gripes? Defenses?
Image of Mateo Guez's Super Hero, Smokey Mountain, 2008 from Contact Festival