Artist Jason McLean, who recently moved to Toronto after 18 years in Vancouver, has a pretty interesting practice. As I've mentioned here before, he works in drawing as well as sculpture and multiples. Particularly striking are his reworkings of sports equipment, such as those seen above.
Since McLean is having a show at Jessica Bradley in Toronto right now, it seemed an opportune time to sit down and have a chat. Today, a condensed version of same was published in the National Post. Here's an excerpt:
Q Often you paint on old photographs or used sports equipment. Why?
A Sometimes I enjoy the awkwardness between sports and art. I'ma closet sports fan, and I like the way a recognizable object opens up to a larger audience.
The photos partly started when I worked for Adbusters. They wanted me to work over 40or 50 pharmaceutical photos. Book art by people like Marc Bell influenced me, too.
But sometimes, there's so much age in an object you can't go wrong working with it! It's kind of like an older person who has all sorts of stories. It's so much more interesting than someone new, in a way.
...
Q In addition to making art, you collect it. Why?
A It's like an addiction, I guess. In my early years, I liked to collect sporting cards, trading them and getting deals.
Art collecting is sometimes about remembering people when you leave a city. Sometimes it's about wanting to make a home feel different. Sometimes people inspire you, so if you can acquire something of theirs, it seems magical.
I'm really into trading art, too. We've traded art for wholesale fruit, birthing doulas, house tiling and law work. It's like, what can't you trade? I've never traded for a car, but then again, I don't drive.
Image of one of McLean's works (not in the Bradley show) from StyleServer
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Storied Objects: Q&A with Jason McLean
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Arts Journalism Panel (Slash Prairie Dog Meetup?) April 20
Over the past few days, many art bloggers have been giving the New Museum's Richard Flood a lot of rightful flack for his comments on bloggers being prairie dogs. (To be clear, he hoped for a negative association on this comparison, though I must say I kind of like prairie dogs--that's what you get for spending developmental years in the same province as the Torrington Gopher Hole Museum.)
It seems that some related themes might be raised--albeit more subtly--in the Canadian Journalism Foundation's upcoming panel, "Arts Journalism: Staying Critical in the Digital Age," which takes place April 20 at Innis Town Hall in Toronto.
According to the event's press info,
From the cultural giants of the past to the celebrity culture of today, how arts criticism and literary journalism have changed. Mainstream media cutbacks and the proliferation of blogging means everyone is a critic. Can the web save arts journalism? A CJF Forum moderated by Bronwyn Drainie, Editor of the Literary Review of Canada, and featuring Kamal Al-Solaylee, Assistant Professor at Ryerson and former theatre critic at the Globe and Mail, Seamus O'Regan, co-host of CTV's Canada AM and host of Arts & Minds and The O'Regan Files on Bravo!, and Globe and Mail columnist and feature writer Kate Taylor, currently on leave as the Atkinson Fellow for 2009-2010.
Though I'm looking forward to attending this event--panels on arts journalism (not just art criticism) are few and far between in these parts--I must note that despite the setup's reference to blogging, no one on this panel is a blogger, nor seems to work heavily on the interwebs. Ah well. At least Kate Taylor has been studying "Canadian cultural sovereignty in the digital age" for her Atkinson Fellowship, and Seamus O'Regan seems to have a Twitter account. It will be interesting to see what discussion is generated.
Image of "The Train to Gopherville is Coming" from jky.net
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Out today: Queen West Reviews of Rasmussen, Building Storeys & Micah Adams
While posters for Art Condominiums plaster Queen West these days, actual art can seem harder to find. (Greener Pastures Gallery is now a hair salon, for instance.) But there's still a few good shows out there, as I point out in today's National Post gallery column. Here's an excerpt:
Elise Rasmussen at Katharine Mulherin, 1082 Queen St. W.
Toronto-trained, Brooklyn-based artist Elise Rasmussen offers an alternately dreamy and dismal look at Newfoundland in this compact solo show. Revving up the romanticism are four large photos of windswept landscapes and lasses looking out to sea. Bringing the despair is a small-town mural of a bustling Main Street shown right next to the actual ultra-deserted strip. These extremes intertwine in other works, like After Shanawdithit, which photographs 30 Newfoundland women posing the same way the last known Beothuk did in a famed painting. A double-frame video, titled When the Sun Crosses the Line that Wind Will Rule the Weather, reinforces the effect, presenting shots of quaint fishermen and sunny forests alongside a voice-over on cultural extinction. First, Rasmussen seems to suggest, the Beothuk were driven to their deaths. Since then, the way of life that drove them out -- the colonial fishery -- has met dire straits, too. There's no resolution, and no masterpieces, but certainly evocative and considered stuff. Overall, Rasmussen's show represents a thoughtful attempt to get inside a place and its difficult complexities. To March 28.
Besides my other picks in the paper at the Gladstone and Queenspecific, I recommend Dorian Fitzgerald's show at Clint Roenisch--though I admit I'm a bit biased, having known Fitzgerald socially for a couple of years. Will Munro's show at Paul Petro, which closes this weekend, is also worth a stop by.
Image of Elise Rasmussen's Zephyr of the Bay from her website
Friday, March 26, 2010
Mailbag: Was my Sullivan Review Justified?
At the Bring It panel in December, I urged people who had concerns about art coverage in any publication to write a letter to the editor. Without reader feedback, editors, publishers and writers have little indication that art coverage is being read, let alone engaged with.
So I'm appreciative of the following letter that appeared in this week's NOW, referring to my March 4 Francoise Sullivan review:
Sullivan overlooked
Leah Sandals’s research on the Françoise Sullivan exhibition at the AGO (NOW, March 4-10) somehow managed to completely overlook the dance performance of Sullivan’s work at Walker Court.
This performance was well advertised and put on in partnership with Women’s Art Resource Centre, where there is currently an exhibition of Sullivan’s most recent paintings.
I curated this show. NOW had a listing in the must-see shows for the opening. So this begs me to ask: do your art critics look at their own magazine while doing research for their reviews?
Natalie Olanick
Montreal
I'm heartened by this letter because Olanick clearly cares about Francoise Sullivan's art and how it is represented--something I care about too. She's also willing to put her point of view out there, and I appreciate the time and effort it took to do that.
Looking over my review for how I might have contributed to Olanick's dismay, I see I could've summarized my main point more clearly, rather than just implying it. That point would be: while Sullivan's legacy is indeed long and admirable, the AGO failed to do it justice in this show.
However, that poor writing decision aside, I still stand by my original 2-N review. Here's why:
First, I was genuinely disappointed by this AGO show.
When I first learned the gallery was planning a Sullivan exhibition, I was excited. Sullivan is an influential, prolific and longstanding Canadian artist, so I was anticipating that a museum show pitched as a celebration of her career would demonstrate that legacy to the public by (a) being of significant/appropriate installation size, (b) including work from a variety of eras, particularly historical ones and (c) perhaps even including work by a few of the many artists she had influenced.
As a result, I was crestfallen to visit the show and see just one smallish room allotted, exhibiting works from just two points in Sullivan's long and varied career. Sullivan deserves much better than this as a major-museum celebration of her successes, as do visitors.
Second, in a brief, current-show review, the writer's main obligation is to assess a months-long exhibition as most members of the public might actually see it (ie. sans one-night performance) and let them know whether the exhibition is worth their time and money (which in this case would involve forking over an $18 admission fee).
In this type of short article, it is not the reviewer's job to include information about related events (particularly long-past ones, like the single February 10 performance) and thematically akin shows which the exhibition itself doesn't bother to reference. In an interview, feature or long, post-show review, sure, these other types of events or shows might be up for inclusion. But they're far from compulsory in a briefer, more user-oriented context.
Third, it is crucial for a vital criticism that writers review not just artists but exhibitions. Again, we can all agree that Sullivan is a terrific artist. But did this show deliver on what it promised? A museum-level celebration of a career? Hell, no. It was like paying for a Springsteen tribute concert and getting just two or three songs performed. Or ordering a hardcover Atwood biography only to discover, when the order is delivered, that it's a 16-page leaflet.
This said, Olanick's letter did prompt a few questions that were new and relevant to me: why didn't the AGO make footage from the February 10 Sullivan performance available to exhibition visitors? In the age of digital video, it seems like this is would be somewhat doable, and extend the benefit of these types of one-night events over a run of several months.
Also, why didn't the AGO refer visitors to the concurrent WARC exhibition? Or at least provide a couple of perfunctory reference texts in the exhibition space for people who wanted to find out more? If Olanick is concerned about how the public is going to experience Sullivan through this exhibition, I urge her to craft another cogent letter—this one addressed to 317 Dundas Street West.
Image from Cartoonists with Attitude
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Critical Canvas: Q&A with Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun
When I was visiting the National Gallery last year, I really enjoyed a few works I saw by Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun--they seemed at once to be abstract and politically pointed. (I'm thinking here of Tweaker, a beautiful abstract-seeming painting that also refers to drug addiction and First Nations issues.) Looking at his work later online, I also really enjoyed how he took First-Nations symbols and turned them, kind of conversely, into "real-world" figures. (The image above, New Chiefs on the Land, is a good example of this stream of his work.)
So when I heard Yuxweluptun was having two concurrent shows in Vancouver--one at dealer Buschlen Mowatt and one at the nonprofit Contemporary Art Gallery--I thought it would be a great chance to chat with him. The resulting Q&A is out in today's National Post. Here's an excerpt:
Q Other paintings of yours can seem quite abstract. How do those relate to your concerns?
A Well, we can look at land claims in an abstract way. How much money do you want to settle this land? OK, well, then, what price do I put on a rainbow that touches my land? Maybe I have to look at every raindrop that created the rainbow. And then I have to look at every cloud that creates the raindrop. And so on.
Basically, I'm working to look at all these things, and to create a style that translates one culture into another culture so others can see it. I'm an artist, so I think that's in my job description--I'm responsible for looking at life, whether it's a tree in the forest or the fact that Frank Paul was dragged out to die in the rain.
Q What else do you make paintings for?
A Well, for all these heavy things I've talked about, I do enjoy creating them. Art can be a lot of fun, a way of helping others. I've worked for over 30 years to develop my style. In the past, I made a lot of black and white drawings because I wasn't sure I was skilled enough to paint those same images. Sometimes it's taken 20 years between the initial drawing and the final painting.
The hardest artwork I ever did was about two Indian heroin addicts. I sat there and drank my beer while they shot up. And there was no totem pole. There was no framework that would allow me to deal with that cultural context. I had to look at it in a different form--instead of a physical, humanoid image, I took it to a symbolic level.
Overall, I think what comes out in my work is the lived experience instead of the gaze, or the lived experience instead of somebody else's gaze.
The artist also has work in the Vancouver Art Gallery's group show Landscape Manual, and the group show on abstraction in First Nations art at the National Gallery continues to April 2010.
Image of Yuxweluptun's New Chiefs on the Land from Guestlife.com
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Enjoyed: Graham Gillmore at Clark & Faria
I really enjoyed Graham Gillmore's show at Clark & Faria, which closed on the weekend. Though the above work wasn't in the show, it's a good example of the way Gillmore is really able to deal interestingly with text and colour. Kind of a shoe-in for a word person who likes art, but whatever.
On a somewhat related note, I noticed while I was visiting the Distillery that Gibsone Jessop is gone—windows papered over, sign removed. This makes it the fourth gallery to depart the Distillery in less than a year. (Though their site mentions in small print that it's moving elsewhere, no other address is listed. I'll believe it when I see it--Sandra Ainsley and Artcore's new spaces having gone MIA.)
While some might say the galleries that left were basically "leaving since they opened," and would have failed anywhere in town, I marvel at the Distillery's ability to shed these art venues while at the same time retain some of their cultural branding cachet. It's kind of like Gentrification Classic (TM), with the art businesses coming in to raise property values until Fresh & Wild arrives. Now I know Fresh & Wild has its benefits—particularly because there's no grocery store nearby to feed local condo dwellers—but it's sad to see the area lose a bit of its art-critical mass. I don't shed a tear for these galleries that have left, but that kind of planning strategy is saddening.
Then again, who knows? Maybe all these guys skipped rent. Anyone with details is welcome to share.
Image of Graham Gillmore's Rejection Letter 2009 from canadianart.ca
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Comic Relief
Sometimes, when you're an editor-type/word nerd having a tough day, you can happen upon a typo that will bring a little levity. Thank you, Piccolo Ristorante. Thank you, rack of lamp!
