Saturday, April 26, 2008

Interview: Subconscious City in Winnipeg


I spent the first eleven years of my life in Winnipeg, and I'm always interested in the swath of great artists that seem to come out of the place. So I was excited to talk with Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan about their latest survey of 'Peg productivity, Subconscious City. You can read my National Post interview with them here.

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Review: Kurt Bigenho @ PM Gallery


What can I say? At his current PM Gallery show, it seems Kurt Bigenho is trying to blind art with science. But does he succeed? Read on here for my NOW Magazine review.

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Monday, April 21, 2008

Canadian museums: Decidedly not free at last

Lately, I've been doing some more cultural commentary blogging for Spacing.ca. One of my self-chosen beats is museums and museum access issues. It's a good time to be writing about these things, as the ROM made an access announcement this weekend. You can read my most recent critiques herehere and here.

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At the Galleries: King & Spadina


My latest gallery hop for the National Post's Toronto section took me to the intersection of King and Spadina for a mix of work both old and new, like the nabe. Click here to see my pick of the lot, like John Kissick, above.

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Interview: ARENA @ the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia


Stanley Cup fever is hitting some areas of Canada hard right now. But if you're sick of the usual play-by-plays there's another way to enjoy hockey right now: namely, through art at a Halifax museum. ARENA is a massive show on hockey-themed fine art (and it's not just Wayne Gretzky posters, natch). Read on here for my National Post interview with show curator Ray Cronin.

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Monday, April 14, 2008

Feature: Crossing Communities in Herizons


Living in the Big Smoke, my sense of what's going on art-wise, and especially art-as-activism-wise, in Canada tends to get obscured by Toronto-centric buzz. How happy I was, then, to encounter the work of Crossing Communities, an impressive Winnipeg arts org, this fall.

Crossing Communities has provided art studio space and training for women and youth at risk of imprisonment for roughly a decade. This January saw a public-awareness leap forward with a showing of their project "Pictures of Self-Harm" at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. In this extraordinary project, women with experience of addiction, homelessness and sex-trade work tell their own stories through film and video.

I was lucky enough to get to speak with project founder Edith Regier in late 2007; the resulting interview informs a feature article in the current Spring 2008 issue of Herizons. Read on here to order a copy of the mag, and read on here to find out more about the org.

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Thursday, April 10, 2008

Interview: Eddo Stern


Eddo Stern is a well-known figure in the worlds of game design and electronic art. Me, the last video game I actually mastered was Donkey King (a cut-rate version of Donkey Kong for the all the TRS-80 Radio Shacksters). Still, Stern took the time this week to explain his works in a way tech-plebes like myself can understand. An extremely condensed version of the interview was published in today's National Post. Once I figure out my own computer, I will post the full transcript.

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