Friday, July 31, 2009

Recommended: Steve Power, Barbara Hobot, Sarah Millman


Did a bunch of gallery hopping this afternoon. Besides the newly emptied sidewalk garbage bins (yay end of city strike) I enjoyed a few other highlights:

1) Steve Powers at Show & Tell Gallery - Basically, the piece above, "My Other Ride is Vegan" totally made me crack up. "Negotiation is My Religion" in the gallery window is also great. Then I realized looking at his bio that it was Powers who did the Coney Island Waterboarding Thrill Ride last year in NYC. Nice diversity and directness. Also enjoyed co-exhibitor Greg LaMarche's collages of zeros an o's. They reminded me of Kristiina Lahde's zero collages, which, if LaMarche's stuff grabs you, you should totally check out.

2) Barbara Hobot at Peak Gallery - Hobot's leather-and-gold-chain disco ball, called Dyskoteka, caught my eye at Peak's summer group show. Her trio of mystic hoodies was not as strong, but still interesting. Would be great to see more of her work in Toronto.

3) Sarah Gregg Millman @ Mercer Union - Millman's videos, seem to be, in some ways, of women on the verge of a nervous hipster breakdown. And I mean that in a good way. There's a kind of dealing in this work with classic-but-still-contemporary stuff around differences between how one is perceived as a woman--maybe as a waitress, as single, as lower-class, as nothing but an "energetic, outgoing, team player" with nice fingernails--and how one wants to be perceived--perhaps, as one of Millman's titles suggests, someone as revolutionary and brash in attitude as Kanye West. Or someone bearing the magic and preciousness and potential privilege of pregnancy. Or someone who thrashes in the dark seas fearlessly at night before returning to serve french toast to an unsuspecting husband and kids. It's some very human stuff.

Mercer U. co-exhibitor Johanna Billing's video, This is How We Walk on the Moon, is more gentle and understated. But if you can give it some time to wash over you, it is also effective, dealing with how we learn and relearn the things we need to know--in this case, showcasing a group of Scottish musicians, who often sing about the sea but have rarely been on it, as they learn to sail. Both interesting shows on change, whether longed for or unexpected.

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Thursday, July 30, 2009

Out Today: Q&A on Coming of Age: American Art 1850s to 1950s


As the American president gets ready to sit down with controversy and a coupla beers, I'd hoped to take a look at past self-images of America via "Coming of Age: American Art 1850s to 1950s." This travelling show is having its sole Canadian stop at the Musee national des beaux arts du Quebec right now. Unfortunately, I couldn't get curator Daniel Drouin to bite on any of my Obama/Shepard Fairey convo attempts. (He pleaded "historical curator.") But, as the Q&A published in the National Post shows today, Drouin did riddle me this on some of the show's bad British reviews:

Q When this show was in England, the London Evening Standard's critic called it "too much of a muddled rag-bag to serve anyone's purpose." What's your response?

A This show was presented in a variety of venues: Venice, London, Dallas and Fort Lauderdale. I saw the show in London, and there were no text explanations on the walls of the galleries. But here it's totally different; I created text supports everywhere and we also offer our visitors an audio guide with a deep explanation about all these paintings. It's not the same exhibition that I've seen before.


Image of John Sloan's Sunday, Women Drying their Hair 1912 from the MNABQ

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Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The Art of Birth, Motherhood and Kids


My sister gave birth a couple of days ago. So that's probably why this piece, Ron Mueck's Mother and Child, struck me with particular force when I was editing some photographs at one of my jobs today. It got me thinking about other pieces on birth and motherhood—a pretty inexhaustible genre, rilly. Art Fag City did a great job of surveying baby-related art earlier this year, and I'm sure Regina Hackett has made it the topic of one of her many themed posts at some point. So I'm not going to reinvent the wheel--just mention a few works that come to mind.
Louise Bourgeois's Maman, however sinister, pops into my head:

As does, in that difficult vein, Sally Mann...

and (yikes! and ha! on this pic) Tierney Gearon:

Nicholas Nixon's family pictures are difficult to pull into a blog. Here's a couple, small, but I recommend perusing the assortment available at Fraenkel Gallery's site.


Mary Kelly's Post-Partum Document is another inescapable link-to:

Adam Fuss's baby photograms as well:

I know lots is missing here. Any other suggestions for works on this theme are welcome.

Image of Ron Mueck's Mother and Child from the BBC; Image of Sally Mann's Emmett, Jessie, and Virginia from Art21; Gearon image from Mothers of Invention; Image of Nicholas Nixon's Clementine, Cambridge, 1986 and Cambridge, 1985, from Collection Frac Lorraine; Mary Kelly Post Partum Document detail from Xtra; Adam Fuss's Untitled 1994 from Tufts

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Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Where LC and the OC meet PS1 and MOMA?


Having just returned from a conversation with some friends about the can't-look-away-horrors of the TV show Dating in the Dark, I feel no shame whatsoever in saying an exhibition of LC and OC portraits looks like a real must-see. Entitled "With Friends Like These..." the latest show of Karin Bubas's work seems to consist of watercolour-style portraits of reality-show stars from The Hills. (Past series from Bubas have included a look at the drama queens from Dynasty.) The image above is called, appropriately, Lauren Crying, 2009. The show opens TONIGHT at the Charles H. Scott Gallery in Vancouver and can only (we hope!) soon be coming to other MTV-series-besotted lands. (Thanks to Lorissa Sengara for the tip!)

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Monday, July 27, 2009

Enjoying the Old and the New in Ottawa

So I went to Ottawa briefly last week and enjoyed some surprises—some new, many old.

At the National Gallery, I took in the Thomas Nozkowski, Scott McFarland and Nomads exhibitions, as well as the more art historical From Raphael to Caracci show.

It was good for me to see the Nozkowskis in person, but I must note that the gallery only included a very few works from the 1980s, making it difficult to buy this as a survey of the artist's 30-year-plus career.

The best part for me was actually the fact that one exit for the exhibition led to the 20th century Canadian collection galleries, where I wandered about afterwards and took in great works by Gathie Falk, Greg Curnoe, Claude Tousignant and (going a little further back in the chronology) Prudence Heward and FH Varley. It's really the permanent collection that left an impression on me this time around—ok, perhaps thanks in part to Nozkowski quotes around the long-term purpose and magic of art and seeing. In any case the collection looked very good and the galleries seemed well cared for despite renovations of a nearby courtyard. (Also... could we get a Heward survey circulating again sometime? Her work was just rad, very strong, and there's many under-40s like me who would find it an education.)

Scott McFarland was also good in person; I just love the images of people working in gardens and with animals, however altered they might be. Lush and crowded and strange.

Nomads was smaller than I expected but I ended up loving the Gareth Moore despite my trepidation around his "next big thing" reputation. It was his video of spliced travelogue scenes, a contrast to his usual decrepit-seeming objects, that really won me over. In this video, everything is in motion: caterpillars, alligators, bears, trains, airplanes, lights, beer, socks, sinks, water. It's better than I'm making it sound, really, and I hope he shows it again elsewhere. Geoffrey Farmer also lived up to the hype with an unphotographable installation, The Surgeon and the Photographer, where paper and cloth figures really do seem infused with life.

Winning me over extra was a couple of large contemporary pieces on diplay, including the Zilvinas Kempinas "Double O" piece that stood out for me in Madrid (a loan) and a Tony Cragg sculpture, A Place in my Heart, that seemed like aortic pipes sheathed in dice (in the collection).

But the *best* in a strange, quirky way was to be found across the road at the small city-run Karsh-Masson Gallery. The space was showing some Karsh portraits as well as (here's that best part) an old 1950s NFB newsreel discussing "the increasing popularity of photography today." In addition to that campy midcentury announcer and old shots of Parliament Hill, you got to see Karsh in action photographing one of Canada's prime ministers. Hearing him describe his process as being contingent on conversation and sympathy was really illuminating.

When I got home, this show led me to take a closer look at Ottawa's Karsh Festival, an event designed to commemorate the centenary of Karsh's birth. The sad part of the fest from my perspective is that it highlights the total lack of a building (still! after multiple bids and government promises and then cancellations) for the Portrait Gallery of Canada. So rather than having a dedicated venue like that, the festival is spread throughout Ottawa. That's not such a bad thing in itself, and it makes you feel all plucky and resourceful. But the fact that the main exhibition is at the suburban Museum of Science and Technology is very inconvenient and awkward.

Still, I had fun tonight looking through one of the festival's online components—My Karsh, an enhanced Flickr group run by the festival that invites anyone to submit their own pictures taken by Karsh, as well as related stories. (Karsh started out in wedding and portrait photography, and continued to offer discounted rates to Ottawa residents even after he became famous.)

There's a lot of sentiment to be plumbed in this online assortment of 80-some pics and tales: a lot of wartime wedding stories, remembrances of times past, of parents and grandparents who sat for a Karsh picture, of factory work at the time. There's even a tale of a young couple brought together by Karsh's photo studio—all that old romantic stuff. Definitely worth a click-through—just ignore the "Karsh Nut" posting "Are you interested in selling this picture?" at the end of various posts! And remember that Flickr does not a national portrait gallery make!

Prudence Heward image from Movie Time Capsule (?); Scott McFarland image from Monte Clark Gallery; Image of Tony Cragg's A Place in My Heart from Cybermuse; One of the images from the My Karsh Flickr Group;

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Saturday, July 25, 2009

Kurt Vonnegut: Light of Hack Hope

For all those of us who write a bit for money—not love nor glory—a hopeful thought or two from Kurt Vonnegut:

Interviewer: You have been a public relations man and an advertising man—

Vonnegut: Oh, I imagine.

Interviewer: Was this painful? I mean—did you feel your talent was being wasted, being crippled?

Vonnegut: No. That's romance—that work of that sort damages a writer's soul. At Iowa, Dick Yates and I used to give a lecture each year on the writer and the free-enterprise system. The students hated it. We would talk about all the hack jobs writers could take in case they found themselves starving to death, or in case they wanted to accumulate enough capital to finance the writing of a book. Since publishers aren't putting money into first novels anymore, and since the magazines have died, and since television isn't buying from young freelancers anymore, and since the foundations only give grants to old poops like me, young writers are going to have to support themselves as shameless hacks. Otherwise, we are soon going to find ourselves without a contemporary literature. There is only one genuinely ghastly thing hack jobs do to writers, and that is to waste their precious time.


From The Paris Review Interviews, Vol 1.

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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

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