Excited About: Guerilla Girls at Galerie de l'UQAM

This morning on ye olde CBC radio, I got to hear a sports pundit make an annoyingly false statement -- namely that sexism simply doesn't exist for the "young folks". In his mind, sure, his generation (I'm guessing middle aged) was capable of being sexist, but certainly not those post-racial, post-difference, Obama-votin' youngsters!

What-ever.

Anyway, though dude was discussing soccer, not sculpture, I gotta just yet again restate the obvious: sexism (and other kinds of discrimination based on outward identity) most certainly do exist across all generations. Though things have gotten a lot better in recent years for the ladies (a fact for which I ironically thank Goddess) I hope my sports-loving colleague simply somehow failed to read the fairly recent news of profoundly ingrained sex harrassment in Ontario high schools? Or missed the release of the WHO report that shows women of all ages around the world continue to die because of ongoing sexism?

In any case, I'm very happy the Guerilla Girls are still working hard to put the lie to the idea that sexism is all over and done with. Next week, the GGs are releasing a new poster commissioned by the Galerie de l'UQAM. The commission, and a related exhibition, are timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Ecole Polytechnique shootings, which, as most of us know, specifically targeted women.

The show is only slated to be up for a short time (December 4 to 19) but hopefully the related poster--as with so many GG gems--will live on in wide distribution.

Image of the Guerilla Girls' UQAM poster from their website

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Janet Bellotto, Kathleen Hearn, Jin-Me Yoon Reviewed today in National Post

There's a number of strong shows on at 401 Richmond right now, and today's National Post contains my reviews of three: Janet Bellotto @ Red Head, Kathleen Hearn @ YYZ and Jin-Me Yoon @ Trinity Square Video. Here's an excerpt:

Dubai-based artist and Toronto native Janet Bellotto won attention last year when she exhibited a whale-skeleton sculpture at Red Head -- a show long on concept but a bit short on craft. Thankfully, Bellotto's new exhibition Wave is more satisfying. In it, she offers a topsy-turvy installation, with mountain-village landscapes and ersatz power poles hanging upside-down from the ceiling. The surfaces of many objects morph in relation to one's position, making streetscapes shift into hard, weathered wood and other surprises. A related film of an underwater scene grooves along to a jazzy headphone soundtrack. Overall, the feel is cute and enjoyable -- almost too cute, in fact, to conjure the more serious themes of looming piracy and environmental change that Bellotto is ostensibly aiming at. While one does successfully get the sense of being frozen for a moment under the prismatic shifts of a rogue wave, the show ends up more Little Mermaid than Moby Dick -- not horrible, but not quite what the artist may have intended.

If you're headed over, note Irish Venice Biennale-er Willie Doherty has a small show closing at Prefix this weekend, while A Space is hosting a smart group show on Days of the Dead themes. Open Studio also has a nice installation from Hazel Eckert and promising student work by Kelsey Schuett.

Image of Janet Bellotto's Wave installation from Red Head Gallery

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Beautiful City builds Billboard-tax-for-Art Momentum

Over the past few years, there's been a growing anti-billboard movement in Toronto. And one of the more interesting subgroups to come out of this is an initiative to use a new tax on billboards to fund public art and art education. The initiative comes up for City Hall approval very soon, November 30 and December 1, and the site BeautifulCity.ca is asking folks to sign a related petition, as well as call their councillors before the vote.

While I'm actually a fan of good, creative advertising and the work it gives creative people (what was the Sistine Chapel, after all, but one massive ad for the church?) the fact is that a lot of billboard ads are crappy, and that we need more money for art, especially art education and underserved communities. (Beautiful City also says that it could generate a 50%/$11 million increase in funding for city artists and arts institutions.) So I urge you to give the petition a look, as well as the related video below.

Beautifulcity.ca Town Hall - 1st Cut from BeautifulCity.ca on Vimeo.

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Wonder Women: Q&A with Janet Werner in today's National Post

Montreal's Janet Werner makes paintings of women that I find really interesting. Often, for me, they contain tension around ideas of female experience, conflicts between idealized appearance and lived reality. Today's National Post ran my brief Q&A with Werner on where she feels the work comes from. Here's an excerpt:

Q I wanted to talk about the strong sense of tension in your paintings. Where does that come from?

A In some of my paintings, a little bunny or bear or Dalton figurine can be isolated against a kind of cosmic, empty space. And I sometimes situate the women in these really artificial paint-by-number landscapes. So I was giving a talk about this show, trying to address the sense of dislocation that's produced, and someone said, "Oh, so it's about innocence and loss." And I was like, "Yeah." I sort of circle around that without naming it, quite often.

Q What kinds of innocence and loss are you talking about?

A Well, I guess it would be fairy-tale fantasy ideals. These are, after all, idealized figures in idealized landscapes. All of us get our ideals set up differently, but in the case of girls, it's often princess-y dreams that are developed. The reality is that those dreams don't materialize. Still, the imaginings that are so alive when we're younger remain in play as adults. And I think that's what a lot of advertising and fashion images are addressing -- often in pretty complex ways, actually.

Werner's paintings are on view at the Art Gallery of Windsor in a solo show through to January 31, with new work debuting at Parisian Laundry in March.

(Image of Werner's Bambi 2005-6 from Parisian Laundry)

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Out Today: Review of Google Earth in NOW

It's been said (and debated) that 400 million people have used Google Earth. This week in NOW, I review two of those users--John van der Woude and Eryn Foster--who have made art using the application for Gallery 44. Here's an excerpt:

John van der Woude’s prints make up the more successful body of work here. Using satellite images gleaned from Google Earth, van der Woude stitches together some incredible aerial views of the world’s busiest airports.

These slick, glossy, detailed images, while fun to look at for a long time, also provide many conceptual points of departure: How does the lightness of global, go-anywhere mobility get played out and bound up at ground level? Who can really fathom the dense intersections of individual stories and trajectories that happen in these places, let alone design for them?

Image of one of John van der Woude's works from NOW

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Two Takes (and some Muzaks) on the Economics of Art

So... almost as scary as this "Money" scene from Cabaret is the long-fraught relationship between money and the arts. Of late in Canada, most of this frightfulness has had to do with a lack of money, particularly in BC but also in other realms. I just wanted to point out two recent responses of note:

1) Tinygrants
Tinygrants is "an experiment in microfunding in the arts" led by Toronto curator and blogger Marissa Neave. What Neave wants to do is provide grants of $300 max to fund "creative interventions," which she seems open to defining flexibly. If you're looking to get some tinycash, the deadline is this Sunday, November 22. And if you're looking to give some tinycash to this project--something a few generous folks have committed--Neave wrote she was still seeking $250 at last tally. While I confess some skepticism about the long-term feasibility of the project, I admire Neave's gumption and optimism. Worth a look.

2) Mary Jo Hughes @ the Mark
Mary Jo Hughes is chief curator for the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and in a recent op-ed for the Mark, Hughes provides some firsthand perspective on the impacts of falling arts funding. Though the consequences of government cuts and falling endowment revenues has been covered in many newspapers in the past few months, it's rare to see a curator go public in this way. As she notes, endowment revenues at the AGGV, once considered guaranteed income, have dropped to zero. The results are a 20% staff cutback, and, as she puts it, "Things fall through the cracks, deadlines are missed, exhibitions stay up longer, perks for members are reduced, and fewer programs are on offer." Again, this is nothing new to those who have been watching closely, but unusual for a head staffer to broadcast. Also worth a read for its recap on the BC arts cuts, which turned $48 million to $3 million in just one year! Wild. In a bad way.

Good thing the best things in life are still free... like more bad Youtube:







Also worth viewing on this theme: Bills, Bills, Bills by Destiny's Child and Gimme some money by Spinal Tap, which has the very awesome lyric "Your face is okay/But your purse is too tight/I'm looking for pound notes, loose change, bad cheques, anything/Give me some money." Maybe a museums development person could steal that one sometime?

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Must-See: An Anthropological Introduction to Youtube

I just spent 55 minutes of my life watching this video, and if you haven't done it already, I strongly recommend you do that too. It shows a presentation called "An anthropological introduction to Youtube" by cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch. Wesch made the presentation to the US Library of Congress in June 2008, which might make it seem dated in internet terms. But really, there are some amazing insights (and incredible video montages) here. (The Numa Numa history is alone worth the (free) price of admission.)

I think this video also holds some jumping off points of particular interest to the art world, for example:

1) Is is possible that Youtube, with its self-reflexive, intimate-yet-distant nature, brings some of the dynamics of artmaking to the general internet-accessing public? After all, as Jerry Saltz famously has said, artists are like cats, always putting objects between themselves and their humans. I wondered watching this if Youtube provides the same freedom/set of conditions to a wider population.

2) There has been a lot of interest in the art world of late in re-enactment, and a lot of tiresome conference sessions that have revolved around the question of "Why are so many young artists interested in re-enactment?" There are many possible reasons in my estimation, but I think the contextualization of YouTube re-enactment that Wesch builds provides great insight into one possible answer -- that people re-enact in order to express that which is important or entertaining to them, and to become part of a wider community. If such re-enactments are instinctive in the mediasphere, why not in the artsphere?

Overall, a very worthwhile viewing experience -- fleshes out in words and reason what Margaux Williamson's Dance Dance Revolutions video circled around in a more oblique way.

FYI this video was called to my attention by Twitter user @Prof_K linking to the blog for We Are Social

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