Recent responses to VoCA:

I just sat down…and read your blog and savoured it all.
I got to tell you - its fabulous!! Informative, fun, entertaining and
very smart. What can be better. Thanks for filling in some big holes.
-Marnie Fleming, curator, Oakville Galleries

Hope you sent this (October 27 post) to the editors at the Post, good sleuthing!
-Robert Birch, Birch Libralato Gallery

Congratulations, it’s long overdue!!
-Michael Awad, Artist
Continue reading →

National Post picks up on VoCA story! (Finally)

This morning’s font page of Canadian newspaper the National Post asks if Daniel Libeskind’s crystal for the Royal Ontario Museum is a copy of the one in Denver.

The Denver Art Museum. Image: pbs.org

The Royal Ontario Museum. Image: telegraph.co.uk

VoCA asked the same question back in January 2006:

Continue reading →

LOVED: OCAD

Even as the very idea of the art college is being re-assessed, even as we are experiencing the consequences of pushing generations of eager students through a standardized system that seems to defeat the purpose of artistic creativity, the Ontario College of Art and Design is doing exciting things.

Are art colleges necessary? Young artists today may be better served by doing a secondary degree in something other than art. The problem is that it all starts to look the same.

OCAD is one school that seems to be broadening its reach, examining itself and looking to build on its best qualities. Community outreach (exemplified in their Nuit Blanche programming) and celebration of their alumni (ditto), with an impressive roster of international speakers are turning the Ontario College of Art and Design into one of the more interesting art venues in Toronto.

The exhibition by alumni including Ian Carr-Harris and David Rokeby on Nuit Blanche was a success. Those who made it up to the 5th floor were rewarded with Rokeby’s floor projection depicting the tracked movments of bodies crossing the busy courtyard below Wil Alsop’s ‘tabletop’:

Another example was the lecture, Encounters in the Disunited States, by New York Guardian correspondent Gary Younge last night.

He spoke about politics as determined by point of view – and he gave examples: A Democrat and a Republican, each with a child fighting in Iraq, were equally able to justify their respective political allegiances by a desire for a quick end to the war.

I was reminded of the excellent HSBC ads plastered all over London’s Heathrow airport:

Check out the HSBC Airport ads HERE

This idea has greater implications for art – because art is about point of view. The HSBC ads contrast a photograph of man on the moon (reality) with a child’s drawing of a man on the moon (fabrication/fiction.) But contemporary art asks whether the photograph is any more reliable than the child’s drawing. Certainly the photograph cannot be accepted as truth, but how about the actual event?

MEANWHILE, AT RYERSON

The School of Image Arts has announced that it will build a new Photography Gallery and Research Centre to house its Black Star Historical Black and White Photography Collection. The Centre will also house the Mira Godard Study Centre, named after the Toronto art dealer.

The new museum-quality 10,500 square foot space will house, exhibit and provide scholarly access to the photography collections.

Along with the new centre, Ryerson will debut a new Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Media in fall 2007. This is designed to compliment its existing graduate programs: Photographic Preservation and Collections Management.

HOW IS ART’S VALUE DETERMINED?

During Frieze Art Fair in London recently, exhibitions were pre-sold, dealers were busy selling out their booths, and auctions were held every night. With the mix between primary and secondary market contemporary works being sold in different venues on the same days, you had to ask yourself how art’s value is determined, and sustained.

Tobias Meyer at Sotheby’s Continue reading →

FOUR DAYS IN LONDON PART TWO:

CHINA POWER STATION:

The Serpentine Gallery organized an exhibition of sound and video artwork from China in the disused Battersea Power Station.

Little city space is left abandoned in London and this large modern ruin has always held a curiosity for us, looming large as it does in the south-west part of the city. Continue reading →

FOUR DAYS IN LONDON PART ONE:

During the Frieze Art Fair, London is the center of the art world universe. The hype is palpable. So are the queues and the crowds. And the money.

We won’t mention the installation of slides by Carsten Holler in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall:

Or dwell on the exhibition by Swiss artists Fischli and Weiss, also at Tate Mod. Their photographic series Stiller Nachmittag (Quiet Afternoon1984/5) comprised sculptural still lifes made of household objects. The best ones, like The Egoist and Tenderness expressed emotion through form:
Continue reading →

DUSSELDORF: CARAVAGGIO

In Dusseldorf at the Museum Kunst Palast I saw an exhibition about Caravaggio. Prepared to see the artist’s many masterworks, I was surprised that the exhibition included many fakes. The curatorial emphasis was on the chiaroscuro techniques which Caravaggio used to surpass his many imitators. His style was so imitated that it inspired an entire movement called Caravaggismo. Continue reading →

LOATHED: THE AGO

Umm…Is the Andy Warhol show still on? We haven’t had much cause to check out the Art Gallery of Ontario since we heard David Cronenberg’s audio tour of the show.

The Future Now is the title of one current exhibition. The website says: “Continuing the success of Favourites: Your Choices from Our Collection, this exhibition features more highlights from the permanent collection.” We recently received a press release stating that of the over 100 ship models from the 18th century gifted to the AGO by the late Lord Thompson, two are now on view as part of The Future Now.

For the rest of Thompson’s ship collection, the public will have to wait until 2008. Continue reading →

LOVED: THE POWER PLANT

We love the Power Plant’s current exhibition (see below) but more importantly we love the Power Plant’s new commissioning program. And even though we haven’t yet been formally introduced, we love the Power Plant’s new director, Gregory Burke.

Following the lines of Artangel’s “Angels” who fund their off-site art projects, the Power Plant’s new Comissioning Program relies on a number of prominent and culturally enlightened Toronto citizens to fund the production of at least one major new work of international significance each year.

The inaugural commission will be by Turner-Prize winning artist Simon Starling, whose commission is now resting at the bottom of Lake Ontario. Continue reading →

NUIT BLANCHE TORONTO:

It was wonderful to see so many people out last night…here are some highlights:

With artist Fujiko Nakaya, Fog in Toronto

Fog in Toronto Continue reading →