Still from Daniel Cockburn’s Metronome, 2002. Image: nowtoronto.com

If you’ve never seen a performance by video artist DANIEL COCKBURN, VoCA highly recommends it!

This Wednesday April 4th, Cockburn with present a piece titled Altogether as part of In There, an “experimental process-based collaboration” between artists and students at Toronto’s York University. It’s FREE and it’s one night only. Performances are at 7:30pm and 9 pm. Continue reading →

…is coming to the Art Gallery of Ontario from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum on June 23rd.

According to the press release: “Highlights of this exhibition will include remarkable ivory carvings, such as the Late Antique Symmachi Panel..

The Symmachi Panel, Rome, Italy, about 400, Carved elephant ivory. Image: hp.uab.edu Continue reading →

CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN is an internationally recognized multidisciplinary artist, one of the main players in the feminist art movement of the 1960s and 70s. She lives in upstate New York but keeps a studio in Montreal.

She is perhaps best known for her 1975 performance Interior Scroll, where she stood naked on a table and painted her naked body with mud. She struck several poses while reading aloud from a paper scroll as she slowly extracted it from her vagina.

Carolee Schneemann, Interior Scroll, 1975. Image: caroleeschneemann.com
Continue reading →

1. ERIC GLAVIN at Birch Libralato, Toronto

Eric Glavin, Ossington Ave P.S. Image: Birch Libralato Gallery.

RCNT/WRKS
March 24 – April 21, 2007

Known for photographically documenting the façades of post-war buildings and using these photographs as a basis for constructing computer-rendered abstracted images, Glavin’s interest lies in the facades’ reference to grids and geometric patterns in modernist, hard-edge painting.

Eric Glavin, Springburn 4a, 2000. Image: Birchlibralato.com Continue reading →

This morning at the AGO, it was announced that Ian Carr-Harris, Aganetha Dyck, R. Bruce Elder, Murray Favro, Fernand Leduc and Daphne Odjig will all recieve the Governor General’s 2007 Award for artistic achievement.

Ian Carr-Harris

IAN CARR-HARRIS is well known in artistic circles for his sculptures, site-specific installations, photography and more recently, illuminated books. Carr-Harris represented Canada at the 1984 Venice Biennale, at Documenta 8 in Kassel in 1987, and at the Sydney Biennale in 1990. Since 1975, he has taught sculpture and installation at the Ontario College of Art and Design.
His work is represented by the Susan Hobbs Gallery in Toronto. Continue reading →

In an article in the Guardian last week, Charlotte Higgins quoted prime minister Tony Blair: “London has become the creative capital of the world. There have been times when that accolade would have gone to Paris, or Berlin or to New York. Now it belongs here.”

As Canada’s largest art market, Toronto may not have London’s creative attitude, or even that of Paris or Berlin, or Chicago for that matter…(or even Montreal, you might argue…) but that’s not to say that we haven’t got it going on. We do.

And VoCA says it’s high time to celebrate.

Image: gizmodo.com

Ten things we love about the Toronto art scene (in no particular order): Continue reading →

Click HERE…

For a classic case of life imitating art, check out the New York Times article on The Legacy of Arthur Pinajian HERE.

…”they were also welcome to the paintings and drawings left behind by Arthur Pinajian, an obscure artist who lived in the house with his sister for decades until they each died at 85, he in 1999, she last year…”

Then check out Iris Haussler’s The Legacy of Joseph Wagenbach HERE.

…”In June 2006, Joseph Wagenbach, the resident of 105 Robinson Street, Toronto, suffered a stroke and now lives in an undisclosed nursing home in Ontario. When neighbours of Wagenbach noticed that the reclusive man had not been seen for weeks…Public Guardians and Trustees entered the house…it was discovered that the environment may comprise an as yet to be determined cultural value….”

French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, best-known for his concept of hyper-reality, died last week at his home in Paris.

Jean Baudrillard. Image: Nonplatonic.com

“The very definition of the real becomes: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction. The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced. The hyper real.” -Jean Baudrillard
Continue reading →

The Art Gallery of Ontario seems to have - FINALLY - realized that one way to get the public interested in art is to take art outside of the gallery walls. Nevermind that the international art world realized this years ago….Hopefully the gallery’s curators will continue this positive apporach.

(TORONTO: Wednesday, March 7, 2007) A spectacular contemporary wallwork by Lawrence Weiner, part of the AGO’s collection, has been loaned to the Ontario College of Art & Design for nine months, transforming the building’s main lobby.

The Ontario College of Art and Design. Image: livewithculture.ca Continue reading →