TORONTO
MAY 1 - 31, 2007

May is photography month in Toronto. CONTACT Photography Festival presents its 11th year with a host of programs and exhibitions that promise to visually energize the city. This year’s theme is The Constructed Image.

For the CONTACT website, click HERE Continue reading →

TORONTO
MAY 1 - 31, 2007

For the CONTACT website, click HERE.

If you are from out of town, consider visiting Toronto in May. It’s a great time to plan an art-related visit.

“Photography is all about manipulation, and as it’s evolved, it’s become more manipulative in every way. I’ve never seen photography as a truthful medium. It’s about individual perceptions of reality, and that’s what people want to see.”
-British fashion photographer Nick Knight, in the New York Times.

VoCA’s PICKS FOR MUST-SEE CONTACT GALLERY EXHIBITIONS
(If you only see seven shows during CONTACT - and hopefully you’ll see many more):

1. Angell Gallery
Nic and Sheila Pye
May 4 - June 2, 2007

Nic and Sheila Pye, Sway - A Life of Errors, 2006. Image: angellgallery.com

Nic and Sheila Pye, Silent Flurry, 2006. Image: angellgallery.com
Continue reading →

Artist Luanne Martineau. Image: Joy Poliquin.

Victoria, BC-based artist Luanne Martineau will be honoured with a $12,000 VIVA award for achievement in the visual arts on May 15th in Vancouver.

The VIVA (Vancouver Institute for the Visual Arts) awards are given annually to two mid-career British Columbia artists who have demonstrated strong creative potential and a long-term commitment to their craft. Continue reading →

This panel discussion took place at the artist-run centre Gallery 1313 in Toronto on March 26, 2007.

The panelists were collectors Father Dan Donovan and Steve Smart, art dealers Olga Korper of the Olga Korper Gallery and Mary Sue Rankin of Toronto’s Edward Day Gallery and Art Gallery of Ontario curator Ben Portis.

This is part one of the discussion, in which panelists talk about how they assess the current art market.

Parts two and three to follow soon on VoCA.

MONTREAL
MICHEL DAIGNEAULT at GALERIE TROIS POINTS
APRIL 28 – MAY 26

Michel Daigneault, Deux Bleus. Image: galerietroispoints.qc.ca Continue reading →

…is on from now through April 28th.

For more information click HERE

The Contemporary Art Gallery is offering a free guided visit of its current exhibitions.

On Saturday, April 28th at 2 pm there will be an introduction to the current exhibitions:

Robin Peck: A Shallow Flight of Stairs, 2007. Image: contemporaryartgallery.ca

Derek Brunen: Blind, 2007. Installation view. Image: contemporaryartgallery.ca

Pavel Pepperstein: Landscapes of the Future, 2007. Installation view. Image: contemporaryartgallery.ca

LIVING CITIES: The paintings of John Hartman

On now through Sunday at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Mar. 5 to Apr. 22, 2007

John Hartman, Owen Sound, 2005. Image: tomthomson.org

The city is usually known as a pulsing, living space containing the grey and the dark, the vibrant and the diverse. As depicted in the current show at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the city displays a new voice. John Hartman paints a fusion of the roiling energy of the city and a fantastical candy land of bubble gum hills and lavender sugar drop skies. This show, entitled Cities, covers two floors of the gallery with Hartman’s vibrant large-scale oil paintings on linen, many on multiple panels.

John Hartman, Halifax, 2006. Image: metiviergallery.com Continue reading →

Theatre of the World exhibition at the Walker Art Center. Image: visualarts.walkerart.org

Theatre of the World, an exhibit by renowned Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping at the Vancouver Art Gallery has been pulled after demands by the B.C Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

“What’s happened here is that two important values have clashed — one is the right to artistic expression and the other is the importance of the humane treatment of animals,” said Peter Fricker, a spokesman for the Vancouver Humane Society. “And in our view, the inhumane treatment of animals is going to trump artistic expression every time.”
Continue reading →

Charles Mason will become the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art’s new curator. Mr. Mason specializes in Asian art and has expertise in Chinese, Japanese and Korean ceramics. He is also knowledgeable about 18th and 19th century European porcelains and early 20th century American art pottery.

Mr. Mason comes to Toronto from the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he was Chief Curator and Curator of Asian Art.

The Gardiner Museum

“I am very excited about coming to the Gardiner,” he says. “The museum already has an excellent international reputation for the quality of its collections and exhibitions. Now with its newly expanded building and outstanding staff and board, the museum is definitely poised to achieve even greater success in the future.”

Katie Pretti Dominant Recessives at Le Gallery, Toronto from April 4 - 29th, 2007

Katie Pretti, Drought Spring, 2007. Image: le-gallery.ca

Katie Pretti, Drought Summer, 2007. Image: le-gallery.ca Continue reading →