MONTREAL: MAY 10 - JULY 8, 2007

The Montreal Biennale, which will take place at six venues across the city, offers Montrealers and visitors a chance to see work by some of Canada’s most exciting artists.

Click HERE for the website.

Many artists this year are favourites of curator Wayne Baerwaldt, and some – particularly those from Western Canada - will be unfamiliar to Quebecers.

For what it’s worth, the press release describes artists’ interest in “the crossbreeding of individual and collective identities, the shift in national borders and the impact of religious beliefs.”

VOCA RECOMMENDS…OUR TOP 10 MUST-SEE SHOWS:

1. THEO SIMS’ THE CANDAHAR

Theo Sims, The Candahar. Image: acad.ab.ca

An artwork and live art where art and life converge, the Candahar is… an Irish Pub.

The Winnipeg artist’s work was shown at Calgary’s Illingworth Kerr Gallery in September, where Baerwaldt is director.

Taking its name from a Belfast street, the bar strays both from its main function and its historical reference and exists only through its social dynamics. Sims invites his guests to have a drink and to become actors within his performance. In Montréal, barmen are played by performers.

2. RYAN SLUGGETT’S TYRANNY, a video installation with three sections made up of some 5,000 digital images, six per second within an enclosure, like a moving pendulum, transmitting sounds. Slugget is represented by Calgary’s Trepanier Baer Gallery.

Ryan Sluggett, New Outfit, 2006. Image: trepanierbaer.com

Ryan Sluggett, Advice from Left to Right, 2006. Image: trepanierbaer.com

3. THE PUPPET KIT WORKSHOP BY GEOFFREY FARMER:

Geoffrey Farmer, Puppet Kit (installation view), 2001. Image: courtesy Catriona Jeffries Gallery

Geoffrey Farmer, Puppet Kit (detail), 2001. Image: courtesy Catriona Jeffries Gallery

Geoffrey Farmer, Puppet Kit (detail), 2001. Image: courtesy Catriona Jeffries Gallery

This installation is a portrait of an evolving puppet as well as an interactive area where visitors are invited to invent their own portraits using puppet fragments. Farmer is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver.

At the Ecole Bourget
1230 de la Montagne
Daily from noon to 7 pm
Price: $6 (includes adminission to exhibits at the École Bourget Annexe)

4. Paris-based American artist SCOLI ACOSTA, who will be present a multi component installation: an upside down igloo, a floral chandelier, small and large drawings.

Scoli Acosta, Big Well (installation view at Liste Basel Art Fair), 2005. Image: danielreichgallery.com

5. ANNIE POOTOOGOOK.

Annie Pootoogook, Composition (Fantastic Head) Image: feheleyfinearts.com

In case you missed her work in the Sobey Award exhibition in November (which she won), you can see her naïve, pencil crayon and ink drawings here. They explore the conventional image of “Inuit Art.” Her work will also be on view at Documenta, in Kassel, Germany, in June. Pootoogook is represented by Feheley Fine Arts in Toronto.

6. VoCA was introduced to BILL SMITH’S otherworldly installations in a room at Toronto’s Drake Hotel that Wayne Baerwaldt curated several years ago during the art fair. Smith creates sculptures by turning natural kinetic forms inside out, which allows him to study potential links in a constellation of mechanical objects, crystals, pearls, springs, electric fans and hydraulic networks.

A detail of a Bill Smith installation at White Flag Projects, St. Louis, MO in 2006.

At the Ecole Bourget - Annexe
1214 de la Montagne
Daily from noon to 7 pm
Price: 6 $ (including admission to exhibits at École Bourget)

7. BGL, NOAM GONICK and LUIS JACOB are showing works at the Parisian Laundry. BGL is a collective that brings together Jasmin Bilodeau, Sébastien Giguère and Nicolas Laverdière. This trio is recognized for its installations that place the context on an equal footing with the other elements of the work. Noam Gonick and Luis Jacob present Wild Flowers of Manitoba, a performance installation that brings together photos, moving images and sounds of Lake Winnipeg. Jacob will also be showing work at Documenta in Kassel, Germany this June and is represented by Birch Libralato Gallery, Toronto.

Luis Jacob, Flashlight, 2005 (detail: Toronto Sculpture Garden). Image: birchlibralato.com

At the Parisian Laundry
3550 St-Antoine West
Daily from noon to 7 pm
Free admission

8. Sculptor DAVID ALTMEJD’s travelling exhibit arrives in Montreal.

David Altmejd, The Unversity I, 2004. Image: andrearosengallery.com

Commissioner Louise Dery is also the organizer behind Altmejd’s installation in Canada’s pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, on from June - November 2007. More info HERE.

At the Galerie de l’UQAM
1400 Berri
Tuesday to Saturday: noon to 6 pm
Free Admission

9. THE ASPARAGUS BALLET:

The Aparagus Ballet. Image: showstudio.com

Pil & Gallia Kollectiv will explore the aesthetics of politics in everyday life and the assimilation of high modernism in popular culture. The majority of their work is based on collage-animation and was influenced by Russian constructivism, the onset of European cinema and children’s comics of the 1980s.

At the SAT - Societe des Arts Technologiques
1195 B Saint-Laurent
Saturday, May 12th, from 8 pm
Tickets: $25 Admission.com or (514) 790-1245

10. The first Canadian screening of Daft Punk’s Electroma will be presented on Friday, May 11th at 11 pm.

Check out the mesmerizing final scene:

At the Cinematheque Quebecoise
335 de Maisonneuve East
Friday, May 11th at 11 pm
Tickets: Adults $7, concessions $6, $4
For more info click HERE or (514) 842-9763