VoCA recommends 5 summer exhibitions across Canada:

TORONTO

July 13- August 6, 2007

The 8th Annual Emerging Artist Exhibition at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre

TWO STEPS BACK: featuring Adam Bellavance, Jason de Haan, Kristen Kellar, Derek Liddington, Laura Paolini, Matthew Willamson

Go to Interaccess website HERE

Technology and failure go hand in hand, sometimes with disastrous consequences, though more often with a sadly comic twist. Two Steps Back is interested in this game of trial and error, the featured artists play with glitches, futility, randomness and ridiculousness. The fraught relationship between machines and their shortcomings is often represented as apocalyptic and ominous.

CAMBRIDGE, ONTARIO

Patty Johnson’s toy bricks. Image: cbc.ca

June 30 - August 18, 2007

NORTH SOUTH PROJECT
A new model of viable design and craft collaborations in the developing world

Cambridge Galleries, Design at Riverside

Check out the North South Project website HERE

The initiative reflects the interchange between research and design and commerce and culture. Inspired by the idea of reaching across a global North/South axis, Toronto designer Patty Johnson is working with partners in Botswana, Guyana, Mexico and India to bring stylish new lines of furniture, lighting and fine craft to the North American and world market. At the same time she is continuously developing a design methodology that emphasizes a flexible and collaborative approach and the designer’s willingness to adjust to the changing conditions of the different societies in which she works.

The sustainability of each object in North South Projectis measured many times over. Every collection is designed for maximum economic, cultural, ecological and aesthetic sustainability. The long-term impact of the projects on the manufacturers, producers and communities is a principal factor of the design process.

VANCOUVER

Kristan Horton, Dr. Strangelove, 2006. Image: jessicabradleyartprojects.com

June 29 to August 19, 2007

Visit the Contemporary Art Gallery website HERE

KRISTAN HORTON
Dr. Strangelove Dr. Strangelove

DRAWINGS BY SIX ARTISTS: Kim Kennedy Austin, Luanne Martineau, Shannon Oksanen,
Laura Piasta, Ryan Sluggett and Corin Sworn

ELSPETH PRATT
Bluff

Dr. Strangelove Dr. Strangelove is an ambitious project in which Kristan Horton, a Toronto-based artist, reproduced 200 scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb as sculptures. Using various commonplace items from his studio (a glue-stick, garbage bags, cutlery, felt markers and dirt) Horton constructs the overall composition of each scene. He then photographs his improvised constructions to match the original film still, which are displayed side by side.

Vancouver based artist Elspeth Pratt will produce an abstract sculpture for the gallery’s street front windows. Using common building materials, she will create a unified design over nine windows. In general Pratt uses forms and materials that align closer with architecture than the history of visual art.

WINNIPEG

Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Peña. Undiscovered Amerindians, 1992. Image: yorku.ca

July 20 - August 18, 2007

Plug In ICA premieres renowned performance-based work to coincide with Winnipeg’s Fringe Festival

PRETEND: THEATRE AND VIDEO

NOTE: Open LATE every night of the Fringe Festival 10AM - 10PM

A New Opening Reception every Thursday Night from July 26 - August 16: 7-10PM
• July 20 (Friday): Tellervo Kalleinen (Finland)
• July 26: Theo Sims (UK/Canada)(artist in attendance)
• August 2: Nathalie Djurberg (Sweden/Germany)
• August 9: Omer Fast (Israel/Germany)
• August 16: Coco Fusco (USA)

In conjunction with the 2007 Winnipeg Fringe Festival, the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art will present performance-inspired works by a group of renowned international artists working in the fields of video and installation. Combining elements of theatre, animation, and journalism with collage, melodrama, and confession, each of these artists will present their work for a single week over a four-week period, next to an in-gallery pub that turns audience members into the actors of an imaginary place.

Check the performance schedule HERE

SHAWINIGAN, QUEBEC

Carsten Holler’s slides at the Tate Modern, 2007. Image: news.bbc.co.uk

2 June - 30 September 2007

The National Gallery of Canada at Shawinigan Space (Quebec)

CARSTEN HOLLER

Read more on the website HERE

This is German artist Carsten Höller’s first major solo exhibition in Canada. Höller, who was born in Belgium and now lives and works in Stockholm, has received international acclaim for his diverse artistic practice. That includes sculpture and large-scale installation-based works aimed at challenging viewers’ perceptions and rational beliefs. Scientist turned artist, Carsten Höller has experimented with a diverse range of mediums and art forms that each ask the viewer to reconsider their relationship with natural and built environments.