View on Canadian Art

Future Projections is TIFF’s new programme of film-related art installations throughout Toronto for the duration of the Film Festival…and sometimes beyond.

It’s all free all the time! Find more info right HERE

They’re all good, but VoCA particularly recommends checking out the following ones:

1. Tyranny, Ryan Sluggett, Canada, 2007

Ryan Sluggett, Judges and their Pedestals, 2006. Image: trepanierbaer.com

Vancouver-based artist Ryan Sluggett appropriates the wide-screen look of advertising and a range of painting styles in his latest short animation, which radically extends his painting and collage process. The hypnotic video installation presents a new, experiential form of moving images and minimalist sound of unparalleled intensity.

Sluggett writes: “Tyranny…is composed of about five thousand digital stills that run at six frames per second while a swinging pendulum/speaker plays a soundtrack. One must unfocus (one’s) vision, lose the specifics of the physical in order to find the image, and ‘read’ the montage.”

Ryan Sluggett shows with Trepanier Baer Gallery, Calgary.

Presented in partnership with and exhibited at YYZ Artists’ Outlet, 401 Richmond Street West, Suite 140. During the Festival, the exhibit will be open from 11am to 6pm (including Sunday and Monday), and after September 15 from 11am to 5pm, closed Sundays and Mondays. Admission is free.

Click HEREfor more info.

2. Best Minds Part One, Jeremy Shaw, Canada, 2007

Jeremy Shaw, detail from DMT (Video still), 2004. Image: presentationhousegall.com

Calgary-based curator Wayne Baerwaldt (and one of VoCA’s most influential Canadians this year – click HERE)

Jeremy Shaw’s artistic practice engages with youth subcultures and cultural deviance. This piece juxtaposes the violent dancing of straight-edge youth with Shaw’s melancholic, time-warping score inspired by William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops.

Clint Burnham writes, “The video shows us kids slowed down – the dancers are simultaneously ballet-like and frenetic – but we are also witnessing a dirge, a funeral, twinned with Shaw’s music like a lament for a scene that is now so over (or maybe just a parody of itself). And in this last moment of historicity, we also see a strong connection to the literary heritage – the Beats – established by Shaw’s title, which refers to the first lines of Ginsberg’s poem ‘Howl,’ itself a lament or dirge for the institutionalization of both his friend Carl Solomon and his mother Naomi.”

Presented at Thrush Holmes Empire, 1093 Queen Street West.

Vancouver-based artist Jeremy Shaw is represented by Tracey Lawrence Gallery

3. Darfur/Darfur, various artists, USA, 2006

Dies Irae in Sudan, Ron Haviv/VII, Image courtesy darfurdarfur.org/brown.edu

Curator Leslie Thomas has gathered over 150 colour and black-and-white images captured by seven renowned photojournalists – Lynsey Addario, Mark Brecke, Helene Caux, Ron Haviv, Paolo Pellegrin, Michal Ronnen Safdie and Ryan Spencer Reed – plus former United States Marine Brian Steidle. Accompanied by music, the images are organized into three video loops of about six minutes each. The first two loops introduce the narrative of the Darfur conflict, while the third uses portraiture to bring viewers closer to the people living through it right now. The idea is to bring the images up close and personal – so that we can no longer put them out of our mind.

Screening at the Royal Ontario Museum. Viewings will be held from dusk to 11pm every evening with a special Opening night event on September 7 at 8pm. Admission is free.

More info on the film HERE

4. Death in the Land of Encantos, Lav Diaz, The Phillipines, 2007

Lav Diaz (left) and Paul Tanedo. Image: sensesofcinema.com

Super Typhoon Durian devastated the the Bicol region of the Philippines late last year, burying entire villages. Death in the Land of Encantos is a mournful work of landscape art. Shooting in rich black and white, Diaz composes his film using barren trees, rocks and even the wind to build an image of loss. The traces of narrative concern a fictional exiled poet returning to wander through his ravaged former world, meeting old friends and lovers.

A nine-hour work running in a continuous loop, Death in the Land of Encantos offers an immersion into a region that has literally been erased and rewritten.

Screening at Spin Gallery, 1100 Queen Street West, 2nd Floor.
An Artist Reception will be held on September 12 (8pm to 1am).

5. Wildflowers of Manitoba, Noam Gonick, Luis Jacob, Canada, 2007

Luis Jacob, A Dance for Those of Us Whose Hearts Have Turned to Ice…(Video still), 2007. Image: birchlibralato.com

Wildflowers of Manitoba is a performative installation of four short films and sound presented in a furnished geodesic dome. The films feature four young men living off the grid in an idealistic survivalist camp on the shores of Lake Winnipeg during the summer of 2006. The music by visionary seventies Québécois rock band Harmonium suggests the potential for sexual and political freedom.

Presented in partnership with and exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, 952 Queen Street West.

Luis Jacob is represented by Birch Libralato Gallery, Toronto.

Wildflowers of Manitoba will be presented at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA), 952 Queen Street West, from September 8 to 16, between 11am and 6pm. Admission is free.