1. Free screening of Sir John Soane: An English Architect, An American Legacy

*TONIGHT* Thursday 22 November, 7 pm

The Agnes Etherington Art Centre

Please click HEREfor more information.

Sir John Soane, British architect. Image: bankofengland.co.uk

Sir John Soane (1753-1837) has inspired many contemporary architects with his command of natural light and his inviting arrangement of spatially sequential galleries. This visually rich film presents a tour through Soane’s life and works, with acknowledgements of his legacy from prominent architects such as Richard Meier and Robert Venturi.

Sir John Soane’s Museum in London UK is one of VoCA’s favorite places.

Sir John Soane’s Museum, London UK. Image: timetravel-britain.com

Introduced by Pierre du Prey, Professor in the Department of Art, Queen’s University, and author of John Soane: The Making of an Architect, who will also take questions after the screening.

2. Farouk Kaspaules: Be/Longing

23 November 2007 to 3 February 2008

The Ottawa Art Gallery

Farouk Kaspaules, Ottawa, 1999. Image: civilization.ca

Farouk Kaspaules began making art in the mid-1980s as a way to reconcile his daily life in Canada with the political, environmental and cultural instability of his home country, Iraq.

His visual experiments in mixed media employ a complex vocabulary of images, symbols and aesthetic forms derived from ancient and contemporary Iraq, as well as from his mixed cultural background (Christian, Chaldean, and Arab). Kaspaules strives “to relate daily events to broader geopolitical and social questions.”

Farouk Kaspaules, …and at night we leave our dreams on window sill, memory of a place, 2000.
Image: civilization.ca

This reflects his belief that art and politics are activities “that cannot be separated from lived experience.”

Talk with Farouk Kaspaules (in English):

Friday 23 November at 12:30 pm

Farouk Kaspaules, …and at night we leave our dreams on window sill, memory of a place (detail), 2000.
Image: civilization.ca

Please click HERE for more information.

THE ARTIST PROJECT TORONTO

March 6 – 9, 2008

At the Liberty Grand, Toronto

We couldn’t help chuckle as we read that The Artist Project - Toronto’s newly announced Independent art fair - “will include…the “Orange Competition” where exhibiting artists will interpret their feelings about the colour Orange.”

Nonetheless, MMPI, one of the largest trade-show producers in the world, which has done Art Chicago, the Armory Show in New York and Toronto’s Interior Design Show, will bring The Artist Project Toronto to the city this coming March.

The Artist Project Chicago will run in April next year, concurrently with Art Chicago™, featuring independent artists undiscovered by the gallery community.

The Canadian version is billed as “a four day exhibition and sale of contemporary fine art, which will bring together for the first time a carefully juried selection of new and emerging artists under one roof. It will welcome over 100 juried independent artists selected to showcase their work to gallerists, collectors and art enthusiasts in an intimate environment. Approximately 85% of the artists will be from Canada.”

For more information, please click HERE.

A sculpture by Vancouver art star Brian Jungen, made of deconstructed Nike Air Jordan running shoes and hand-sewn into the shape of an aboriginal-style mask, was a big hit at yesterday’s sale in Toronto of important Canadian art by Sotheby’s/Ritchies auctioneers.

Brian Jungen, Prototype for New Understanding #5, 1999. Image: catrionajeffries.com

“All the bids came from outside Toronto via telephone. Bidding for about the first 10 seconds proceeded in increments of $10,000, but then at the $32,500, one of the callers “jumped queue” to $100,000, electrifying the packed house. A few seconds later, an anonymous New York collector claimed Prototype for $140,000…”

Read the rest of the article from the Globe and Mail HERE.

Jungen is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver. Please click HERE.

ETIENNE ZACK: AUTHORSHOP

Equinox Gallery, Vancouver

November 24 - 22 December, 2007

Etienne Zack, Cycle, 2007. Image: equinoxgallery.com

Etienne Zack, Cut and Paste, 2007. Image: equinoxgallery.com

Love it or loathe it, there’s no denying that Etienne Zack’s work is fantastically creative. At a time when many young painters are influenced by Neo Rauch and the Leipzig School or the grisaille of Luc Tuymens, Zack - whose work does carry echoes of the new German school - has created his own distinctive style, twisting and folding perspective, often drawing from his immediate surroundings, into something more reminiscent of 1980s-era David Salle.

David Salle, Satori Three Inches within Your Heart, 1988. Image: tate.org.uk

He’s brave, refusing to shy away from looming forms or nonsensical imagery - witness the large (78 x 90 inches) piece Important Things, whose enormous eyeball in one corner put off several prospective buyers at the Toronto International Art Fair - or his signature murky palette of putty beiges and grey.

Etienne Zack, Important Things, 2007. Image: equinoxgallery.com

Zack arrived in Vancouver from Montreal in 1997 at the age of 20, and eight years later won the RBC Painting Competition. Since then, his work has been purchased by the National Gallery of Canada, the Musee D’Art Contemporain and the Musee des beaux-arts de Montreal.

For more information, please click HERE

Le tout Toronto came out to the Power Plant last night to celebrate their 20th anniversary with a glamorous dinner by Michael Stadtlander and art auction hosted by Maarten Ten Holder from Sotheby’s. The champagne flowed as past presidents of the gallery rubbed elbows with collectors, artists, socialites and CEO’s.General Idea, Untitled (Trintron), 1986. Courtesy of AA Bronson/Estate of General Idea Continue reading →

Andrew Rucklidge, beam-beam, 2007. Image: andrewrucklidge.com

Continue reading →

1. London Art Scene talk in Montreal

Iwan Wirth and Detmar Blow discussing not only the London art market but the need to raise the intellectual discourse of the London art scene. Image: blowdelabarra.com

Iwona Blazwick, Director of London’s Whitechapel Gallery, will give a talk at Societe des Arts Technologiques in Montreal on Saturday, November 24th at 3 pm.

The FREE talk, entitled The Acquired Inability to Escape (The Life and Times of the London Art Scene) is presented by DHC/ART Foundation.

Continue reading →

1. London Art Scene talk in Montreal

Iwan Wirth and Detmar Blow discussing not only the London art market but the need to raise the intellectual discourse of the London art scene. Image: blowdelabarra.com

Iwona Blazwick, Director of London’s Whitechapel Gallery, will give a talk at Societe des Arts Technologiques in Montreal on Saturday, November 24th at 3 pm.

The FREE talk, entitled The Acquired Inability to Escape (The Life and Times of the London Art Scene) is presented by DHC/ART Foundation.

For more information, please click HERE. Continue reading →

Greg Girard, Zhabei House, #1, 2002. Image: presentationhousegall.com

This year’s Toronto International Art Fair was apparently an enormous success, with over 18,000 visitors and sales estimated at over 20 million dollars with a final piece selling for half a million dollars just seconds before the close of the Fair.

Works purchased by the Art Gallery of Ontario from the fair included Annie Pootoogook’s Composition from Feheley Fine Arts, Greg Girard’s House on Zixia lu from Monte Clark Gallery and Metropolis from Olga Korper Gallery artist Denyse Thomasos. Continue reading →

London Report

VoCA went to the Tate Modern today – saw the Louise Bourgeois retrospective.

The artist Louise Bourgeois. Image: ocaiw.com

What is there to say, really? For us, her work is almost perfect. Her use of material loaded with meaning - from threadbare tapestry (her parents were tapestry restorers in France) to models of her childhood home - is part of a deep, lifelong self investigation that Freud would doubtlessly be in awe of. Continue reading →