Your Cultural Concierge! VoCA offers critical commentary on the Canadian art scene, with a focus on Toronto. Featuring exhibition previews, critics picks, interviews and in-depth articles on art in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Halifax.
Elias Goldensky [Portrait of three women], c. 1915 George Eastman House Collection.
Image: vanartgallery.bc.ca
This exhibition looks at the artistic movement that transformed photography from a tool of documentation to one of the most exciting means of visual expression of the twentieth century.
With nearly 200 photographs from major museum collections around the world, the exhibition includes a large group of works from the George Eastman House as well as important loans from The Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
VoCA predicts some trends. Look out for the following ten themes to break through in art in 2008:
1. INTERFACE DESIGN: David Rokeby, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Max Dean and others use computers and robotics in their art
Body Movies, Relational Architecture No.6, by Rafael Lozano Hemmer
2. EXPERIENCE: Fear, exhiliration, taste. Gregor Schneider…the blurring of art with entertainment. Carsten Holler’s slides at Tate Modern Continue reading →
VoCA was forwarded the following email, titled eXponential Future press release and its unexamined assumptions
It refers to the group exhibition of young Vancouver artists currently on view at the Belkin Gallery at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Click HERE to see the exhibition.
Tim Lee, The Jerk, Carl Reiner, 1979. Image: coolhunting.com
VoCA would have thought that it’s a healthy sign how – in contrast to Toronto – Vancouver galleries continually celebrate their own artists. But apparently there are some disgruntled – jealous? – voices around…What amazes VoCA is that these people, whoever they are, don’t have the chutzpa to make themselves known.
Why hide behind anonymity? If you don’t like something, stand it behind it! That’s how you get a dialogue going. Otherwise, you risk appearing petty.
Here’s the email:
POST#1
feedback.vancouver
In an attempt to intervene in the lackluster state of arts criticism in Vancouver, we, a group of artists, educators and curators, have developed a feedback system that is committed to honesty and rigor. Anonymity allows us to say the things that the institutional politics of art makes prohibitive.
¡Cuba! Art and History from 1868 to Today, brings together 400 works of art in the first showcase the art of this Caribbean island, which Christopher Columbus described as “the most beautiful land eyes have ever seen.”
This massive multidisciplinary exhibition draws a broad panorama of Cuban art and history. You will find about one hundred paintings, including a huge collective mural produced in 1967 by many artists, two hundred photographs and documents, approximately one hundred works on paper (in particular two collections of pre- and post-1959-Revolution posters), installations and videos, in addition to music and film excerpts.
Freestyle SoundKits are the latest of artist Jessica Thompson’s works. Thompson is a new media artist whose practice encompasses sound, performance and mobile technologies. Her projects enable audience members to create user-defined spaces and situations within urban environments. Freestyle SoundKits are wearable sound pieces that generate and broadcast electronic beats as users move through the urban environment.
At Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver, 18 January – 16 February, 2008
This exhibition brings together works by gallery artist Kelly Wood and Hamburg-based artist Monika Grzymala.Kelly Wood will show a new series of ten unique, large, near-monochromatic photographic images that depict the binary code formats of digital recordings of ten songs. Wood has selected recordings of innovative Canadian electronic or avant-garde music, ranging from Hugh Le Caine’s “dripsody”—composed in 1955 from a sound sample of a drip of water falling in a pail—to recordings by Intersystems, the Nihilist Spasm Band, John Oswald and the UJ3RK5.
Out of Place: Memories of Edward Said; A documentary by Japanese filmmaker Sato Makoto
Saturday 26 January at 7 pm
At the Library and Archives Canada Auditorium, Ottawa (395 Wellington Street)
Edward Said. Image: brown.edu
As a compliment to its exhibition Orientalism & Ephemera - 23 November 2007 to 3 February 2008 - the Ottawa Art Gallery and the Canadian Film Institute present this film, which borrows its title from Edward Said’s 2000 memoir, Out of Place. The book traces the life and work of Edward Said (1935-2003), the Palestinian-born intellectual who wrote widely on history, literature, music, philosophy and politics.
AA Bronson, excerpt from Mirror Sequences, 1969. Image: aabronson.com
1. AA Bronson’s School For Young Shamans at John Connelly Presents, New York
January 10 - February 16, 2008
This performative exhibition features a collaboration with erstwhile Canadian artist Terence Koh and works by nine young shamans including Winnipeg artist Michael Dudeck and VoCA favorite, the Tokyo-based Item Idem:
With a portrait by Bruce LaBruce, original score by Andrew Zealley and AA Bronson’s self portraits from 1969.
Two collaborations with Terence Koh consist of a double toilet cubicle joined by a glory hole: one is a miniature, a three-dimensional model; the other is an architectural installation that invites the performative.
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design...