When in Winnipeg this week, VoCA toured a few galleries. We met loads of people, we caught up with others, we loved, and we loathed.
LOVED:
-Christi Belcourt, Off the Map: Perspectives of Land, Water and Metis People at Urban Shaman
January 18 – 1 March, 2008
Christi Belcourt, Coat for Harry, 2005-06. Image: chrstibelcourt.com
Christi Belcourt, Portrait of Maria Campbell, 2005-06. Image: chrstibelcourt.com
Christi Belcourt, Untitled, 2005-06. Image: chrstibelcourt.com
Belcourt – an aboriginal artist living in Whitefish Falls, Ontario, makes exquisite work, as is evident in her show at Urban Shaman, an aboriginal artist-run centre. Taking as inspiration traditional First Nations craft and beadwork, these portraits, titled Great Metis of My Time, feature Metis leaders, activists and/or artists who sought justice for the Metis Nation. The portraits are set into the centre of each painting, Victorian-style, with beadwork-style painting surrounding. They are lovingly painted and deserve to be seen.
For more information, please click Urban Shaman’s website HERE
-Richard Hines, Pictures from (Inside) at Platform
11 January – February 22, 2008
Richard Hines, Chess. Image: nscad.ns.ca
These intimate photographs of the artist’s wife and son sort of creep up on you. They are direct and tender, and convey the emotional intensity of Hines’s relationship to his family. The works place the viewer in a peculiar position, as we are strangers to these people, but the last image, a family portrait in which Hines is completely obscured by shadow, speaks volumes.
Richard Hines, Sliced Apple, 2006. (Image not in the exhibition)
Image: gibsongallery.com
This is a well-curated show. For more information, please click A href=”href=http://www.platformgallery.org/>HERE.
Richard Hines is represented by Michael Gibson Gallery, London Ontario. Please click HERE.
LOATHED:
-Luis Jacob and Noam Gonick: Wildflowers of Manitoba at Plug-In ICA
December 14 – 26 January, 2008
Luis Jacob and Noam Gonick, Wildflowers of Manitoba. Image: plugin.org
We were very disappointed by Luis Jacob and Noam Gonick’s installation Wildflowers of Manitoba. The installation, which we expected to enjoy, occurs inside a tent-sized geodesic dome and stopped short of what it should have achieved.
In fact, we found that the didactic panel at the show’s entrance told us more about the work than the work itself. Never good.
The video projections were crudely shot gay men romping in the countryside, and the intallation itself consisted of a turntable with soundtrack, a mattress, some tree trunks and a dreamcatcher.
It was low-energy and left us cold.
Not to mention that it was stuck on one side of the darkened, empty gallery.
Not to mention that we hear that Noam Gonick is on the Board of Directors of Plug In.
For more info, please click HERE.
IN OTHER NEWS:
-Jarod Charzewski and Colleen Ludwig: Vanishing Point at aceartinc.
January 18 – 23 February, 2008
Jarod Charzewski, installation shot of Tides: Everglade, 2005. Image: jarodcharzewski.com
When we arrived, the artists were in the midst of installing a highly complex work, which would eventually be a forced perspective area map of the Winnipeg lakes, rendered in board and suspended from the ceiling with a water ‘wall’ at the back. The work is billed as an “environmental, cultural, social and political investigation” of the environmental situation that threatens lake Winnipeg due to high levels of phosphorous and nitrates generated by four provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario) and four U.S. States (Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota).
For more information, please click HERE
Jarod Charzewski will also have an exhibition in Toronto at Trinity Square Video from January 25 – 23 February, 2008.
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design...
3 comments ↓
“Wildflowers” was the best exhibition in Toronto in 2007. So I beg to differ on your shallow and poorly written review. I saw the show from a very different perspective than the reviewer. At the end of this response, in quotations, is what I wrote for http://www.digitalmediatree.com/sallymackay ‘s blog for the best of 2007.
It seems reviewer is not used to experimental video installation nor is that person familiar with alternative queer practices?? This is the kind of review I would expect from a straight person who cannot think beyond his or her own aesthetics, politics or personal experience. I think the reviewer felt left out, which might be why you choose to say this body of work left you feeling “cold”. And by judging the other works that VOCA “Loved” in Winnipeg, I would say that is most likely accurate.
Conservativism is rampant in Canada in the visual arts – your choices in Winnipeg were, from my standards safe, square and could be used for bank advertising – whereas Luis and Noam’s work questions and plays with ideas about sexuality and community in ways that are not safe nor comfortable, this is what makes great art, questioning the status quo! You portray, in your review, a complete lack of understanding of the material you have chosen to review – stick to the bank art and the art that safely serves the state.
Whether a person is on the BOD directors of an institution is just bitchy gossip and should not colour the outcome of an art review. Shame on VOCA for mentioning this kind of pooh.
“Wildflowers of Manitoba” by Noam Gonick and Luis Jacob, video installation for TIFF at MOCCA. Ok I have wanted to do a radical faerie/hippie fag piece for years using geodesic domes, but you beat me to it! I loved this show more than I can describe!!! I wish that it had a longer run!!! http://www.mocca.toronto.on.ca/”
I appreciate your opinion. Here’s what the curator of the show wrote to me up on reading my review:
Hi Andrea,
After reading your review of Wildflowers of Manitoba I regret not giving yourself and Celia an introduction to the exhibition, as there were some crucial components not immediately evident in the show. One of the primary “animating” elements of Wildflowers is a person/performer (the artists call this person an “attendant”) who lives inside the dome: sleeping on the mattress, burning incense, listening to the music on the record player, dreaming, and remembering. Ideally this attendant is in the dome at all times, but given budget restrictions he is only able to do so on Saturdays. When he is inside the dome the work takes on another level of life and warmth, and in many ways the entire structure (and series of films) can be seen as the manifestation of his mental architecture; recalling and savouring a utopian dream.
There are also candles in the gallery intermittently, and the large amount of space afforded to the work is designed to allow the “fragments” of video that spill over the projection screens to unite with the sound and saturate the space with suggestion.
There are a number of references at play in the work as well – from the geodesic dome of Expo ’67, to the Radical Faerie Network (communities of queer men who live simply in countrysides around the world), to the Franco-pop group Harmonium (who provide the soundtrack) and Wilhelm Reich’s Orgone Generator. The installation should of course work without knowledge of these elements, but it certainly adds to the depth of the work. A forthcoming publication accompanying the installation will delve into these details in greater depth.
Thanks,
Steven Matijcio
By the way, my review was of the show at Plug-In in Winnipeg…VoCA didn’t see the one in Toronto.
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