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.
January 16th, 2008 — Winnipeg
VoCA has been invited to give a talk, The Role of the Art Critic at the University of Manitoba, followed by critiques of 3rd and 4th year visual art students.
Stay tuned for more in the next day or two…
A view of Winnipeg, Canada from space. Image: answers.com
January 15th, 2008 — Artists, Exhibitions
1. Canadian artists abroad: DEREK SULLIVAN, DAVID ARMSTRONG SIX
UNTITLED (ON PAPER)
January 10 - 9 February, 2008 at Moti Hasson Gallery, New York
Derek Sullivan, National Gallery Catalogue, 2004. Image: motihasson.com
In celebration of the traditional first anniversary gift of paper, New York’s Moti Hasson Gallery celebrates its one-year anniversary with a group exhibition of works on paper by artists including David Kramer, David Armstrong Six, Jennifer Murphy, Raymond Pettibon and Derek Sullivan.
The exhibition features artists who have created works that incorporate paper, but are not limited to drawings.
January 14th, 2008 — Articles, News: International
Why I collect: Collectors reveal what drives them – an excellent article from the Wall Street Journal:
For the full article, please click HERE
Oscar Neimayer, Novomuseu, Curibita, Brazil. Image: Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz
For this year’s Sao Paolo Biennale (October - December 2008), director Ivo Mesquita has revealed that he intends to organise an exhibition with no works of art.
January 12th, 2008 — Exhibitions, News: International
Ivory from the Thompson Collection. Image: ft.com
A collection of Ivories from the Thompson Collection to be previewed at London’s Somerset House before coming to the Art Gallery of Ontario later this year.
“Ivories were the first works of art Thomson ever acquired back in the 1950s; he was attracted by their miniaturist craftsmanship and their intimate tactile quality. He bought Egyptian, Byzantine and Romanesque ivory carvings as well as Japanese Netsuke, Baroque ivories and ingenious machine-carved Cheverton portrait busts. Within this group, however, the holding of western medieval ivories ranks among the most important in the world – in or out of a museum…”
January 11th, 2008 — Articles, News: International
Philippe de Montebello. Image: tfaoi.com
“it is the mystery, the wonder, the presence of the real that is our singular distinction and that we should proudly, joyfully proclaim.”
- Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
January 10th, 2008 — Architecture
VoCA saw Cameron Sinclair, co-founder of Architecture for Humanity speak at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto last night.
Cameron Sinclair. Image: worldchanging.com
He was able to demonstrate, in just over an hour, what Bruce Mau was trying to tell Toronto with his exhibition Massive Change in 2005.
January 9th, 2008 — Exhibitions, Ottawa
1. CONVERSATION PIECES
12 January to 10 February
The Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston Ontario
Deirdre Logue, Why Always Instead of Just Sometimes. Image: deirdrelogue.com
Conversation Pieces is an exhibition of new media work by Canadian artists Linda Duvall, Germaine Koh, Deirdre Logue, Matt Rogalsky and Laurel Woodcock. Audio, video and multimedia installations explore acts of communication through verbal exchanges.
January 8th, 2008 — Articles, Artists
Exquisitely contrived disorder
By Jackie Wullschlager in the Financial Times
Published: December 14 2007
Jeff Wall, Picture for Women, 1979. Image: courses.washington.edu
What happens if a politicised conceptual artist loves beauty? The Canadian artist Jeff Wall launched his career with “Picture for Women” – a clever photographic reprise of “A Bar at the Folies Bergère” – in the 1970s, a time when aesthetic seduction roughly approximated to the evils of capitalism. Wall was too intelligent, innovative and ethically committed to ignore the current sensibility, but too finely tuned as an artist, and too steeped in art history’s pleasures, to accept the taboo on beauty. So he came up with a method of image-making that referenced Manet as well as Donald Judd, Cézanne as well as Dan Flavin, and revolutionised late 20th-century art photography.
January 6th, 2008 — Artists, Interviews
VoCA recently caught up with 2007 Sobey Art Prize winner Michel de Broin, by phone from Berlin, where he is now based.
The Montreal artist has a Toronto court case coming up this spring to contest charges brought against the driver of his increasingly notorious pedal powered Buick, the Shared Propulsion Car, which was recently on view at Mercer Union.
The public is invited to the hearing, which will take place in Toronto on April 3rd, in courtroom R at 60 Queen Street West
at 3 pm. Watch this space for more info.
Michel de Broin, Solitude. Colour Photograph, 2002. Image: micheldebroin.org.
The project consists of suspend a mobile home in isolation but in the centre of traffic for a retreat.
VoCA: There seems to be something of a contradiction between Western society’s desires - for a healthy planet, for example - and our cultural behavior. Your work seems to harness this contradiction, to make objects that somehow embody that contradiction.
January 4th, 2008 — Underrated Canadian Artists
Artist Hilda Woolnough. Image: hildawoolnough.com
HILDA WOOLNOUGH
Hilda Woolnough (1934 – 2007) is a well-renowned visual artist who had been a resident of Prince Edward Island for more than 30 years. She was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) in 2000 and her work is in many public and private collections including the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Canada Council Art Bank and the Confederation Centre of the Arts.
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design...Read full bio