VoCA contributor Catherine Toews visited Allyson Mitchell’s exhibition in Kingston, Ontario recently. Here are her thoughts:

An installation shot of the exhibition’s dolls. Image: uniongallery.queensu.ca

Allyson Mitchell’s mixed-media work integrates a dizzying array of soft, girly, gaudy components – Cabbage Patch doll heads, hooked animal rugs, cross-stitched kittens, ceramic dolls, and fuzzy pink afghan blankets. It is a testament to Mitchell’s crystal clear vision and considerable technical skill that she has managed to combine such disparate, kitschy components into two strong, subtle installations for her exhibition at the Union Gallery on the Queen’s University campus.

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Nuit Blanche Toronto takes place this Saturday, October 4th from dusk ’til dawn. Since last year’s audience doubled to 800,000 VoCA has selected what we think will be the evening’s highlights.

Click HERE for our critics picks of Zone A and HERE for Zone B.

Zone C is down in Toronto’s Liberty Village this year, and is made up of two exhibitions by two curators, Haema Sivanesan, executive director of SAVAC, the South Asian Visual Arts Centre in Toronto and Dave Dyment, artist and former co-director of Mercer Union Contemporary Art Centre, Toronto

Our picks for Dave Dyment’s exhibition, titled Beginning to See the Light, are:

1. Overflow, 2008 by Michel de Broin

Michel de Broin, Solitude, 2001. Image: micheldebroin.org

We’re pretty sure the 2007 Sobey Award winner won’t disappoint. This is the man who imagined suspendina a mobile home from a crane and risked arrest for driving a pedal-powered Buick Regal downtown.

This piece will present a waterfall flowing from a third story window.

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Vancouver painter Jeremy Hof has won the 10th annual RBC Painting competition for his work entitled layer painting red.

Jeremy Hof, layer painting red, 2008. Image: courtesy RBC.

Amanda Reeves of Oakville and (VoCA favorite) Wil Murray of Montreal were revealed as honourable mentions for their work Untitled 08 2008 and Sexe Maniac Maniac Maniac Maniac Maniac.

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Please, please read the full article that Ms. Atwood - the queen of Canada’s literary scene - wrote in yesterday’s Globe and Mail about the Conservative government’s cuts to the arts. Here’s an excerpt:

“Tuesday, (Prime Minister Stephen Harper) told us that some group called “ordinary people” didn’t care about something called “the arts.” His idea of “the arts” is a bunch of rich people gathering at galas whining about their grants.

Well, I can count the number of moderately rich writers who live in Canada on the fingers of one hand: I’m one of them, and I’m no Warren Buffett. I don’t whine about my grants because I don’t get any grants. I whine about other grants - grants for young people, that may help them to turn into me, and thus pay to the federal and provincial governments the kinds of taxes I pay, and cover off the salaries of such as Mr. Harper.”

Canadian national treasure, novelist Margaret Atwood. Image: imaginastore.com

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We saw two exhibitions in New York recently: Giorgio Morandi at the Metropolitan Museum and After Nature at the New Museum.

Giorgio Morandi, Still Life (Natura morta), 1961. Image: metmuseum.org

Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964)

September 16–December 14, 2008

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Morandi was excellent. We kept thinking of Plato’s theory of Forms, which are described as the pure essences of things, or the defining characteristics of things.

Perhaps the exhibition catalogue says it best: (The still life genre) “let him proceed by concentrating on “simple ‘objects’, arranged, graduated, varied, exchanged” and landscapes bounded by a horizon - elements of his visual world but also of his interior world, and part of his propensity for giving new expression to an entirely Italian essence, “digging into form, and through it, layering tonal ‘memories’”.

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Before we get to our Report from New York, we should mention the gala dinner that we attended last night in celebration of one of Canada’s most notable philanthropists and cultural supporters, Mr. Jim Fleck.

Jim Fleck. Image: rotman.utoronto.ca

Cultural bigwigs from Karen Kain to (VoCA favorite) the extraordinary cabaret star Patricia O’Callaghan came out to salute Mr. Fleck and perform, with actor Albert Shultz (of Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre) holding court as Master of Ceremonies.

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Julian Schnabel’s Rose Bar, part of his interior at the Grammercy Park Hotel, where we’ll be having cocktails.
Image: ontheinside.info

There’s a great interview with Mr. Schnabel in Art Review. Click HERE and download the digital mag, free.

Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto

Dyed Roots: The New Emergence of Culture

September 9 - October 26, 2008

This beautiful exhibition, curated by Camilla Singh in the difficult space of MoCCA, presents “the intermingling of cultures…considered as a natural consequence of immigration and travel.”

Rina Banerjee, Crib sculpture. Image: rinabanerjee.net

The show’s title refers to intrinsic qualities that persist in spite of external influence and efforts made to conceal them. Dyed Roots: the new emergence of culture explores the ways in which a sense of identity can be cultivated and influenced.

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We know that it has its sights set on becoming more culturally-aware. Now, the city of Calgary, Alberta has just announced “a stunning Western bronze destined to become one of the largest sculptures in North America and one of the city’s most photographed icons.”

A model for the bronze. Image: cbc.ca

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Damien Hirst, The Explosion - Exalted, 2006. Image: ionarts.blogspot.com

VoCA loves reading FT art critic Jackie Wullschlager’s take on things. Here’s her take on Damien Hirst’s sale at Sotheby’s in London, which happens today.

“Warhol..and Jeff Koons…were prophets of this collusion, but (Damien Hirst’s upcoming Sotheby’s sale) “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” is its apogee. It does not matter what sells or flops.

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