It’s been almost a year, and we’re wondering where these out-of-the-box thinkers are now. Click HERE to see what they were up to last year.

Wedge Curatorial Projects, Toronto

BECOMING: Photographs from the Wedge Collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit
September 12 – 28 December, 2008

Wayne Salmon, Mr. MacKenzie. Image: mocadetroit.org

Wedge’s Kenneth Montague has been busy. Aside from having curated a neat show-within-a-show at Toronto’s Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art that opened yesterday (More on that excellent exhibition coming soon), he’s got a show of photographs showing in Detroit. Featuring approximately 67 works by 38 artists, the show focuses on the portrait, and the reclaiming of identity through the photographic image.

Click HERE for more information.

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Following the trend of commercial galleries collaborating with the auction houses (lest the auction houses overtake them - see VoCA posts HERE and HERE ), in Montreal, the Contemporary Art Galleries Association (AGAC) is going to be organizing an exhibition between its members and Ritchies Auction House.

Massimo Guerrera, Au coeur du sujet, 2003-2006. Mixed media on paper mounted on canvas.
Image: joyceyahoudagallery.com

Entitled A suivre…, the first exhibit is perfect for new collectors, as it will focus on the relatively affordable medium of works on paper. Handily, it will parallel the art fair PAPIER 08, which will take place in Montreal from October 23 to 26, 2008, and which is also organized by AGAC.

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At a press conference in Toronto this morning, National Ballet artistic director Karen Kain, Sara Diamond of the Ontario College of Arts and Design, filmmaker Atom Egoyan, Joe Halstead of Caribana, film director Paul Gross and Jim Fleck of Business for the Arts each issued appeals for Canadians to care about the arts in this election:

Since VoCA was unable to attend, you can read the report on the press conference HERE.

Playwright Wajdi Mouawad. Image: ledevoir.com

From Wajdi Mouawad, Governor General Award-winning Canadian playwright; Knight of the Ordre National des Arts et des Lettres, France; Artistic Director of French Theatre, The National Arts Centre of Canada.

Originally published in the Montreal paper Le Devoir.

Monsieur le premier ministre,

We are neighbours. We work across the street from one another. You are Prime Minister of the Parliament of Canada and I, across the way, am a writer, theatre director and Artistic Director of the French Theatre at the National Arts Centre (NAC). So, like you, I am an employee of the state, working for the Federal Government; in other words, we are colleagues.

Let me take advantage of this unique position, as one functionary to another, to chat with you about the elimination of some federal grants in the field of culture, something that your government recently undertook. Indeed, having followed this matter closely, I have arrived at a few conclusions that I would like to publicly share with you since, as I’m sure you will agree, this debate has become one of public interest….

Read the rest of the letter HERE.

Gwenaël Bélanger, Chutes (amas), 2003. Image: graff.ca

In this piece for Art Review magazine, we single out our picks for “Next Great Quebec Artist” from the recent Quebec Triennale in Montreal.

Read our full review on artreview.com, HERE

Manon De Pauw, Fantasmagorie lumineuse, 2008. Image: canadianart.ca

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At this point, everything Mr. Hirst does is worth taking note of by art world observers.

Damien Hirst, the ultimate Art Star. Image: artdaily.com

His latest endeavors, from the Pharmacy bar/restaurant in London’s Notting Hill that closed with an auction of its contents to his now infamous diamond-studded skull that he, along with a group of investors purchased from his own gallery for 75 million Euros, have shocked the art world by aggressively pushing at its limits.

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There’s a great article in Art + Auction on the fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld and his newly launched Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion, a traveling contemporary-art show that he conceived as a 50th-anniversary tribute to the Chanel handbag and whose exhibition space he commissioned the Pritzker Prize–winning architect Zaha Hadid to design.

The Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion, designed by Zaha Hadid. Image: architecturelist.com

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Check out the short videos that we produced for the Canadian Art Foundation:

Just click right HERE.

Woman with the Devil, Drawing by Annie Pootoogook.
Image: sitemedia.ca/Feheley Fine Arts

• Dealer Wil Kucey of Le Gallery talks about his hot young artists and his prescient interest in illustrative, grafitti and street art

• Dealer Pat Feheley discusses the new Inuit art. It’s not soapstone sculptures of bears anymore, since Annie Pootoogook’s drawings were included in the last Documenta in Kassel, Germany.

• Artist Kim Dorland welcomes us into his studio as he talks about his influences, his recent work and how he hopes the viewer responds to his paintings.

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The OLD Canadian twenty dollar bill. Image: members.shaw.ca

Did you know that if you look at the NEW Canadian twenty dollar bill - you’ll need a magnifying glass - you will read the following quote by French-Canadian author Gabrielle Roy (1908 - 1983):

Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?

Nous connaitrions-nous seulement un peu nous-memes, sans les arts?

At last night’s jam-packed town hall meeting, organized in response to the Stephen Harper’s Conservative government’s recent slashing of $62.06 million in Arts and Culture programs, there were several passionate speeches by Claire Hopkinson of the Toronto Arts Council, Susan Swan of the Writer’s Union and Lisa Fitzgibbons of the Documentary Organization of Canada, rising to a crescendo with a polished, fervent speech by writer and activist Naomi Klein.

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We read, in the Art Newspaper (right HERE), that the Richard Prince works currently on view at London’s public Serpentine Gallery are for sale.

Richard Prince, “Untitled,” 1983. Image: zine.artcal.net

According to the article, this raises “questions about the relationship between publicly-funded galleries and their sponsors.”

Actually, since the Serpentine is not involved in any sales from the show, it raises more relevant questions about the power of commercial dealers in today’s art world. Naturally it behooves both dealers if their clients are able to purchase works complete with lofty provenance - that is, the Serpentine’s seal of approval.

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