Steeling the Gaze: Portraits by Aboriginal Artists

31 OCTOBER 2008 – 22 MARCH 2009

Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa

Kent Monkman, Emergence of a Legend, series of 5 portraits of Miss Chief in various performance personas.
Image: pfoac.com

(Click image above to enlarge)

This group exhibition, drawn from the collections of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography and the National Gallery of Canada, explores representations of Aboriginal people by Aboriginal artists.

Carl Beam, Einstein and Sitting Bull, ca. 1991. Image: archives.gov.on.ca

Artists include KC Adams, Carl Beam, Dana Claxton, Thirza Cuthand, Rosalie Favell, Kent Monkman, David Neel, Shelley Niro, Arthur Renwick, Greg Staats, Jeff Thomas and Bear Witness.

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This book is devoted to Canadian women artists from the 19th to mid 20th centuries. It should be necessary reading for anyone who is interested in Canadian history, and/or Canadian art.

Please don’t let the cover design dissuade you! Keep reading!

Independent Sprit, by A.K. Prakash. Image: fireflybooks.com

“It’s tempting to assume that Canadian women artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries were second-rate, given taht the male-dominated canon of art history has portrayed them as such, simply by exclusion. Independent Sprit helps dispel such tendencies. A.K. Prakash, art advisor to the Thomson family, the Prime Minister’s Office, the Canada Council, and UNESCO, among other, argues convincingly - at times reverentially - for the significance of the 36 artists profiled in this revealing four-part compendium…”

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METAMORPHOSIS: A contemporary art exhibition
Akbank Sanat, Istanbul, Turkey
November 6, 2008 - 31 January, 2009

Isabelle Hayeur’s remarkable installation Tunnel Vision, 2007, Netwerk CCA (Aalst, Belgium). Image: isabelle-hayeur.com

Isabelle Hayeur, Tunnel Vision, 2007, Netwerk CCA (Aalst, Belgium). Image: isabelle-hayeur.com

One of VoCA’s favorite curators, Louise Déry, from Galerie de l’UQAM in Montreal takes seven artists (all VoCA favorites, as it happens) to Istanbul for the city’s first group exhibition of contemporary Canadian art.

The artists are Michael Snow, David Altmejd (currently showing at Modern Art Inc. in London), Jérôme Fortin, Raphaëlle de Groot, Isabelle Hayeur, next year’s Venice Biennale representative Mark Lewis and Jocelyn Robert

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However you define fashion, there’s no denying that Montreal designer Renata Morales is an artist - and it’s certain that Canada has very few of whom one can say that.

A look from Morales’ spectacular Spring 2009 show. Image: renatamorales.com

Yoshitomo Nara, Guitar Girl, 2003. Image: tokyoartgallery.com

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Rumour has it that the Venice Architecture Biennale is coming to Cambridge Ontario!

Apparently, the Biennale Foundation has agreed to work with the University of Waterloo to create a ‘preview’ of sorts this coming summer. This show will become the basis for the next Architecture Biennale in 2010/2011.

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The 80-year-old Vancouver painter, sculptor, installation and performance artist Gathie Falk has long been inspired by the elements of everyday life: fruit, eggs, men’s shoes, women’s clothing, garden flowers and reading a book, among other things. Her work appears to meld feminine and masculine elements in a unique, charming, serious way.

The artist Gathie Falk in her studio, Vancouver, 1983. Image: lac-bac.gc.ca

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Nobody has systematically collected data on the women who historically contributed to Canadian art, architecture and craft. Until now.

Self-Portrait, by Lilias Torrance Newton, 1929. Newton was the first Canadian painter to paint the portraits of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip. Image: collectionscanada.gc.ca

Several weeks ago in Montreal, Concordia’s Canadian Women Artists History Initiative (CWAHI) held a symposium called Connections, to launch the first ever online database of Canadian women artists born before 1925.

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These are people who aren’t satisfied with how things are. They want change and they’ll risk criticism for it. Their reward? Injecting Toronto’s art scene with a sense of much needed vitality. We should all thank our lucky stars for these people, without whom Toronto would be a much more boring place.

A work by Gilberto Zorio. Image: iiclosangeles.esteri.it

1. Fabrice Marcolini – Director, Artcore Gallery. While working for Artcore in 2000, I had the rare opportunity of showing work by Francesco Clemente, Gilberto Zorio and Enzo Cucchi, among others. How many other Toronto gallerists can say that?

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…Isn’t it? When art prices go stratospheric, many smart collectors turn to prints, ephemera, and…books.

New York Art Book Fair at Phillips, de Pury and Co.
October 24 - 26, 2008
New York City

The cover of the One Cent Life portfolio, screenprint by Roy Lichtenstein, 1963.
Image: artnet.com

Collector and friend of VoCA Bill Clarke has been doing this for years and is well on his way to completing an edition of One Cent Life, with poetry by Walasse Ting and co-edited with painter Sam Francis, 1964, edition of 2100 copies.

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“Things have been overpriced; they need to come down,” said Glenn Scott-Wright, director at London’s Victoria Miro gallery, who attended the sale. “If Christie’s had dropped the reserves by 20 percent, it would have done better.”

Read the full story from Bloomberg HERE

“Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio” by Lucio Fontana, an oil and glitter on canvas work executed in 1963, was expected to fetch at least 12 million pounds ($21.8 million) during the Christie’s “Post-War and Contemporary Art” auction in London on Oct. 19. Source: Christie’s Images Ltd. via Bloomberg News

It was not to be. Read more HERE