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.
Science, the company behind Damien Hirst’s artistic production, marketing and publicity, is ranked number one in the seventh edition of ArtReview’s Power 100, distributed in the November 2008 issue of the contemporary art magazine.
British Mega-Artist Damien Hirst. Image: espacioblog.com
In a year that began with the setting of new auction records for contemporary art and ended in global financial crisis, Hirst overshadowed and outshone, becoming the first artist to bring his work directly to auction (at Sotheby’s London in September), and grossing £111 million in the process.
The top 10 also includes Kathy Halbreich, the first woman to appear on her own in the top 10. Ranked third, behind Hirst and gallerist Larry Gagosian, she is the newly appointed Associate Director of MoMA, New York, and the first of 32 women on this year’s ranking of art world players in a list traditionally dominated by men.
Click HERE for my article on the sculptors for Azure’s DesignLines magazine. They’ve just reworked the language of the traditional children’s jungle gym for their new city commission at Lee Centre Park in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto. Their design-y pieces reference Modernism using such unusual materials as Ikea furniture and bicycle tire.
Christian Giroux and Daniel Young, Mao, 2008. Image: cdgy.com
Christian Giroux and Daniel Young, Fullerene, 2003. Image: aceart.org
CDGY are represented in Toronto by Diaz Contemporary - click HERE.
VoCA sat down with Christian and Dan to talk about their work:
VoCA: How would you describe your artistic practice? You have made many sculptures, but also a film and a comic-book inspired print.
CG: We are primarily sculptors.,,our collaboration is born of shared sculptural interests. Our concern is still sculpture, but we’re not confining ourselves to making objects. It’s a hard question. Have we taken a sculptural approach to film? Yes. It’s a typology of comparison between the vocabulary of building construction and the sense of a moment of life in the city. Not just form but the social parameters that shape that form…Also in the history of sculpture…we research how we go about making work. It doesn’t always come naturally. It’s a way of thinking about forms.
DY: We’re interested in the fabrication process..the fabricators – we represent their realm, the industrial base. As you get to know a tool, it guides your process. No one masters anything anymore, it’s all super specialized.
Nocturne is Halifax’s first annual Nuit Blanche-inspired nighttime arts festival, bringing light and colour to the streets of Halifax, from 6 pm - midnight on on October 18th, 2008.
Francois Gaudet, pomme de pain. Image: galeriesaule.ca
Designed and initiated by volunteers within the community, Nocturne will be a signature arts event for Halifax that is easily accessible, free of charge and completely unique to the city. Attendees – tourists and residents alike - will have the opportunity to visit a number of the city’s art organizations, including both public and private art galleries, and experience art in many of Halifax’s public spaces.
Charles Pachter, The Painted Flag, 1981. Image: cpachter.com
Food for thought by Ms. Blatchford from a recent issue of the Globe and Mail…
“…Artists, while precious and important to the nation, are not fragile and ought not to be infantilized. They don’t need coddling and protection from government; they don’t need their work to be judged only kindly or only by their friends; they need not be constantly praised; and surely, it is not necessary that every aspect of their lives is subsidized by their countrymen.
On Torontoist.com, Johnnie Walker writes: “In retaliation against the positively terrifying notion of a Conservative majority government, groups like Vote For Environment and the Department of Culture have sprung up to take the battle to the blogs.”
Continue reading the article, and the comments…HERE.
Get involved! Join the Department of Culture - right HERE.
Learn how to vote strategically so as to ensure the Conservatives don’t get a majority - click on Vote for Environment HERE.
Last night, Magenta Publishing launched it’s latest issue of Flash Forward - an annual compendium of young photographers from the US, the UK and Canada. The launch kicked off with a well-curated exhibition of winners at Lennox Contemporary last night in Toronto. (Don’t let the image of a wax Celine Dion put you off!) The show runs until October 26, 2008.
I wrote the foreword, and in the coming days VoCA will be featuring a selection of our favorite artists featured in the book.
Jolie Dobson, Nuclear. Image: joliedobson.com
Jolie Dobson, Deadland. Image: joliedobson.com
Please see below for my introductory text:
From photography’s earliest days, when W.H. Fox Talbot experimented with Calotypes at Lacock Abbey, England, to the exotic imagery of 19th century travel photographers Maxime du Camp and Auguste Salzmann through to its application in 21st century news media, the camera has functioned, as Marshall McLuhan observed, as an extension of the eye. With this extension came a transformation of the world from a personal time-based experience into a series of singular, consumable moments whose original context is always lost to the ambivalent gaze of its recipient.
The Canada Council for the Arts announced today that the Beaverbrook Art Gallery is the recipient of the 2008 York Wilson Endowment Award, an award given annually to an art museum or public gallery to assist with the purchase of a single work by a Canadian artist.
Graeme Patterson, The Barn, 2004-2006. Image: canadacouncil.ca/courtesy Graeme Patterson
The Gallery will use the $20,000 award to purchase The Barn, including the animation Romancing the Farm, by 28 year-old Halifax-based artist Graeme Patterson.
Calgary’s TRUCK GALLERY presents three performance-based artworks in conjunction with Alberta’s Mountain Standard Time Performance Art Fest - which also features work by artists including The Cedar Tavern Singers, Jenn Goodwin and Jessica Rose, David Hoffos, Istvan Kantor, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Camille Turner and David Zack.
1. STEPHAN SCHULZ: Equally Distant From Both Sides
Second Performance on October 8, 2008 @ noon
Location: Various locations around Calgary’s downtown core
Documentation on display at TRUCK Gallery from October 10th to 17th
Stephan Schulz, Equally Distant From Both Sides. Image: mstfestival.org
THANK GOODNESS. In a move that seems designed to respond to the brou-haha over the Conservative government cuts to the arts, particularly in Quebec where they are very - rightfully - angry, Prime Minister Harper’s Conservative Government has decided NOT to reintroduce Bill C-10, the bill that would eliminate tax credits to films deemed to be “contrary to public policy.”
Since Damien Hirst made a killing in his Sotheby’s sale on the day that the US market dropped, there has been almost universal puzzlement over the future of the contemporary art market. Below are some conflicting headlines about the art market from the past few days - demonstrating that no one really knows what’s going on.
Image: boston.com
The Art Newspaper says:
Sign of things to come? New York art market shows evidence of weakness
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design...