“Photography for me is about awe in our world brought to us through nature.” -Ariel Estulin

Friend of VoCA and traveling nature photographer Ariel Estulin will debut his work at the Rivoli Lounge in Toronto, from Sept 6 – 7 November.

A scene in Patagonia. Image courtesy Ariel Estulin.

Estulin draws inspiration from two great North American photographers, the late Galen Rowell, outdoor adventurer, photo artist and writer; and Canada’s renowned landscape photographer and writer, Freeman Patterson, from whom he learned much about the practice of photographing nature.

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Peut Mieux Faire
September 4 – 9 October, 2009
Atelier Punkt, Montreal

There’s a new exhibition opening on September 4 at Atelier Punkt, the year-old space that appears to be one of Montreal’s coolest art and design spaces.

Founded by artist Melinda Pap, Punkt is effectively an artist-run centre that dedicates itself to exhibitions of work by young designers, photographers, illustrators and architects from “Montreal and the world.”

Peut Mieux Faire features work by artists, performers, graphic designers, stylists, make up artists, ceramicists, jewelers, architects, authors-composers-interpreters…each of whom have been given by Emmanuel Galland (the curator ‘professor’), a classic Canada Hilroy exercise book as a ‘canvas’.

Participating artists include Suzanne Dery, Justin Stephens, Jerome Fortin and Daniel Olsen, among many others.

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Here are a few good art-world happenings coming up:

Edward Burtynsky, Oil Fields #22, Cold Lake Production Project, Cold Lake, Alberta, 2001. Image: arttattler.com

• Photographer Ed Burtynsky is planning a new traveling exhibition on the theme of Oil that will be on at the soon-to-be opened Art Gallery of Alberta in 2010

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VoCA went to Georgian Bay this past weekend, and we were surprised to discover a work of contemporary art sitting on a rock overlooking the water.

Robert Murray, Pointe au Baril II, 2003. Image: Scott Barker

The sculpture is by the artist Robert Murray, who has a cottage nearby and sits next to a lighthouse that marks the original township/community of Pointe au Baril.

The Georgian Bay community of Pointe au Baril was originally located on the north east corner of Lookout Island and the mainland, where the lighthouse presently stands. Together these two land bodies form part of the entrance channel which begins in open water to the west and threads its way through small islands to Pointe au Baril Station and Shawanaga Bay, a protected body of water that extends south to Snug Harbour and the entrance of Parry Sound.

Robert Murray grew up in Saskatoon. He attended the Regina College School of Art and studied with Ken Lochhead, Arthur McKay, Roy Kiyooka, Wolfram Neissen and Richard Simmons. He also studied at the Emma Lake Artists Workshops with Jack Shadbolt, Barnett Newman and Clement Greenberg.

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A reader recommended to us this article about an art exhibit that was on view at Toronto gallery Board of Directors a few weeks ago. Wishing to explore the issues that artists face in regard to government funding, artist Maria Flawia Litwin wrote numerous rejection letters and sent them off to Canadian museums and even the Canada Council for the Arts – which “expresses total bafflement”, says the article.

Although we regrettably missed the exhibition, we quite like the concept. Read the full article from the National Post, HERE.

It’s no secret that VoCA loves feminist and post-feminist art, and elements of it are apparent in Maria Flawia Litwin’s work. We love her ability to mix wit and a real deep truth in many of her ongoing performances and installations, but above all we love that we sense her commitment to her work.

Here are a few images of her work at the Ontario College of Art and Design:

Maria Flawia Litwin, Big Ball of Yarn, mixed media, ongoing since 2006.
Image: ocadarchive.com

Maria Flawia Litwin, Big Ball of Yarn, mixed media, ongoing since 2006.
Image: ocadarchive.com

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With so much writing being done online, books have taken on a precious new meaning.

That’s no different in the art book world, or more specifically, the luxury book market as defined by Benedikt Taschen, the German publisher who in 1999 famously published SUMO, a retrospective of the work of iconic photographer Helmut Newton.

It was the largest book produced in the 20th century and now sells on Ebay for $15,000.

An image by the late, great Helmut Newton, from SUMO. Image: livresphotos.com

“…books can themselves become their own pieces of highly sought-after art. “The making of the titles is a collaboration with the artists,” (Taschen) explains. “Their ideas are at the centre of the work and they are involved all the way through the process, making the books original, personal and desirable – like great art should be. Why shouldn’t an art book be something to be revered?”

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For the Colour Bar Lounge’s debut at the 1979 Basel Art Fair, the Italian dealer Lucio Amelio published six lounge decor images, including the famous Nazi Milk (1979)
Image: kw-berlin.de

Item Idem. Image: blogs.colette.fr

Friend of VoCA and Tokyo-based artist/provocateur Item Idem, in collaboration with Paul Mpagi Sepuya, has dedicated this ‘homage’ to General Idea’s Nazi Milk work. It’s in honour of “30 years of Nazi Milk”, and you can find it on the blog for the French shop Colette.

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“With their artists competing on an international stage, Canadians can no longer complain of their country as a cultural backwater nor luxuriate in the nostalgic charm of provincialism. In art as in political, social and economic activities, Canada is fully involved in the world of today,”
– Dr. R. H. Hubbard, former Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Canada.

Guido Molinari, Untitled, 1964. Image: artnet.com

Walking down Bloor Street in Toronto last night, we stopped at a bookshop’s outdoor display and there, right in front of us, on sale for $1.99, was a copy of Canadian Art Today, originally published in 1970 by Studio International.

Edited by William Townsend, a professor at the University of London, the slim book is filled with contributions from Canada’s art elite at the time: R.H. Hubbard, then chief curator of the National Gallery of Canada, Doris Shadbolt, then curator of the Vancovuer Art Gallery, curators Dennis Reid, Pierre Theberge and David Thompson.

“Canadian artists were dependent for generations on the artistic traditions of France and England and it is only since the last war that contemporary American influences have made a decisive impact,” writes Townsend.

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For the third year, from September 10 – 19, 2009 TIFF will feature a program of art films as part of its Future Projections series, at venues throughout the city.

The programme was initiated to call attention to video art, and the upcoming Bell Lightbox building will continue this goal with a street-level gallery that, we hear, will screen video art through a window 24/7. (Great news!)

Isabella Rossellini, Green Porno: Scandalous Sea. Image: wired.com

The 2009 Future Projections features artists and filmmakers such as Isabella Rossellini, Jesper Just, a brand new work by VoCA favorites Lisa Steele and Kim Tomszak and the North American premiere of Mark Lewis’s work straight from the Venice Biennale, in case you missed going, as we did.

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A New York Democratic senator has introduced a bill that could make the process of gifting artworks to museums easier for Americans. Sen. Charles Schumer has introduced the bill in reaction to museums’ complaints of sharp declines in art donations.

The full article, HERE, explains it in more detail but it does make VoCA think that a similar bill should also be introduced here.

Rineke Dijkstra, Golani Brigade, Orev Unit, Elyacim, Israel, May 26, 1999, 1999.
Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Gift of Alison and Alan Schwartz
Image: vanartgallery.bc.ca

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