This year’s Sobey Art Prize shortlist is Luanne Martineau (West Coast & Yukon); Marcel Dzama (Prairies & The North); Shary Boyle (Ontario); David Altmejd (Québec) and Graeme Patterson (Atlantic)

Shary Boyle, To Colonize the Moon, 2008. To Colonize the Moon. Porcelain, enamel, gilt, diamond, mirror. Image: sharyboyle.com

The Sobey Art Prize is around the corner, and while this year it’s impossible to predict, rumour has it that it may be Shary Boyle. Ontario has yet to win, and Shary Boyle has had a great few years, with national and international exhibitions, museum shows and a gorgeous hard cover catalogue on her work.

However.

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Artist and curator Dave Dyment curated Zone C at last year’s Nuit Blanche. Among his installations were Michel de Broin’s waterfall and Jon Sasaki’s jaded mascots at Lamport Stadium, both of which helped make Liberty Village the undeniable hit of NB 2008.

Dyment is involved again this year, if rather less officially. He’s curating No Melatonin, a mini-zone in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood, along Queen Street West from Roncesvalles to Dufferin.

A still from Jon Sasaki’s video. Image courtesy Dave Dyment.

He was approached by Parkdale’s business improvement centre to put together a street project. It made sense, since as Dyment notes, many of Toronto’s artists actually live in Parkdale.

In a bid to keep it local and highly effective, Dyment has chosen accessible, easily recognizable works by local artists. As he puts it, “The idea is to entice people.”

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Nuit Blanche 2009, which will take place on the night of October 3 from sunset onwards, looks to be excellent again this year. Perhaps more serious than past years, many of the pieces are designed to make you consider the meaning of your surroundings. With more performance-based work than previous years, there are lots of ways for you to get involved with art.

For the Nuit Blanche 2009 website, please click HERE.

Jeff Koons’ Rabbit in New York. Image: rawartint.com

Here are VoCA’s picks:

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Superstar art dealer Larry Gagosian is certainly tapped into the zeitgeist, with his high-profile stable of artists, mini-empire (New York, Beverly Hills, London, Rome, Hong Kong, Athens) and recently, with his new shop that sells multiples by big-name artists in New York. The shop is new for a dealer, but not so new for the art world. It began with Claes Oldenburg’s art project The Store from 1961, and more recently, when Takashi Murakami began collaborating on Louis Vuitton-emblazoned merch, (and then opened a shop with his show at the LA MOCA.)

It’s clear that art has met fashion, and fallen in love.

The Gagosian Shop at 988 Madison Avenue. Image: selectism.com

As author Don Thompson makes evident in his observations from inside the international art world in his book The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art (a reference to Damien Hirst’s shark preserved in formeldahyde), art has become about brands. And almost no one brands more successfully than Hirst and Gagosian.

It was probably inevitable, but it seems a shame that art has been reduced to branding. When the focus is on the brand, it takes away from the value of the art.

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A new sculpture by the 2007 Sobey Award-winning Montreal artist Michel de Broin was unveiled in Winnipeg a few days ago.

Michel de Broin, Monument, 2009. Image courtesy Denis Prieur.

The granite work, titled Monument, is the inaugural sculpture for the Jardin de sculptures at Le Maison des artistes visuels francophones in Saint-Boniface, in Winnipeg.

Up to 20 sculptures will eventually be placed on the site by various provincial, national and international French speaking artists.

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We were just forwarded this letter by the excellent Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia. It was sent by the gallery’s director and curator, Scott Watson. According to an article in The Tyee, there has been a decline in core funding over two years of more than 88 per cent in British Columbia, from $19.5 million down to $2.25 million.

Gordon Campbell, Premier of British Columbia. Image: nxew.ca

The Honourable Gordon Campbell
Premier of British Columbia
9041 Station PROV GOVT
Victoria, BC V8W 9E1
f. 250.387.0087
e. Gordon.campbell.mla@leg.bc.ca

Dear Premier Campbell,

I am writing in hopes that the recent cuts to the B.C. Arts Council and the cuts of lottery money to the arts will be reconsidered.

The arts are fundamental to civil society and one of the basic elements of a healthy economy. British Columbia is in a relatively remote part of the Western world with a small population; public support for the arts is all the more necessary. B.C. has never had a stellar reputation for arts support. We lag far behind Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba. Now that reputation will be even more dubious.

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The nomadic art school Reverse Pedagogy moves to The Model Satellite in Sligo, Ireland. The project will bring together artists from Canada, Iceland and parts of Ireland and will culminate in a visual art exhibition opening on Friday 25th September.

Reverse Pedagogy in Banff, Alberta. Image: canadianart.ca

From the Model::Niland blog, which is maintained by the Model Arts and Niland Gallery:

“For their time in Sligo, the group of artists are occupying the Model Satellite space on Castle Street and will be submerging themselves and responding to local culture, including a tag rugby game with local team The Supermodels this evening, surf lessons in Strandhill, mountain climbs, and informal meetings with local arts and cultural groups.”

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Chris Barr: Bureau of Workplace Interruptions
September 17 – 1 November, 2009
The Art Gallery of Mississauga, Toronto

Chris Barr, Bureau of Workplace Interruptions, installation. Image: mississauga.ca

This is a show in the grand tradition of conceptual art. It transforms the gallery space – itself fast becoming a tradition: see Phil Collins, Elmgreen & Dragset, Rirkrit Tiravanija and many others. Not only does it transform the gallery, it aims to transform the gallery-goer. The Bureau of Workplace Interruptions, by the American artist and designer Chris Barr, is exactly what it sounds like. If you go to the ‘office’ or gallery, or bureau, you can sign up for an interruption. You can also do it online HERE.

Who wouldn’t welcome an interruption in their workday?

Says the artist: “Our promise is to create interruptions that challenge the efficiency of our audience and the social and economic conditions of the modern workplace.”

Go on, do it! Click HERE

That’s the POINT of this exhibition. It’s only good if people participate.

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VoCA is sad to report that one of Toronto’s most unusual and unique galleries will close.

Image: Goodwatergallery.com

Goodwater, a small store-front space on a non-descript stretch of Queen Street at Sherbourne run by John Goodwin, was unique in that it allowed artists to create special projects that they might not have the opportunity to do otherwise. The work wasn’t always salable, as with the installation of colourful paper sheets tacked to the wall by the painter Elizabeth MacIntosh.

Nonetheless, many installations were stunning, like Andrew Reyes’ bold crisscross, which Leah Sandals wrote about HERE.

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In THIS article in the New York Times, Roberta Smith notes that “The recent inflated art market has created the illusion that being an artist is a financially viable calling.”

Art school. Image: educationuk.org

“…The growing interest among art schools and universities (mostly abroad so far) in offering a Ph.D. in art makes the blood run cold. It also seems like rank, even cynical commercial opportunism. It’s too soon to tell, but I’d like to think that the economic downturn is doing serious damage to this trend and maybe even put budding artists off graduate school entirely.”

It’s a topic that we highlighted in THIS opinion piece for The Mark News.

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