Here are some photos take this past weekend in Edmonton by friend-of-VoCA, Qasim Virjee of Design Guru. For info on the gallery, including The Murder of Crows by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller as well as Francisco Goya’s infamous print suites: Los Caprichos (1799) and The Disasters of War (1810-1820), which traveled from the National Gallery of Canada, please click HERE.

And for more on the gallery architecture, by Randall Stout Architects, please click HERE.

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“To build this house is to build my soul.” – Herman Wallace

Herman Wallace. Image: blacktalkradio.com

Last night we went to hear Jackie Sumell talk at Prefix ICA. Introduced by Kenneth Montague of Wedge Curatorial Projects, Sumell spoke about her fascinating art project, The House that Herman Built. For a number of years, Sumell, a Brooklyn-born, New Orleans-based artist has been corresponding with Herman Wallace, an inmate – in solitary confinement – in the Louisiana State Penitentiary for over 36 years.

Solitary confinement at the prison consists of spending a minimum of 23 hours a day in a six-foot-by-nine-foot cell.

Herman Wallace is one of the Angola Three, along with Robert King and Albert Woodfox, members of the Black Panther Party who organized a prison chapter of the party in order to desegregate the prison, and organized strikes for improved conditions.

Artist and activist Jackie Sumell. Image: grassroots.org

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Great curatorial minds think alike, it seems.

After what seems like an interminably long period of preciousness with Toronto’s starchitect-designed art spaces at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum, the gloves are off.

Both institutions have invited artists to literally destroy gallery walls.

The gorgeous, Frank Gehry-designed AGO. Image: seanjohn.com

At the AGO, the glorious collages and installations of Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu will, for her first major solo exhibition, include a haunting series of drawings mounted on a ‘pockmarked’ gallery wall, which will be punctured and torn to reflect the post-colonial themes at the core of Mutu’s work.

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We snuck in on the final day to see the Cut/Paste: Creative Reuse in Canadian Design show at the Royal Ontario Museum this past weekend, and, while the huge gallery spaces overwhelmed the design objects on display, there were a few things of particular interest, like objects that prison inmates had ingeniously cobbled together: water-boilers and crudely made toaster, to transform water and bread into toast and tea.

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Thanks to the Canadian Design Resource, who tweeted these two images, with a *sigh* that we echo:

Canadian Pavilion, or “Katimavik” at Expo 67. Image: expo67.ncf.ca

The Canadian pavilion in Vancouver.  Federal Heritage Minister James Moore shows off the exterior of the 2010 Canada Pavilion (visible in the background) for the Vancouver Olympics.
Image: vancouversun.com

Architect Joshua Prince-Ramus. Image: seattlepi.com

On Friday, we went to hear Joshua Prince-Ramus, the president of REX Architects in New York, speak at Toronto’s Interior Design Show, for the Azure-sponsored talks.

Prince-Ramus is an excellent and passionate speaker, who previously worked with Rem Koolhaas.  He is also an architect who - like Koolhaas -  clearly revels in the constraints imposed upon him.  As he said, “Constraints are the mother of invention.”

He spoke about architectural agency, about the need for architects to take responsibility for the fact that they have become marginalized. He noted that there was an artificial schism between creation and execution, that the idea of architect as ‘individual genius’ is a myth, and that there is a need to stitch creation and execution back together again.

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Given the recent kerfuffle over Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum being voted worst of the decade’s architecture by the Washington Post, VoCA would love to have your thoughts on the new condo that Daniel Libeskind is designing for downtown Toronto:

And a daylight shot. Image: downtownrealty.ca

WE FOUND AN IMAGE OF A MORE RECENT RENDERING - it’s the one on the right:

“Toronto is only beginning to evolve in the design of public space…the city feels like it was designed by the public works department.”

The UQAM Residences, in Montreal. Image: VoCA

Yes it does and it’s a real shame that it’s taking so long.

After being in Montreal over the holidays, where the UQAM buildings off Sherbrooke are invigorating, challenging, high quality…anything but dull, we came back to Toronto, where the average new building has cheap doors, glass frontage right out onto the streets, few courtyards and shameful quality. (Hello, lower Jarvis Street)

Read THIS article on the Toronto architect who - we are thrilled to see - is changing that.

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LOATHED: THIS article by Toronto architecture critic Christopher Hume tells of a developer who skirted the law by hiring thugs to deface a building that was slated for heritage protection. Now the building can’t be designated, so he’s able to just tear it down.

Gordon Matt-Clark, Conical Intersect, 1974-5. Image: thesprawlnetwork.com

Such little respect for our architectural heritage is astounding.

A more interesting option would have been to put out a call to artists to make work out of the old building. At least then it would ‘die’ with respect. Something similar to the excellent show the Leona Drive Project, which we blogged about HERE. That show was the result of a collaboration between developers and curators that gave soon-to-be-demolished houses over to artists for a week.

An image from the Leona Drive Project in Toronto. Image: Derek Flack/blogto.com

Of course, using architecture as art has been done by the late, great Gordon Matta-Clark, an artist who famously split houses in two, transforming their meaning from living space to wonder-inducing sculpture.

It reminds us of the young trees lining Toronto’s Bloor Street that were brutally beheaded last week to make room for other trees, with more soil, that will grow larger. Was it really necessary to kill all those trees? We hear they were mostly healthy.

One of the beheaded trees on Bloor Street. Image: Remi Carreiro/Torontoist

Let’s look for creative, positive solutions to such issues. After all, according to Seth Godin and others, we are entering the age of generosity.

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Thanks to Gareth Bate from whom we got Hume’s story on Facebook.

This just in from the Department of Culture, a community of artists and arts professionals who organized themselves in the wake of the Harper Government’s brutal cuts to the arts in the past year, in order to ensure “the social and cultural health and prosperity of our nation in the face of a Federal Government that is aggressively undermining the values that define Canada.”

Daniel Borins and Jennifer Marman, In Sit You, 2007. Image: torontoist.com

The Department of Culture and VoCA are encouraging Torontonians to support beautifulcity.ca, an initiative that will see tax from billboard ads go toward municipal arts funding.  Toronto is a city with ‘money issues’, so this is an important possible revenue stream.

Please take a second to click below to sign the petition or contact your councillor.

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