ATTENTION ARTISTS: I’m thrilled to announce that I’m looking for artists for a brand new art project that I’m involved with. It’s called Artbomb and it’s a daily online art auction delivered to your inbox.

Patrick Hughes, Colour Process, 1984. Image: wonderboygraphics.com
I have one of these prints for sale, incidentally.

Here’s how it works. People subscribe for free and receive a single email from us everyday from Monday to Friday. Each day a new work of art is featured, and subscribers can bid on it. If they like it, they bid and if they don’t, they don’t.

It’s simple.

It will be launching in about one month and I’m looking for ‘emerging’ artists to potentially participate. By emerging, I mean less established artists, although some established artists are welcome.

If you are are Toronto-based artist and are interested in showing your work to thousands of potential buyers, please contact me at carsonandrea@hotmail.com. I’ll answer any questions you have and send you a copy of the contract.

Send me your phone number and we’ll go from there. Our website will be up soon.

Artbomb. Buy what YOU love.

I’ve been thinking recently about Canada’s arts granting system. With all this talk of financial reform, from the global to the municipal levels (hello, Rob Ford), maybe it’s time we looked at whether the granting system in Canada could use some reform of its own.

Image: canadianart.ca

Federal, provincial and municipal arts councils are all arms length agencies of the government. The Canada Council for the Arts is a crown corporation chaired by Joseph Rotman, which is funded from parliament along with endowments and donations. The visual arts are one division, the other five are media arts, dance, music, theatre and writing/publishing. The Ontario Arts Council is a publicly funded agency of the ministry of culture, and the Toronto Arts Council is funded by the City of Toronto.

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While it’s clear that Canada has some thriving art scenes in Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg, the issue continues to be the comparatively weak market for contemporary art. We have Nuit Blanche in Montreal and Toronto (which is a good start) and we have art fairs for collectors, but the question is how to get the average non-art person visitng gallieres and purchasing work by local artists?

Darren Stebeleski, $400.

An idea to bring the gallery to the people will launch at Winnipeg’s popular Fringe Festival (July 13 – 24, 2011). Conceived by Martha Street Studio, RAW:Gallery of Architecture and Design, and Golden City Fine Art, the idea is to increase exposure and appreciation of Winnipeg’s outstanding artists. “We felt it was unfortunate that people are not able to find local contemporary artists as easily as in other markets,” say the organizers. “Thus, over some drinks we hatched POST NO BILLS temporary commercial gallery. We hope that this event, in conjunction with the Fringe Festival will help both artists and patrons to meet one another.”

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Although I stopped going to art fairs a while ago, after having been to many over the years both as a ‘gallerina’ and as a critic including Art Basel, Basel Miami, Art Chicago and Frieze, they remain popular venues for collectors, curators and, of course dealers and artists to hang out and do business.

Kristine Moran, Sidestep. Image: modto.com

New York’s Armory Show is one of the most prestigious and it takes place from March 3 – 6 in Manhattan.

Canada’s Art Dealers Association is – as per usual – organizing some programming around Canadians participating in the fair, but this year they are celebrating Canadian expat artists in New York with a series of discussions and tours of the show.

It’s a pretty good list of artists that I thought I’d share with you.

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I came across a funny, smart article called “A guide to the market oligopoly system”, which is a piece by Felix Salmon that uses a drawing by the artist William Powhida to deconstruct the complexities of the American art market.

William Powhida, A Guide to the Market Oligopoly System. Image: reuters.com

It makes interesting reading, particularly the part of the pyramid where locales are listed on a scale from Topeka to New York, where he notes “the value of a work of art is to a very large degree a function of the city where it’s being sold. New York’s at the top of the heap (or, to be precise, Manhattan); Berlin punches well above its weight; Paris, the erstwhile center of the art world, is conspicuous by its absence.”

It suggests that Toronto, which I would put on par with Philadelphia or Seattle at the lower end of the scale, is a small market that determines the fate of its artists. It’s a bit of a double-edge sword for artists: Do they wallow in relative obscurity in a small going-nowhere market like Toronto (or all of Canada, for that matter), but where they can teach and have the support of government grants and artist-run centres and have a decent quality of life, or do they dive into the overpopulated, over-competitive waters in New York or London, where they also risk obscurity (and, likely, poverty)?

I’m thankful for the excellent, world-class artists who have decided to remain in Canada. Though they may never achieve super-star status, we need and appreciate them.

Read the full article, HERE.

Oh, and Happy New Year! See you in 2011.

Over the past few years, I’ve often mentioned, and championed, regional art galleries in Ontario and Canada.

Artist Luke Painter and one of his works. Image: blogto.com

CAFKA (Contemporary Art Forum, Kitchener and Area) is a regional not-for-profit arts organization whose mission it is to “present innovative art within a public space.” It has evolved from a small, regional festival in 1996 to an organization that offers year-round programming, featuring international and national artists.

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Toronto is changing dramatically these days, as anyone who lives downtown can tell you. Seemingly hundreds of condo towers are going up, and the city centre is filling in nicely.

Queen West. Image: realestatebrothers.com

I was at an opening the other night and I could just tell that there were condo-dwellers scattered among the artists in the crowd. It made me wonder about the effect of the influx of a group primed for objets d’art – how will this affect the local market? Already Queen Street West and Queen West West, and Dundas West and Liberty village are full of artists, galleries, studios, workshops and boutiques.

The creative scene has been thriving for a few years now, and the local media is responding.The city finally seems to be comfortable in celebrating our own, whether local fashion designers like Jeremy Laing, local artists (Shary Boyle, Kristan Horton among many, many others), musicians, chefs, bartenders, architects and designers.

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I just got a press release from theartmarket.ca, a newly launched website that bills itself as “a game changer”.

Image: VoCA

The idea, conceived by two friends, Merete Kristiansen and Kate Barron of Vancouver, is to provide “an innovative and comprehensive guide to the Canadian art world”, by hosting free profiles of artists, galleries and related events.I hope that they get things rolling soon.

With a name like The Art Market, they’ll really have their work cut out to feature what’s happening across the country. I know, because that’s pretty much what VoCA set out to do four years ago.

On the site you will find a searchable database, which will presumably soon be filled with, as they say, profiles for artists, arts organizations and their events. Their release may have been a little premature, though. I searched “installation” “conceptualism” for the years 2000-2010 and it came up with… nothing.

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Fashion designer Jeremy Laing, it turns out, is also an avid art collector.

Jeremy Laing’s exhibition. Sign by Derek Sullivan. Image: VoCA

I discovered this on Saturday of the Toronto International Art Fair, when I led a tour for the Canadian Art Foundation’s young patron group, the New Contemporaries, and Laing took the time to show us around the installation that he curated.

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There was quite a good vibe at the art fair in Toronto this weekend. While Toronto’s fair pales in comparison to those in Miami or London or New York, it’s less useful to compare them, and better to focus on the fantastic young Canadian talent to be found.

Mike Bayne, Untitled, from the series God, Shelter, Oil Painting and Hockey, 2010. Oil on panel. Image: VoCA

The fair was divided into new, young contemporary (to the west side) and more established (and less cutting-edge contemporary, it seemed, to the east.) Among a lot of average work, there were some really good pieces on view, some of which I’ve featured here.

The dealers whom I spoke with sounded positive, particularly those in the less expensive Next section (for younger galleries). There were plenty of red dots, indicating sold works.

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