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.
An inspiring story from Edmonton on how artist Kristy Trinier is shaking things up in Edmonton as the Public Art Director for the Edmonton Arts Council.
Kristy Trinier and Davide DiSaro, Inkognito, 2005. Image: skewgallery.com
The above work by Kristy Trinier was a collaborative sound and light installation for an exhibition of paintings by Sverre Bjertnaes at the Trondheim Kunstmuseum in Norway. Ten record players continuously looped, playing a composition developed with sound software and printed on white vinyl LP’s. The paintings in this work of the exhibition were only visible in the black lights. Materials used were vinyls, record players, black lights.
Painter Graham Peacock has been teaching painting at the University of Alberta since 1969, when he arrived in Canada from England.
Graham Peacock, Valor, 2003. Image: grahampeacock.com
Perhaps not strictly speaking underrated, Peacock has been exhibiting throughout Canada on a regular basis since 1971. In 2003 he had an exhibition of recent work at the New New Painting Museum in Toronto, and in 2005 had a retrospective at the Ernest Poole gallery in Edmonton.
How relevant are art schools today? Do artists really require education beyond basic technical training? Do art institutions hinder, rather than help the creative expression of artists today?
Bruce Nauman, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign), 1967.
Image: truthinart.wordpress.com
And what does Bruce Nauman think?
Read my opinion piece on the brand new news website, The Mark.
1. NEXT: A Series of Artist Projects from the Pacific Rim
Reece Terris: Ought Apartment
Vancouver Art Gallery
May 6 - September 20, 2009
Reece Terris, Concept drawing for Ought Apartment. Image: architecturewanted.blogspot.com
Vancouver artist Reece Terris is building a 60-foot architectural installation straight up through the heart of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Ought Apartment is an “apartment tower” with six full-sized residences stacked on top of each other, each dedicated to a decade of décor between 1950 and 2000. With an opening date of May 6, 2009, Terris and his crew are hard at work in the Gallery building what will be the largest sculptural installation ever created at the museum.
Click HERE for Reece Terris’ website, and HERE for the VAG.
Here Now or Nowhere
Throughout January 2009
Grande Prairie, Alberta
Presented by the Prairie Art Gallery
Jon Sasaki, The Destination and the Journey, 2007, video still
Here Now or Nowhere and is an exhibition of temporary public interventions taking place throughout downtown Grande Prairie, in Alberta.
Where is Grande Prairie? It’s located 456 kilometres northwest of Edmonton. The population of Grande Prairie is currently over 50,000 people and it’s deemed the second-fasted growing city in the oil and (increasingly culture) -rich province.
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.
Please, please read the full article that Ms. Atwood - the queen of Canada’s literary scene - wrote in yesterday’s Globe and Mail about the Conservative government’s cuts to the arts. Here’s an excerpt:
“Tuesday, (Prime Minister Stephen Harper) told us that some group called “ordinary people” didn’t care about something called “the arts.” His idea of “the arts” is a bunch of rich people gathering at galas whining about their grants.
Well, I can count the number of moderately rich writers who live in Canada on the fingers of one hand: I’m one of them, and I’m no Warren Buffett. I don’t whine about my grants because I don’t get any grants. I whine about other grants - grants for young people, that may help them to turn into me, and thus pay to the federal and provincial governments the kinds of taxes I pay, and cover off the salaries of such as Mr. Harper.”
Canadian national treasure, novelist Margaret Atwood. Image: imaginastore.com
From Wajdi Mouawad, Governor General Award-winning Canadian playwright; Knight of the Ordre National des Arts et des Lettres, France; Artistic Director of French Theatre, The National Arts Centre of Canada.
Originally published in the Montreal paper Le Devoir.
Monsieur le premier ministre,
We are neighbours. We work across the street from one another. You are Prime Minister of the Parliament of Canada and I, across the way, am a writer, theatre director and Artistic Director of the French Theatre at the National Arts Centre (NAC). So, like you, I am an employee of the state, working for the Federal Government; in other words, we are colleagues.
Let me take advantage of this unique position, as one functionary to another, to chat with you about the elimination of some federal grants in the field of culture, something that your government recently undertook. Indeed, having followed this matter closely, I have arrived at a few conclusions that I would like to publicly share with you since, as I’m sure you will agree, this debate has become one of public interest….
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design...