The Walrus has a good interview with Simon Brault, author of No Culture, No Future, the new book that exploresthe fact that the arts are a necessity, not a luxury.

As he puts it, the book is a “call to action” - for Brault, it’s up to everyone to communicate with one another to promote and encourage the arts.

Image: cormorantbooks.com

Here is some of what Brault has to say in the interview:

“When you look in the papers, the conversation around arts and culture is reduced to the economy or to presenting a particular cultural product. It’s not a broad conversation about what arts and culture bring to people — to children, to people who are lonely, to people who have a need for expressive life.”

“Every human being has a relationship with the arts. The fact that we are ignoring that — and trying to lecture people as if they are completely ignorant, as if they are completely disconnected from everything we believe in – is a big problem.”

“I read, I think, I write, but mostly I act. And I try to act with people around me. I still believe that ideas can change the world. I know it can sound like a very romantic vision — but it’s not so romantic because things are changing… ”

Author Simon Brault. Image: cormorantbooks.com

I haven’t read the book, but I’m looking forward to it.

If you want to know more on Brault’s thoughts vis a vis the arts in Canada (and the world), buy the book HERE.

From this morning’s Ottawa Citizen, we learn that Shirley Thomson, the former director of the National Gallery of Canada, has died.

Jana Sterbak, Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic, 1987. Image: makefive.com

Thompson is known for her staunch defence of the gallery’s decision to purchase Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire for $1.8 million in 1988. You can’t help but smile remembering the hou-ha that that caused, considering today’s $100 million plus prices that we see at auction. She also acquired the famous “meat dress” by Montreal artist Jana Sterbak.

From the article, which quotes her as saying “We know that some of the cutting-edge Canadian artists, by the very nature of their innovation, are not necessarily going to please a broad expanse of the public. However, we are morally and esthetically committed to these artists.”

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The finalists for the 2010 Sobey Art Award were announced today. The artists, selected by a jury from each region of Canada, are competing for the Award’s $50,000 top prize. Bendan Tang may be the newest kid on the block, but our money’s on Duke & Battersby or the excellent Daniel Barrow, who was passed over in 2008.  Do we have wonderful artists in this country, or what?

The 2010 Sobey Art Prize shortlist:

• West Coast and Yukon: Brendan Lee Satish Tang

A work by Brendan Lee Satish Tang. Image: illusion.scene360.com

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We returned from Vancouver to the news that Brian Jungen has won the $25,000 2010 Gershon Iskowitz award at the AGO, and that the $50,000 Sobey Art Prize longlist has been announced.

Vanessa Paschakarnis, Shield for a Human, 2009. Bronze. Image: erhard-metz.de

Most regions have a pretty clear shortlister for the Sobey (I’m thinking either Isabelle Pauwels or Jeremy Shaw from the West; Daniel Barrow from the Prairies; Diane Borsato or Jon Sasaki from Ontario and Duke and Battersby from the East) but Quebec has a tough choice between Pascal Grandmaison, Patrick Bernatchez, BGL, Adad Hannah and Karen Tam.

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Ok, ok people, you pummeled VoCA for THIS post, with many comments…

Tell VoCA what you want. Image: smh.com.au

Some agreed, saying “I feel like this this revulsion I’m experiencing is the desired effect: Trecartin would endeavour to highlight contemporary culture’s more outlandish aspects by combining them all into one loathsome beast” and “bad taste, as well as bad technique are the point! Maybe that’s the case here.”

But most blasted my “poorly poorly argued and supported judgments,” my “impatience with the work’s rigor, (that) shows a complete misunderstanding for the medium, and is lazy criticism,” suggesting that perhaps “sometimes aggressively queer work makes (me) feel uncomfortable.”

There have also been numerous suggestions and comments from readers sent to me off the blog.

So, I want to say that I hear you.

I welcome your comments on what you’d like to see in a critical art blog, below.

Thanks!

Often, the spotlight eludes excellent artists who aren’t showing with the right galleries, or for that matter, any gallery. So…here’s an off-the-radar artist who is doing lovely, sensitive work about place and memory.

All photos courtesy Sandra Hawkins.

We met Ottawa-based artist Sandra Hawkins M.E.S., B.F.A., C.F.A., B.A. soc. through Facebook, and have been interested in her work for some time.

Now she will be showing an installation and series of prints @Reference, on Queen Street West in Toronto next door to the Drake Hotel, for three days from Tuesday, March 30 until Thursday April 1.

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There’s recently been a brou-ha-ha brewing in Ottawa, over the decision by Marc Mayer, director of the National Gallery, to put a sculpture by the 43-year-old New York artist Roxy Paine on Nepean Point, the area nearby to the National Gallery.

A sculpture by Roxy Paine. Image: linka-me.com

Nepean Point is, more precisely, a hill in Ottawa overlooking the Ottawa River, Parliament, the Museum of Civilization, and other features of downtown Ottawa and Gatineau. It is located between the National Gallery of Canada and Alexandra Bridge.

At the peak of the hill is a statue of French explorer Samuel de Champlain holding his famous astrolabe upsidedown. And the proposed sculpture, Called One Hundred Foot Line, evokes a tree without branches.

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Presentation House Gallery
Vancouver, British Columbia
The Malcolmson Collection
October 1, 2009 to December 20, 2009

Gustave Le Gray, The Great Wave, Sete, 1857. Image: canadianart.ca

Do not miss seeing these extraordinary vintage photographs from the collection of friends-of-VoCA Harry and Ann Malcolmson.

Over the past twenty-five years, the Malcolmsons have assembled a rare collection of vintage and historic photographs that span the history of the medium. Highlights include nineteenth and twentieth-century classics by famous photographers Eugene Atget, Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Marville, Tina Modotti, Man Ray, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Margaret Bourke-White, among others.

For more images and information on a number of artist tours and events, please click HERE.

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Artist and friend-of-VoCA AA Bronson with Governor General Michaelle Jean.

Congratulations, AA.  Very well deserved.

For more on AA Bronson, please click HERE

David Hoffos: Scenes from the House Dream
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
6 November 2009 – 14 February 2010

David Hoffos, Scenes from the House Dream: Barnett Newman, 2004 Detail of diorama.
Image: canadianart.ca

“I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”
— Gaston Bachelard (The Poetics of Space)

Up in the small city of Lethbridge, Alberta, artist David Hoffos has, for a number of years now, been working on an elaborate 5-phase series of work titled Scenes from the House Dream.

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