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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“With their artists competing on an international stage, Canadians can no longer complain of their country as a cultural backwater nor luxuriate in the nostalgic charm of provincialism. In art as in political, social and economic activities, Canada is fully involved in the world of today,”
– Dr. R. H. Hubbard, former Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Canada.

Guido Molinari, Untitled, 1964. Image: artnet.com

Walking down Bloor Street in Toronto last night, we stopped at a bookshop’s outdoor display and there, right in front of us, on sale for $1.99, was a copy of Canadian Art Today, originally published in 1970 by Studio International.

Edited by William Townsend, a professor at the University of London, the slim book is filled with contributions from Canada’s art elite at the time: R.H. Hubbard, then chief curator of the National Gallery of Canada, Doris Shadbolt, then curator of the Vancovuer Art Gallery, curators Dennis Reid, Pierre Theberge and David Thompson.

“Canadian artists were dependent for generations on the artistic traditions of France and England and it is only since the last war that contemporary American influences have made a decisive impact,” writes Townsend.

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Burning Cold
18 June – 30 August 2009
The Ottawa Art Gallery

For a while now VoCA has been interested in the new Inuit art – in fact, we interviewed Inuit art dealer Pat Feheley about it HERE. Feheley speaks eloquently and knowledgeably on the “sea change” that occurred once Cape Dorset artists discovered that they could depict the world around them.

Shuvinai Ashoona, Scary Dream, 2006. Image: ottawaartgallery.com

Previously, they had been limited to what the ‘market’ dictated – cliched images of bears, seals, old-fashioned hunting scenes etc.

We recommended Noise Ghost, curator Nancy Campbell’s exhibition at the Justina M Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto that pairs Ashoona with super hot multi-media artist Shary Boyle in a two-woman show, and now we recommend Burning Cold, a show curated by Scott Marsden, that pairs Ashoona’s work with other Canadians including BGL, Tania Kitchell and Emily Vey Duke + Cooper Battersby.

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Paolo Veronese and the Petrobelli Altarpiece
29 MAY – 7 SEPTEMBER 2009
The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Paolo Veronese, The Petrobelli Altarpiece (reconstruction). Image: churchtimes.co.uk

If you’ve ever wondered about how paintings are restored, there’s a great video on the National Gallery of Canada website where Stephen Gritt, Chief Conservator explains the history of Veronese’s The Dead Christ Supported by Angels, which is presently being restored.

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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.

Click HERE.