In Vancouver, the VAG is negotiating with the city to obtain an entire block for their new, larger downtown building. The province has already contributed $50 million.

The VAG. Image: discovervancouver.com

The VAG board has voted unanimously to move the gallery to a prominent downtown location near the current one, rather than the one near the Plaza of Nations that the provincial government had offered them. They want to build “something magnificent for the community which will do the job for the next 50 years”, says Michael Audain, the chairman of the relocation committee of the VAG’s board of trustees.

The excellent WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution exhibtion at the VAG

Read the full article HERE

BUT…those plans have hit a roadblock as the city has planned to offset the cost of the site with an office tower.

Reece Terris, Ought Apartment, 2009 at the VAG. Image: kostuikgallery.com

The city “cautioned that in the current economic climate, the VAG may have to have a good, hard look at its ambitious plans for a gallery that is double its current size and estimated to cost $400-million.” (For context, the AGO’s Gehry renovation cost $276 million.)

Read the full article on this, HERE.

Will the city acquiesce? Or will the VAG have to find an alternate solution?

Stay tuned…

For a while now, VoCA hasn’t been trotting off to art fairs the way we used to. This year, the New York Amory almost went unnoticed to us. But then we noticed that some people, curators, dealers…are choosing to remain home this year, too.

New York’s Armory Show. Image: thearmoryshow.com

Is it the end of the art fair?

A new non-fair, called the Independent, is on from March 4 - 7 at the Dia building in New York, and is billed as a “hybrid model and temporary exhibition forum.” It is the subject of THIS fascinating article in the Observer.

The article states that “New York is going through a moment right now—that the glitzy, frivolous culture of the boom years is giving way to a new era of intellectual engagement and open-minded community among art lovers.”

Johan Lundh’s evening of critical discussion at Fillip’s offices. Image: firtheaglandlundh.net

That same “new seriousness” can be found, here and there, in Canada, though our market wasn’t as deflated as that of the U.S. in the recent economic downturn. Nonetheless, upstart journals such as the excellent Fillip Review from Vancouver and Toronto’s publication Hunter and Cook, run by artists Tony Romano and Jay Isaac, show us that the art world wants to talk. Also, galleries around town are working discussion into their programming. The Toronto Free Gallery is a not-for-profit space that has long been doing this with events that express their mandate to provide a forum for social, cultural, urban and environmental issues.

The Toronto Free Gallery’s executive director, Heather Haynes. Image: photojunkie.ca

New festivals, like the Flash Forward photography festival (coming next fall to Liberty Village in Toronto) aim to blend exhibition opportunities with lectures, workshops and public art - in short, to provide a place for artists and the public to learn, and engage with art in a new, real, hands-on way.

This is also echoed by the Young Patrons groups sprouting up in this city. At various price levels and interest points, they range from the AGO’s NEXT, to the ROM’s Young Patrons Circle to the Canadian Art Foundation’s New Contemporaries (which - disclaimer - I help organize), all of which aim to generate interest, engagement, education and discussion about arts and culture.

Finally, the recent interest in art criticism that is blossoming in Toronto, particularly, in both serious and less serious ways, (and that took off with THIS VoCA post) is heartening.

In Vancouver and want to see something other than the Games?

World Tea Party, by Bryan Mulvihill. Image: bright-light.ca

You would undoubtedly be in the minority,  but you would have a lot to choose from. Bright Light is an interesting-sounding initiative between the City of Vancouver and a number of arts organizations in the Downtown East Side.

Projects range from site-specific artworks, light-based installations, video projections and live web links to outdoor performances, publications, a parade, a festival, interactive community events and lively gathering spaces.

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Some of the visual artists who will be exhibiting new works at the Vancouver 21010 Olympics:

Eric Metcalfe, Insectarium, 2005. Image: winchestergalleriesltd.com

1. ERIC METCALFE AND GEORGE LEWIS: IKONS

Ikons is a collaborative interactive art installation Vancouver performance and visual artist Eric Metcalfe and legendary American composer, trombonist and intellectual George Lewis.

For the piece, Metcalfe has created seven vibrant hand-painted sculptures, each about eight feet tall, that will house sonar sensors and speakers. The exhibition space will be full of recorded music composed by Lewis and performed by Vancouver’s contemporary/classical Turning Point Ensemble.

Ikons runs January 28 to February 28 from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. at Five-Sixty, 650 Seymour Street, Vancouver. Admission is free. Click HERE for a map.

More, including Etienne Zack, David Hoffos and Don Ritter, if you click over…

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Rumour has it that some artists aren’t pleased with the way the Vancouver Olympics is being handled.

Image: mediacoop.ca

We’ve been hearing rumblings for some time now of artists being censored, their ‘anti-Olympics’ works removed or under threat of removal and constraints being put on artists who are being commissioned to make works to showcase Vancouver’s visual art scene.

Much of the debate arises from this contractual clause: “The artist shall at all times refrain from making any negative or derogatory remarks respecting VANOC (the organizing committee), the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Olympic movement generally, Bell and/or other sponsors associated with VANOC.”

Vancouver has the most condensed area of homelessness and addiction in Canada and many Vancouver artists take inspiration from the grittiness of the Downtown East Side. We can imagine that they wouldn’t agree with an Olympic Committee that may be glossing over this aspect of the city.

“Art without free speech is simply propaganda“, says The BC Civil Liberties Association president Rob Holmes.

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Organized as part of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics cultural mandate, CODE is a program of art, music, film and Canadian culture that is available online as a website where audiences can interact and take part.

The CODE Screen website, with a nice piece by Aganetha Dyck. Image courtesy CODE Screen 2010/Peter Dyck.

It’s a great way of bringing Canada’s culture to international audiences. One of CODE’s platforms is for visual art. It’s called CODE Screen 2010 and allows audiences to click through to curated displays of artwork online.  The speed and ease of the site is impressive, and some of the work is excellent.

Many ‘exhibits’ suffer from unfortunately lazy curating, as with the current show by Daina Warren that far too simplistically brings animal-themed work together (aghh!)  There is much work worth seeing, it’s just preferable to take each work by itself, since there isn’t much to be gained from the curatorial themes.

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Takao Tanabe was born in British Columbia in 1926 and was interned with other Japanese-Canadians in BC during World War II.  He studied in Winnipeg, London and Toyko, and in New York at the Brooklyn Museum Art School where he was taught by the famous German-born American abstract expressionist painter Hans Hoffman.

The artist Takao Tanabe. Image: gov.bc.ca

Takao Tanabe was awarded the Emily Carr Foundation Scholarship in 1953,a Canada Council Fellowship in 1959 and a Canada Council Senior Fellowship in 1969.

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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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We were just forwarded this letter by the excellent Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia. It was sent by the gallery’s director and curator, Scott Watson. According to an article in The Tyee, there has been a decline in core funding over two years of more than 88 per cent in British Columbia, from $19.5 million down to $2.25 million.

Gordon Campbell, Premier of British Columbia. Image: nxew.ca

The Honourable Gordon Campbell
Premier of British Columbia
9041 Station PROV GOVT
Victoria, BC V8W 9E1
f. 250.387.0087
e. Gordon.campbell.mla@leg.bc.ca

Dear Premier Campbell,

I am writing in hopes that the recent cuts to the B.C. Arts Council and the cuts of lottery money to the arts will be reconsidered.

The arts are fundamental to civil society and one of the basic elements of a healthy economy. British Columbia is in a relatively remote part of the Western world with a small population; public support for the arts is all the more necessary. B.C. has never had a stellar reputation for arts support. We lag far behind Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba. Now that reputation will be even more dubious.

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This week, the Guardian interviews author and artist Douglas Coupland about his upcoming new novel, Generation A. Read the interview HERE.

Douglas Coupland, Talking Sticks, 2009. Image: coupland.com

As the article notes, Coupland’s real passion is his artistic practice. He shows with the Clark Faria Gallery in Toronto and Monte Clark Gallery in Vancouver. His work is brightly coloured, very well made, it’s Pop and it’s kitsch. It’s admirable in many ways….but a little too fun for VoCA’s taste.

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