1. DONIGAN CUMMINGS: EX VOTOS

MSVU Art Gallery, Halifax

21 June-10 August 2008

One of Donigan Cumming’s collages. Image: canada-culture.org

Montreal-based artist Donigan Cumming is known for his staged portraits of the aging, ill and socially assisted poor, in the form of photographs, videos and, best of all, his photographic collages.

Cumming’s work deliberately attacks the objectivity claimed by traditional documentary media. His disturbingly intimate images have been influenced by Artaud’s “theatre of cruelty,” Surrealism and cinema verite, among other historical art forms.

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The late Haida artist Bill Reid received the Order of British Columbia. Image: protocol.gov.bc.ca

In Canada, the first time the work of contemporary indigenous artists made it into an art context was in 1965-67 when Doris Shadbolt, at the Vancouver Art Gallery, organized the groundbreaking exhibition, Arts of the Raven: Master Works of the Northwest.

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VANCOUVER:

Moodyville at Presentation House Gallery
May 3 - 15 June, 2008

An image by Dan Siney. Image: tinyvices.com

Moodyville is a group exhibition featuring work by:

Karin Bubaš - click HERE
Jim Breukelman - click HERE
Babak Golkar - click HERE
Mike Grill - click HERE

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In a move perhaps inspired by the spate of American, European and Chinese collectors opening up their own spaces, the dashing Canadian collector Bob Rennie will open his own private museum to showcase his collection of contemporary art.

Collector Bob Rennie. Image: rennie.com

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Vancouver’s Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design is to become a university.

Going head-to-head with Toronto’s OCAD - also an art and design university - and VoCA wonders whether this is a good thing.

Toronto artist - and OCAD dropout - Thrush Holmes’ studio. Image: lowegallery.com

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1. AARON CARPENTER: THE ART OF RICHARD TUTTLE AT THE HELEN PITT GALLERY, VANCOUVER

April 11 to Saturday May 3, 2008

VoCA loves the work of American artist Richard Tuttle. Now, the young Vancouver artist Aaron Carpenter is getting all Sturtevant and copying Tuttle’s oeuvre.

(Elaine Sturtevant has made her name copying famous artist’s work - see her Warhol below)

Elaine Sturtevant, Warhols Flowers, (1964-1991). Image: saatchi-gallery.co.uk

Aaron Carpenter’s THE ART OF RICHARD TUTTLE is the first installment of the Helen Pitt Gallery’s three-exhibition Workaday series, addressing process, labour and the performative gesture.

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Greg Girard, Doorway, Wukang Lu, 2003. Image: monteclarkgallery.com

Vancouver photographer Greg Girard has been living in Shanghai for a number of years, documenting the changes to the city’s landscape.

Read my review of his recent exhibition at the Monte Clark Gallery:

Wil Murray: the strange space that will keep us together

At the Belkin Satellite Art Gallery, Vancouver

8 March to 6 April 2008

Wil Murray, Casual Friday Morning Coming Down, 2007. Image: belkin.ubc.ca

We’ve got to say it: VoCA loves Wil Murray’s paintings!

A novel mix between painting, sculpture and collage, with echoes of Jessica Stockholder, James Rosenquist and Rauschenberg, they’re not gimmicky. If vision could equal sound, this might be it.

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1. David Rokeby: Plots Against Time at Pari Nadimi Gallery, Toronto

March 1 – 26 April, 2008

David Rokeby, Machine for Taking Time (Boul. Saint-Laurent), 2007. Image: courtesy the artist

New media artist (and VoCA favorite) David Rokeby is showing new work at Pari Nadimi Gallery, Toronto.

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1. RE-ENACTMENTS AT DHC ART FOUNDATION, MONTREAL

February 21 – May 25, 2008

Harun Farocki, still from Deep Play, 2007. Image: mustekala.info

Re-enactments gathers six media artists whose works ‘re-enact’ - in some way critically re-stage media spectacles, performance art or films – cultural events of the past – to pose compelling questions about the present.

Including work by Nancy Davenport, Stan Douglas, Ann Lislegaard, Paul Pfeiffer and Kerry Tribe.

Harun Farocki’s Deep Play (2007) garnered significant attention at last year’s Documenta in Kassel, Germany. Even if you don’t care in the least about football (soccer) – the work is mesmerizing. Twelve synchronised video projections in real time variously show the unprocessed feed from TV networks, motion traces of players, coaches evaluations, schematic depictions of passes, abstract computer-generated representations of the game, kinestesiology, visualisations, as well as soundtracks and commentary of all quantifiable events from the Berlin Olympic Stadium, police radio and TV production teams.

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