VoCA’s fasination with British artist Damien Hirst continues with a review of Toronto author Don Thompson’s book, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art.

Check it out HERE.

Look for our review in an upcoming issue of Quill and Quire – we’ll post it on VoCA, too.

Continue reading →

St. Catharines and the Niagara region is home to a good number of excellent artists and art-related spaces. Cram, the NAC and Brock University’s Rodman Hall Art Gallery (see links below) all have strong programming.

Perhaps the best-kept secret in the St. Catharines art community is the Teutloff Collection of Sculpture that exists across Brock’s campus. In 1988, then president Terry White reached an agreement with German art collector Lutz Teutloff to display his large-scale sculptures on campus. The collection includes work by Fabrizio Plessi, Ilan Averbuch, Reinhard Reitzenstein and Bucky Schwartz.

Ilan Averbuch, The Bleeding Harp. Image: collegepublisher.com

Please click HERE for more info.

Continue reading →

From James Adams in yesterday’s Globe and Mail:

“When its September, 2007, online sale resulted in gross revenues of about $600,000 on 156 lots, (Heffel Fine Art Auction House) started to think seriously about going with a separate live auction (for post-war and contemporary art) and “concentrate more on this growing component of the market,” noted Nina Kim, Heffel’s director of postwar and contemporary art…”

For the rest of the article, please click HERE.

Tom Thomson, View from a Height, Algonquin Park, Fall, 1916.
Auction Estimate: $800,000-1,200,000
Price Realized: $1,207,500

While the Canadian auction ’scene’ may seem laughable next to the inflated numbers bandied about in the U.S and the U.K these days, we are finally seeing increased interest in Canadian art since 1945, which is great because it has, for so long been terribly undervalued.

Continue reading →

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

Continue reading →

“Art originates out of a diversity of opinions. The gallery owners are biased. And that’s why they are bad witnesses from the start. Also the art collector is biased. Because he defends his own preferences. And thus he is a bad witness. Art is rather determined by neutral positions. From critics, from museums, from curators. These are the people that matter first and foremost when you evaluate art.”

-Harald Falckenberg, art collector, Hamburg

In related news, the RBC Painting Competition has just announced its 2008 jury panel:

-3 artists: Pierre Dorion, James Lahey, Neil Campbell
-4 curators: James Baird, Louise Dery, David Liss, Kitty Scott
-2 gallerists: Jessica Bradley, Monte Clark

Continue reading →

Power to the people: The Grange Prize is an annual $50,000 contemporary photography prize where you decide who wins!

Raymonde Aprile, Miroir (mirror), ink-jet print,, 2004. Image: raymondeapril.com

Continue reading →

December 15, 2006

Dear Young Collector,

I hope this letter finds you well. As promised, here is my follow-up to my previous note.

So. You’ve heard that it’s cool to buy contemporary art; you think you might want to buy something, but you don’t want to throw your money away. There’s so much art around – how do you know if it will be worth anything one day? How do you know which gallerist to trust?

Image: Epo-kem.com

First, make sure you want to begin collecting because you have an interest. Whether it’s an interest in a particular media or just a curiosity to see what’s out there, collect because you love what you’re buying – not because you’re hoping to one day make a profit. Continue reading →

December 6, 2006

Dear Young Collector,

As you probably realize, the international art world has become a spectacle unlike any other. Auction madness in New York and London seems to have peaked in the last number of years, with records being set as new collectors from China and Russia in particular enter the market. A few weeks ago, for example, the highest price ever for a contemporary art work – 27 million US – was paid for an abstract painting from 1977 by Willem DeKooning.

Willem DeKooning, Untitled xxx, 1977. Image: IHT.com

Andy Warhol’s silkscreen of Mao – similar to paintings that you might have seen at the recent AGO Warhol exhibition – sold to a Hong Kong collector for $13.37 million US. Continue reading →