1. Justice Yeldham, Christof Migone, Just’Au Crâne and DJ Debbie Wayne at Pavilion Projects, Montreal

Tuesday February 26th 2008 at ZOOBIZARRE

Doors 8pm, Admission: $5 - $8

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The Montreal High Lights festival, February 21 – 2 March, 2008.

“Let’s spend the night together!”

Nuit Blanche Montreal kicks off on March 1 – Certainly the most extensive, if not the best, all-night celebration in Canada. It’s a fully-fledged cultural celebration – art, music, folies, theatre, poetry, dance, food…how do they fit it all in one night?

123 mostly free activities light up the 5th Montreal All-Nighter, Saturday, March 1 to Sunday, March 2, 2008

Free shuttle service — including an all-new express route.
Click on the festival website for all information RIGHT HERE

VoCA recommends a few not-to-be-missed art exhibits (in no particular order):

Digital Chile_Road Show at SAT:
Click HERE

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EXPOSURE 2008 CALGARY

January 25 - 2 March, 2008

A work by E. Ross Bradley at Willocks and Sax Gallery, Banff.

Image: willocksandsaxgallery.com

Exposure joins Toronto’s Contact and Montreal’s Mois de la Photo as significant national celebration of photography.

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Out of Place: Memories of Edward Said; A documentary by Japanese filmmaker Sato Makoto

Saturday 26 January at 7 pm

At the Library and Archives Canada Auditorium, Ottawa (395 Wellington Street)

Edward Said. Image: brown.edu

As a compliment to its exhibition Orientalism & Ephemera - 23 November 2007 to 3 February 2008 - the Ottawa Art Gallery and the Canadian Film Institute present this film, which borrows its title from Edward Said’s 2000 memoir, Out of Place. The book traces the life and work of Edward Said (1935-2003), the Palestinian-born intellectual who wrote widely on history, literature, music, philosophy and politics.

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Today through Saturday, in the St. Henri Art Walk in Montreal, artists open their studios to the public.

Read the full article HERE

For a map of the area and a list of participants, please click HERE

1. London Art Scene talk in Montreal

Iwan Wirth and Detmar Blow discussing not only the London art market but the need to raise the intellectual discourse of the London art scene. Image: blowdelabarra.com

Iwona Blazwick, Director of London’s Whitechapel Gallery, will give a talk at Societe des Arts Technologiques in Montreal on Saturday, November 24th at 3 pm.

The FREE talk, entitled The Acquired Inability to Escape (The Life and Times of the London Art Scene) is presented by DHC/ART Foundation.

For more information, please click HERE. Continue reading →

1. London Art Scene talk in Montreal

Iwan Wirth and Detmar Blow discussing not only the London art market but the need to raise the intellectual discourse of the London art scene. Image: blowdelabarra.com

Iwona Blazwick, Director of London’s Whitechapel Gallery, will give a talk at Societe des Arts Technologiques in Montreal on Saturday, November 24th at 3 pm.

The FREE talk, entitled The Acquired Inability to Escape (The Life and Times of the London Art Scene) is presented by DHC/ART Foundation.

Continue reading →

Alberto Giacometti, Three Men Walking II, 1949. Image: metmuseum.org

1. Walking Life

The Gladstone Hotel, Toronto

September 5 - 4 October, 2007

VoCA applauds the curators of Walking Life, an exhibition celebrating the experience of walking - for their press release:

“The goals for Walking Life are by no means profound….We’???d like to inspire people to reclaim (aka: use!) the sidewalks as public space. We???d like to inspire people to think about the pedestrian experience. And, we???d like people to contemplate the environments in which they walk…the creative process has been known to stimulate contemplation, interesting discussion and even innovation.”

The exhibition serves as a prelude to the International Walk 21 Conference, which will take place in Toronto from October 1 - 4.

2. The Movement Movement

Art Gallery of Mississauga, Toronto

November 3, 2007 (during the Viktor Tinkl: Making Things exhibition)

Kasimir Malevitch, Running Man, 1932-34. Image: sai.msu.su

The country’s hottest (and sweatiest) public art movement, the Movement Movement runs through art institutions. They have run the Royal Ontario Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, and have plans to continue their Canadian Art Tour and, next year, the Ontario Art Marathon.

Register on their website HERE

Future Projections is TIFF’s new programme of film-related art installations throughout Toronto for the duration of the Film Festival…and sometimes beyond.

It’s all free all the time! Find more info right HERE

They’re all good, but VoCA particularly recommends checking out the following ones:

1. Tyranny, Ryan Sluggett, Canada, 2007

Ryan Sluggett, Judges and their Pedestals, 2006. Image: trepanierbaer.com

Vancouver-based artist Ryan Sluggett appropriates the wide-screen look of advertising and a range of painting styles in his latest short animation, which radically extends his painting and collage process. The hypnotic video installation presents a new, experiential form of moving images and minimalist sound of unparalleled intensity.

Sluggett writes: “Tyranny…is composed of about five thousand digital stills that run at six frames per second while a swinging pendulum/speaker plays a soundtrack. One must unfocus (one’s) vision, lose the specifics of the physical in order to find the image, and ‘read’ the montage.”

Ryan Sluggett shows with Trepanier Baer Gallery, Calgary.

Presented in partnership with and exhibited at YYZ Artists’ Outlet, 401 Richmond Street West, Suite 140. During the Festival, the exhibit will be open from 11am to 6pm (including Sunday and Monday), and after September 15 from 11am to 5pm, closed Sundays and Mondays. Admission is free.

Click HEREfor more info.

2. Best Minds Part One, Jeremy Shaw, Canada, 2007

Jeremy Shaw, detail from DMT (Video still), 2004. Image: presentationhousegall.com

Calgary-based curator Wayne Baerwaldt (and one of VoCA’s most influential Canadians this year – click HERE)

Jeremy Shaw’s artistic practice engages with youth subcultures and cultural deviance. This piece juxtaposes the violent dancing of straight-edge youth with Shaw’s melancholic, time-warping score inspired by William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops.

Clint Burnham writes, “The video shows us kids slowed down – the dancers are simultaneously ballet-like and frenetic – but we are also witnessing a dirge, a funeral, twinned with Shaw’s music like a lament for a scene that is now so over (or maybe just a parody of itself). And in this last moment of historicity, we also see a strong connection to the literary heritage – the Beats – established by Shaw’s title, which refers to the first lines of Ginsberg’s poem ‘Howl,’ itself a lament or dirge for the institutionalization of both his friend Carl Solomon and his mother Naomi.”

Presented at Thrush Holmes Empire, 1093 Queen Street West.

Vancouver-based artist Jeremy Shaw is represented by Tracey Lawrence Gallery

3. Darfur/Darfur, various artists, USA, 2006

Dies Irae in Sudan, Ron Haviv/VII, Image courtesy darfurdarfur.org/brown.edu

Curator Leslie Thomas has gathered over 150 colour and black-and-white images captured by seven renowned photojournalists – Lynsey Addario, Mark Brecke, Helene Caux, Ron Haviv, Paolo Pellegrin, Michal Ronnen Safdie and Ryan Spencer Reed – plus former United States Marine Brian Steidle. Accompanied by music, the images are organized into three video loops of about six minutes each. The first two loops introduce the narrative of the Darfur conflict, while the third uses portraiture to bring viewers closer to the people living through it right now. The idea is to bring the images up close and personal – so that we can no longer put them out of our mind.

Screening at the Royal Ontario Museum. Viewings will be held from dusk to 11pm every evening with a special Opening night event on September 7 at 8pm. Admission is free.

More info on the film HERE

4. Death in the Land of Encantos, Lav Diaz, The Phillipines, 2007

Lav Diaz (left) and Paul Tanedo. Image: sensesofcinema.com

Super Typhoon Durian devastated the the Bicol region of the Philippines late last year, burying entire villages. Death in the Land of Encantos is a mournful work of landscape art. Shooting in rich black and white, Diaz composes his film using barren trees, rocks and even the wind to build an image of loss. The traces of narrative concern a fictional exiled poet returning to wander through his ravaged former world, meeting old friends and lovers.

A nine-hour work running in a continuous loop, Death in the Land of Encantos offers an immersion into a region that has literally been erased and rewritten.

Screening at Spin Gallery, 1100 Queen Street West, 2nd Floor.
An Artist Reception will be held on September 12 (8pm to 1am).

5. Wildflowers of Manitoba, Noam Gonick, Luis Jacob, Canada, 2007

Luis Jacob, A Dance for Those of Us Whose Hearts Have Turned to Ice…(Video still), 2007. Image: birchlibralato.com

Wildflowers of Manitoba is a performative installation of four short films and sound presented in a furnished geodesic dome. The films feature four young men living off the grid in an idealistic survivalist camp on the shores of Lake Winnipeg during the summer of 2006. The music by visionary seventies Québécois rock band Harmonium suggests the potential for sexual and political freedom.

Presented in partnership with and exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, 952 Queen Street West.

Luis Jacob is represented by Birch Libralato Gallery, Toronto.

Wildflowers of Manitoba will be presented at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA), 952 Queen Street West, from September 8 to 16, between 11am and 6pm. Admission is free.

Istvan Kantor: The Revolt of Depressed Lymphocytes at DeLeon White Gallery, Toronto.

The exhibition runs from August 9 to September 1 and is curated by artist Jubal Brown.

“An exhibition/installation of recent paintings and sculptural works dealing with the spirit of Wilhelm Reich, burning books, flags, flaming cats, sex, terror, robots, the broken clocks of the Emperor, the oppressive nature of hyper-authoritarian total control systems, the dictatorship of the Rentagon, the beauty of vandalism, the perishing of lifespace, blood and gold and bread, Queen West is dead! Amen!”

Standing on an old filing cabinet, Istvan Kantor posed, bare-legged, wearing an overcoat and sneakers. With his shaved head and sunglasses, it appeared as if a flasher had wandered up from Queen.

He held a large shepherd’s cane and lifted it up, striking a statuesque pose. Then he opened his coat to reveal his naked body, save for a strategically placed flashing light. He posed again. This display was no surprise to anyone familiar with Kantor’s work - his legendary performances regularly involve nudity, blood, fire, toxic smoke, robots and computer parts among other things.

Then he held up a wooden sign reading “Dirty Bloor West Uber Alles!” which he set alight and held aloft while it burned. He followed this with a paper flag – red on one side, black on the other. He set it alight and waved it, sending flaming bits of paper everywhere. He took a pink plastic toy keyboard and defiantly sang a song in his native Hungarian, before arranging a flaming wooden plank between two chairs and doing a cartwheel through the flames.

For the grand finale - and the most interesting part of the performance - he enlisted the help of the audience. To one side, he declared “You will be the revolutionaries!” to the other “You will be the executioners!” He then donned a red blindfold and, along with his fellow revolutionaries, staged an elaborate death at the executioners’ rapidly firing guns - “ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta!”.

Kantor is a passionte man whose work - like Neoism, the movement that he is closely aligned with - defies categorization.

Neoism is defined as “a specific subcultural network of artistic performance and media experimentalists and more generally to a practical underground philosophy. It operates with collectively shared pseudonyms and identities, pranks, paradoxes, plagiarism and fakes, and has created multiple contradicting definitions of itself.”

Is Kantor a revolutionary? It is unclear whether or not he accepts his efforts as futile. His rages against “Toronto” or “Bloor West” appear comical, yet his look and his passion are undeniably the real thing.

What lies beneath the skin of Kantor’s revolution?

Is he seeking to draw attention to the tyranny of contemporary society – our city streets, government, social infrastructure, the web’s interface design – to which we are bound?

Or is his anger directed more straightforwardly towards the city and the art institution? If so, he should go further. The basic problem in Kantor’s work is that he relies so heavily on the gallery’s infrastructure, whether using the gallery to stage his exhibitions and performances, or throwing blood on its walls. Many artists today struggle with the relevance of the museum. Being so extreme, Kantor’s performance would be more effective in an empty warehouse where the threat of arrest or injury would be real.

“My philosophy is based on the equation that life equals art equals life,” he has said. “Everything is art; everybody is an artist. The greatest art is the people in the streets, the beggars, the prostitutes, the people in the offices, executives and secretaries.”

Kantor is no stranger to extreme behavior, and yet… He has been arrested at least a dozen times, banned from the National Gallery of Canada and is known for his use of human blood. And yet, in 2004, he accepted the Canada Council’s $15,000 Governor General’s award.

Not very anti-establishment.

Read more about Istvan Kantor HERE