I’m working on a video exhibition with the public art organization No. 9 Contemporary Art & the Environment. It’s called Four Directions, and its opening will coincide with the opening of Evergreen at the Brickworks, Toronto.

SUNDAY September 26, 2010 – December 31, 2010

The exhibition is designed to reflect the mandate of the public art organization No. 9: that contemporary art can stimulate positive social and environmental change. The group video exhibition features four powerful environmentally themed video artworks, each screened inside one of four restored drying kilns (long tunnels). The kilns are located at the North end of the Heritage Brick Factory, Building 16, which is a 52,000 square foot space, the largest building on-site.

A still from Lessons of Darkness. Image: uashome.alaska.edu

The works to be screened are Lessons of Darkness by the legendary German filmmaker Werner Herzog and three Canadian artists:

L’Or blanc/White Gold, a No. 9 commission by Isabelle Hayeur
The Cyanide Flats: 50?54´15´´N / 95?20´20´´W, a No. 9 commission by Val Klassen
Waterspeak by Dana Claxton

The exhibition’s goal is to acknowledge manmade environmental destruction and to offer alternative ways of thinking about a healthy earth that suggest re-growth and healing. The exhibition will present a journey for the viewer from Herzog’s bleak documentation of Kuwait’s burning oil fields to Isabelle Hayeur’s curtain of softly falling salt crystals, followed by Val Klassen’s still signs of hope within a ravaged landscape, to Dana Claxton’s mesmerizing plea on behalf of water.

Without being overly didactic or preachy, together the three works will provide a response to Herzog’s Lessons of Darkness. As the viewer progresses through each tunnel, he/she will witness environmental devastation, followed by works that engage the emotions to suggest mindfulness, respect and honour for our environment.

Check out No. 9 Contemporary Art & the Environment, HERE.

Curator William Huffman of the Toronto Arts Council has, in collaboration with the Art Dealers Association of Canada (ADAC) organized some 200-odd Canadian artworks to be displayed to foreign dignitaries during the G8 and G20 summits.

After the fake lake brouhaha, this comes as a better bit of G20 art news, as my fellow blogger Leah Sandals acknowledges in her post HERE.

Gershon Iskowitz, Midnight No. 3 (B244), 1986. Oil on canvas. All images courtesy of ADAC.
Image courtesy Miriam Shiell Fine Art and the Estate of the Artist.

The works, which include one of Brian Jungen’s hockey masks and a sculpture of bears – front and back – by Dean Drever hanging in the Prime Minister’s Office, have been specially chosen by Huffman and a crew of 12 people to represent the breadth of contemporary Canadian artistic practice. Also on display in the PMO will be 2 landscapes by Winnipeg painter Ivan Eyre. There will be a stunning Riopelle in the leader’s lounge, and work by legendary Quebecoise artist Francoise Sullivan. Alongside these will be works chosen by the Ontario Crafts Council.

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Check out my piece on artist Kent Monkman’s home and studio in the current issue of Design Lines magazine. The studio, a former factory, was re-done by Jason Halter of boutique design firm Wonder Inc.

You know Monkman for his traditionally painted landscapes into which he inserts contemporary figures of First Nations people, often doing rather unconventional things…

Kent Monkman, Achilles and Patroclus, 2008. Image: kentmonkman.com

Or for his drag performances as Miss Chief Eagle Testickle…

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Now’s a good time to check out the Art Gallery of Ontario again.

Part of Barbara Kruger’s billboard on the facade of the AGO. Image: VoCA

You can take in Barbara Kruger’s magnificent billboard that lines the front of the gallery, (done for CONTACT photography fest, which in on throughout May.) The billboard reads LOVE IT-SHOVE IT-PRAISE IT-PLEASE IT-DOUBT IT- SHAME IT-BLAME IT-KISS IT-BUY IT-BELIEVE IT.

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Well.  Last night I did a “Face the Critic” at the Drake, with Leah Sandals and Richard Vaughn and it was…interesting, to say the least. I didn’t feel able to properly articulate my views - there were some big personalities in the room. But I learned a lot, and it’s always good to have your foundations shaken a little.

Brendan Flanagan, Reflective Pool. Image: brendanflanagan.ca.

The idea was that each critic would bring two works – one we ‘love’ and one we ‘loathe.’

Richard began by pointing out that he doesn’t subscribe to the idea of ‘loving’ or ‘loathing’, which is fair enough. Then he went on to talk at length, and very interestingly, about how much he loved an Allyson Mitchell work – one of her large, fun-fur covered Sasquatch sculptures.

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Here is the final part of an article written by former Winnipegger Edwin Janzen, an artist and writer currently based in Ottawa. The article was previously published in Drain magazine - you can read the full article, HERE, (under Related Essays) or click HERE for last week’s post on VoCA.

Roger Crait, Untitled, 2009. Image: umanitoba.ca

The Power of Myth
How Did Winnipeg and Its Art Become such a Big Deal?

By Edwin Janzen

The City Behind the Myth

Winnipeg artists — and the city as a whole — owe much to the considerable efforts of these influential “fixers.” For the representation of Winnipeg as a sort of mythic art mecca has surely been a good thing, hasn’t it? Winnipeg and its artists are receiving more attention than ever before, so can the repackaging of Winnipeg as a geographically and creatively charged nexus be anything else than an unmitigated good? If life gives you lemons….

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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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There’s an interesting exhibition on up at the Glenhyrst Art Gallery in Brantford, Ontario from 29 November 2009 – 22 January 2010. It’s only about an hour’s drive from Toronto and VIA Rail goes there, too.

Bonnie Devine, Reclamation Project, 1995. Image: ccca.ca

The show, organized in collaboration with Toronto’s SAVAC, brings together work by First Nations artists with work by South Asian artists, in a reflection of the two communitieis who live side by side in the area.

The artists are Roy Caussy, Bonnie Devine, Ali Kazimi, Afshin Matlabi, Yudi Sewraj, Greg Staats, Ehren Bear Witness Thomas and Jeff Thomas.

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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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The Washington Post’s influential art critic, the Canadian Blake Gopnik, offers some thoughts on critical opinion. He is “quite certain that the works of…Canadian Brian Jungen are about as good as it gets in contemporary art,” he says. “I’m sure I must have been right. My memory and instincts tell me I was.”

Brian Jungen, Prototype for New Understanding #1, 1998. Image: curatedobject.us

But then he questions himself: “What if I wasn’t? What if I…(now) reach whole other conclusions?”

He concludes that part of being a critic is being open and strong enough to change your mind.

Interesting.

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