Your Cultural Concierge! VoCA offers critical commentary on the Canadian art scene, with a focus on Toronto. Featuring exhibition previews, critics picks, interviews and in-depth articles on art in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Halifax.
May 5th, 2009 — Architecture, Interviews
“Money and art: it’s a difficult question,” (says Miuccia Prada.) “But art has always been about very rich people – think of the great popes and princes of the Renaissance.”
The Prada Transformer, Rem Koolhaas’s incredible re-think of what architecture is. Image: gadget.ca
We think Ms. Prada is on to something here. Today, we were at a talk sponsored by the Canadian Art Foundation, by the Paris-based curator Vincent Honore, who works for the David Roberts Art Foundation in London.
April 30th, 2009 — Interviews, Sculpture/Installation, Toronto and region, Upcoming Events, Upcoming Exhibitions
Canada has a strong culture of Government funded artist-run centres in every province. These are public galleries, run by artists for artists, with a strong exhibition program that supports artists from Canada and abroad.
Another type of artist-run gallery in Toronto opened earlier this month. 47 is run by three artists, Dennis Lin, Jaclyn Quaresma and Jennifer McGregor, with – so far – no grants, investors or outside funding. But it’s not an artist-run centre.
Images from Rock Bottom, the opening night exhibition, by Steve Richards. Image: 47gallery.blogspot.com
47 spoke to VoCA by email:
On artist-run centres: Though similar to, we are not an artist-run centre. The only thing that seems to connects us with the conception of an artist-run centre is the fact that we are all artists.
When we are working at the gallery we are gallerists/curators, the artists we show are our focus. Independently we are artists with our own, separate practices.
March 4th, 2009 — Interviews, Performance art, Winnipeg
VoCA has long championed Winnipeg as a hotbed for contemporary artists - Guy Maddin, Sarah Anne Johnson and Paul Butler among them.
Since he was included in AA Bronson’s School for young shamans at John Connelly Presents in NYC last year, along with other VoCA favorite Item Idem, young Winnipeg artist Michael Dudeck is fast emerging as one of the country’s most intriguing performance artists.
Michael Dudeck, Parthenogenesis at Pari Nadimi Gallery. Image: courtesy the artist.
Fresh from his first exhibition at Toronto’s Pari Nadimi Gallery, VoCA contributor Whitney Light caught up with Dudeck in Winnipeg:
December 9th, 2008 — Collecting, Interviews, Toronto and region, Upcoming Events
A shameless plug - since I work for the Canadian Art Foundation - for our upcoming Reel Artists Film Festival in Toronto:
Save the Date for the 6th Annual Reel Artists Film Festival!
The 2009 Canadian Art REEL ARTISTS FILM FESTIVAL will take place in Toronto from February 26 – 1 March, 2009.
This year’s festival will focus on EDUCATION, STIMULATION and INSPIRATION with a FREE day of films for students, the WORLD premiere of Michael Blackwood’s film Georg Baselitz: Making Art after Auschwitz and Dresden and the CANADIAN premiere of The Universe of Keith Haring by Christina Clausen.
Check out the Keith Haring trailer here:
Plus - As featured in the November 2008 issue of W magazine: The CANADIAN premiere of Herb and Dorothy, a documentary by Megumi Sasaki about a postal clerk and a librarian who built one of the most important contemporary art collections in history.
November 24th, 2008 — Interviews, Performance art, Toronto and region, Vancouver and region
Founded in 1993, Mammalian Diving Reflex is a “research-art atelier dedicated to investigating the social sphere, always on the lookout for contradictions to whip into aesthetically scintillating experiences, producing one-off events, theatre-based performance, theoretical texts and community happenings.”
According to their website , “It is our mission to bring people together, engage them, challenge them and get them talking, thinking and feeling.”
VoCA has been wondering for some time whether Mammalian artistic Darren O’Donnell is one of the most interesting and relevant artists in Canada. We sat down with him in Toronto to find out what his work is all about.
One of Mammalian Diving Reflex’s popular performances, “Haircuts by Children”. Image: torontolife.com
October 16th, 2008 — Articles by Andrea Carson, Interviews, Sculpture/Installation, Toronto and region
Click HERE for my article on the sculptors for Azure’s DesignLines magazine. They’ve just reworked the language of the traditional children’s jungle gym for their new city commission at Lee Centre Park in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto. Their design-y pieces reference Modernism using such unusual materials as Ikea furniture and bicycle tire.
Christian Giroux and Daniel Young, Mao, 2008. Image: cdgy.com
Christian Giroux and Daniel Young, Fullerene, 2003. Image: aceart.org
Click on thumbnail to enlarge my article:
Click HERE for the artists website.
CDGY are represented in Toronto by Diaz Contemporary - click HERE.
VoCA sat down with Christian and Dan to talk about their work:
VoCA: How would you describe your artistic practice? You have made many sculptures, but also a film and a comic-book inspired print.
CG: We are primarily sculptors.,,our collaboration is born of shared sculptural interests. Our concern is still sculpture, but we’re not confining ourselves to making objects. It’s a hard question. Have we taken a sculptural approach to film? Yes. It’s a typology of comparison between the vocabulary of building construction and the sense of a moment of life in the city. Not just form but the social parameters that shape that form…Also in the history of sculpture…we research how we go about making work. It doesn’t always come naturally. It’s a way of thinking about forms.
DY: We’re interested in the fabrication process..the fabricators – we represent their realm, the industrial base. As you get to know a tool, it guides your process. No one masters anything anymore, it’s all super specialized.
September 5th, 2008 — Articles by Andrea Carson, First Nations/Inuit, Interviews, Painting, Sculpture/Installation, Toronto and region, Upcoming Exhibitions, Video/New Media
Check out the short videos that we produced for the Canadian Art Foundation:
Just click right HERE.
Woman with the Devil, Drawing by Annie Pootoogook.
Image: sitemedia.ca/Feheley Fine Arts
July 18th, 2008 — Architecture, Interviews, Toronto and region
The Art Gallery of Ontario is set to re-open in November with a brand new renovation by architect Frank Gehry, a new curatorial strategy and a new logo.
VoCA likes the Warhol-esque new logo. We read it as the white letters sitting on top of a colourful background of (art) history. It seems appropriate.
The logo. Image: artmatters.ca
Not everyone agrees, though. Click HERE to read what Sarah Nicole Prickett had to say on Torontoist.com, and some of the ensuing commentary.
In the interest of fairness, VoCA spoke with AGO logo designer Kevin Sugden, of Bruce Mau Design about the gallery’s new identity:
July 7th, 2008 — Interviews, Photography
Courtesy of Designboom, we have found an interview with German photographer Barbara Probst, whose work is represented by Jessica Bradley Art & Projects in Toronto.
Read the full article HERE
Barbara Probst, Exposure #27, N.Y.C. 249 W. 34th Street, 05.25.04, 9:27p.m., 2004. Image: themorningnews.org
March 7th, 2008 — Interviews, Painting, Upcoming Exhibitions, Vancouver and region
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.
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design...Read full bio