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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In the midst of promoting the Canadian Art Reel Artists Film Festival, which opens this Wednesday night, Feb 24th with a big gala screening and then to the public from Friday Feb 26th to Sunday 28th in Toronto, there are three under-the-radar highlights that you should know about:

A wallhanging by El Anatsui at the Venice Biennale. Image: artradarasia.com

1. Fold, Crumple, Crush: The Art of El Anatsui is the world premiere of a film on the amazing African artist whose wondrous metal wallhangings took the Venice biennale by storm several years ago. He will also have the world premiere of a retrospective of his work at the ROM in Toronto coming up later this year.

Click HERE for more info on the film.

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Some of the visual artists who will be exhibiting new works at the Vancouver 21010 Olympics:

Eric Metcalfe, Insectarium, 2005. Image: winchestergalleriesltd.com

1. ERIC METCALFE AND GEORGE LEWIS: IKONS

Ikons is a collaborative interactive art installation Vancouver performance and visual artist Eric Metcalfe and legendary American composer, trombonist and intellectual George Lewis.

For the piece, Metcalfe has created seven vibrant hand-painted sculptures, each about eight feet tall, that will house sonar sensors and speakers. The exhibition space will be full of recorded music composed by Lewis and performed by Vancouver’s contemporary/classical Turning Point Ensemble.

Ikons runs January 28 to February 28 from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. at Five-Sixty, 650 Seymour Street, Vancouver. Admission is free. Click HERE for a map.

More, including Etienne Zack, David Hoffos and Don Ritter, if you click over…

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You may remember, if you’re in Toronto, or Calgary, that the Canadian Art Foundation screened the excellent documentary, Herb and Dorothy, at last year’s Reel Artists Film Festival.

Megumi Sasaki’s touching documentary, Herb and Dorothy. Image: now-movies.com

The film tells the extraordinary story of Herbert Vogel, a postal clerk, and Dorothy Vogel, a librarian, who managed to build one of the most important contemporary art collections in history with very modest means.

In the 1960s they began devoting all of Herb’s salary to purchase art they liked, mainly the emerging practices of Minimalist and Conceptualist art, and living on Dorothy’s paycheck alone, they continued collecting artworks guided by two rules: the piece had to be affordable, and it had to be small enough to fit in their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment.

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Whether I’m painting or not, I have this overweening interest in humanity. Even if I’m not working, I’m still analyzing people. -Alice Neel

VoCA paid a visit to the home and studio of artist Jason McLean last week. It was a wonderful glimpse inside a truly honest artistic mind. McLean was raised in London Ontario, moved to Vancouver where he attended the Emily Carr College of Art and Design, and has been in Toronto, with his family, since 2008.

Jason McLean, world stage 1978 (photo etching), 2005. Image: jasonmclean.ca

There were a few things we loved in particular. One was Jason’s large collection of found writing, bits of scrap paper that he found all over the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver (a dodgy part of town) and has collected inside a suitcase. He uses these writings – many of which are shockingly sad and dark – as inspiration for his work.

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Today is World Aids Day.

Scott Treleaven, Heartworms, 2004. Image: artnet.com

In light of this, there’s an exhibition we want you to know about in New York City, that runs from January 8 - 10, 2010 called Postcards from the Edge.

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Takao Tanabe was born in British Columbia in 1926 and was interned with other Japanese-Canadians in BC during World War II.  He studied in Winnipeg, London and Toyko, and in New York at the Brooklyn Museum Art School where he was taught by the famous German-born American abstract expressionist painter Hans Hoffman.

The artist Takao Tanabe. Image: gov.bc.ca

Takao Tanabe was awarded the Emily Carr Foundation Scholarship in 1953,a Canada Council Fellowship in 1959 and a Canada Council Senior Fellowship in 1969.

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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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Dear VoCA readers,

Should VoCA be more critical?

I’m starting to feel (again) that Toronto is one big artistic love-in, when the fact is that a lot of art being made today is just not very good. (Thank you Jerry Saltz for backing me up on this.) The danger is that really good work is being sidelined at the expense of ‘hip’, ‘young’ ‘witty’ conceptual work that is neither important nor well-executed.

I went to Sitting Pretty, the new show at Red Bull Projects in Toronto last night.

Some oil paintings by Stephen Appleby Barr. Image: narwhalartprojects.com

There was work by Stephen Appleby-Barr, Paul Butler, The Collecting Collective, Tibi Tibi Neuspiel, and Kara Uzelman. I think Nicholas Brown is a talented curator, but the work left me cold. Sure, it was neat to see pieces of moldy toast made from beeswax with images of everyone from Hitler to Mother Teresa (seriously) burned into them. But is this work that really matters? Did the artist Tibi Tibi Neuspiel make the work with any kind of emotional involvement? If so, there was none left by the time it went on display.

The photograph by Vancouver’s Collecting Collective was far less interesting than the wall label, which described the collective as consisting of a number of Vancouver-based artists (including Cedric Bomford and Arabella Campbell) and the Toronto-based artist Mark Dudiak, “who also perform the roles of collector-patrons, financing projects and building a private collection of work by other artists, while maintaining a corporate-minded approach to the means of production and expression.” I realize that that’s the point, but then why have the photograph there at all?

Thank goodness for Stephen Appleby-Barr’s small, intricately painted Royal Art Lodge-esque oils, which were a welcome relief.

VoCA believes in the importance of criticism and tries to recommend the best (and only the best) work being made in Canada. We must all learn to support the art scene while celebrating the best, and exposing the worst. That’s a critic’s job.  Of course, that’s only possible if you have confidence in what is good and what’s not.

For more info on the exhibition, which opened last night and runs until 5 December, please click HERE.