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.
August 6th, 2008 — Artists, Exhibitions, Painting, Photography, Sculpture/Installation
Speaking of women artists, one of VoCA’s very favorites, Tracey Emin, has a retrospective exhibition on now in Edinburgh.
The typically outspoken artist Tracey Emin. Image: fawcettsociety.org.uk
Watch this brilliant, fascinating BBC newsclip of Emin doing a walkthrough of the exhibition HERE
August 5th, 2008 — Artists, Painting, Sculpture/Installation, Underrated Canadian Artists
It’s no secret that women artists have been notoriously overlooked throughout the course of white, male-dominated art history.
Christiane Pflug, Kitchen Door with Esther, 1965. Image: christianepflug.com
There are many reasons for this, not least of which is that women’s ability to express themselves was seriously limited before they won the right to vote. For non-asian and non-First Nations women in Canada, this was in 1916 in Winnipeg.
Click HERE to see a 1974 CBC clip of Beatrice Brigden, recalling suffragette Nellie McClung’s famous ‘mock parliament’ of 1914. It’s great.
The early 20th century produced some women artists who are well worth knowing about, for instance Lilias Torrance Newton, Emily Coonan, the Automatiste Marcelle Ferron and the self-taught painter Christiane Pflug.
August 1st, 2008 — Artists, Sculpture/Installation, Toronto, Underrated Canadian Artists
Canadian sculptor and painter Sorel Etrog was born in Romania in 1933, studied in Tel Aviv and moved to Toronto in 1963 from New York, where he had been at the Brooklyn Museum of Art on scholarship.
Sorel Etrog, The Hand, 1972. Image: flickr.com
In 1959, Etrog had his first Canadian solo exhibition at Gallery Moos and shortly thereafter, having become a Canadian citizen, represented Canada at the Venice Biennale in 1966.
July 31st, 2008 — Exhibitions, Ottawa, Painting, Sculpture/Installation
1. LE SALON: CELEBRATING 35 YEARS OF THE FIRESTONE COLLECTION OF CANADIAN ART
The Ottawa Art Gallery
2 August to 9 November 2008
Jean-Paul Riopelle, Perspectives, 1956. Image: tate.org.uk
The Firestone Collection of Canadian Art is a significant art collection that spans the modern period (1900-1980). Originally established by collectors O. J. and Isobel Firestone in the early 1950s, the collection contains approximately 1,600 works by a number of influential Canadian artists.
July 29th, 2008 — Artists, Calgary, Exhibitions, First Nations/Inuit, Montreal, Painting, Sculpture/Installation, Toronto
1. Dean Drever: Bear Minimum
Michael Klien Gallery, Toronto
August 2 - 30, 2008
Dean Drever, She Loves Me She Loves Me Not (Bullets). Image: douglasudellgallery.com
Dean Drever continues his examination of power and violence in this show, which takes as a theme the Kodiak bear.
Drever is a member of the Haida Nation and Haida culture acknowledges the bear as an embodiment of a supreme being having both extraordinary physical and supernatural powers.
Bear Minimum presents the Bear, life sized and hand carved.
Check out more on the website HERE.
July 22nd, 2008 — Artists, Exhibitions, Painting, Photography, Sculpture/Installation, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg
1. SAMUEL ROY-BOIS: Let us, then, be up and doing; With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, Still pursuing; Learn to labor and to wait
Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver
June 13 – August 24, 2008
Samuel Roy-Bois, J’ai entendu un bruit, je me suis sauvé/I heard a noise and I ran, 2003.
Image: samuelroybois.com
ARTIST TALK: Thursday, July 24th at 7pm
July 17th, 2008 — Art market, Artists, Books, Collecting, Sculpture/Installation
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.
July 16th, 2008 — Artists, Exhibitions, Photography, Sculpture/Installation, Toronto, Video/New Media
Iain Baxter& Landscape with Sea Boats, 1999, (from the series Television Works).
Image: corkingallery.com
Over the years, we’ve loved the AGO (the Yoko Ono exhibition in 2002, the acquisition of David Almejd’s 2007 Venice pavilion installation, the Henry Moore sculpture gallery with the Julian Opie pole dancers, Swing Space) and we’ve loathed them (Nuit Blanche 2006, their lack of innovative curatorial thinking, the institution’s low energy and measly acquisition budget…)
July 1st, 2008 — Artists, Exhibitions, Montreal, Painting, Photography, Sculpture/Installation, Video/New Media
6. MASSIMO GUERRERA: DARBORAL
26 juin au 31 août, 2008
Quartier Ephemere/Fonderie Darling
“Darboral s’articule autour de plates-formes artistiques et spirituelles, qui invitent le visiteur à prendre part à différents rituels. Partages de nourriture à l’occasion de repas et suçage de noyaux, ateliers de créativité lors de moulages corporels et adaptation de prothèses, prise de conscience des modes d’ouverture physique et psychique, méditation, donnent lieu à une série d’éléments dont les traces de passage composent Darboral.”
It’s a work that concentrates on the rhythms of the creative experience, and shares these processes with others. It’s a contemplative space that gives back to art it’s original function, in the service of the ritual.
The Massimo Guerrera installation at Quartier Ephemere. Image: VoCA
June 26th, 2008 — Architecture, Artists, Exhibitions, Photography, Sculpture/Installation, Toronto
In addition to the Power Plant’s summer exhibition, Not Quite How I Remember It, featuring work by Gerald Byrne, Diane Borsato and Nestor Kruger, VoCA recommends Object Factory at the Gardiner Museum, which features ceramics by the likes of VoCA favorites Cindy Sherman and the late, great Ettore Sottsass (see previous post HERE.)
Cindy Sherman, Madame de Pompadour (née Poisson) Soup Tureen, 1990. Image: mintwiki.pbwiki.com
For the Power Plant, please click HERE and for the Gardiner museum, click HERE.
We also recommend checking out one of Toronto’s best new galleries, MKG 127.
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design...Read full bio