The other day, I visited artist Paulette Phillips at her home in Toronto, to be interviewed for her upcoming artwork. Called The Directed Lie, it involved being put to the test – the lie detector test.

Me with Paulette Phillips, undergoing the polygraph. All images: Scott Barker/VoCA

Phillips has trained as a professional polygraph technician in the United States, and owns a polygraph machine, which is cleverly disguised as a suitcase, but it’s the real deal. I don’t know why, but I surprised that it was such an authentic experience, complete with blood pressure and respiration monitors, and carefully considered questions.

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The Work Ahead of Us
The Québec Triennial 2011 at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
7 October 2011 – 3 January 2012

This review is by Kingston, Ontario-based VoCA contributor Catherine Toews.

Claudie Gagnon, Tableaux (To Beauty) (video still), 2011. Vidéogramme, son, environ 20 min. Collection de l’artiste.
Image: macm.org

I had the good fortune of visiting and writing about the inaugural Québec Triennial in 2008. At the time, I described it as “a huge curatorial effort, handled with a great deal of care, consideration and innovation,” requiring “time and patience on behalf of the viewer.” It was “fresh, exciting, and eager to please,” with many artists employing a “strange sense of humour” that rendered the first Triennial “so immensely likeable.” I am pleased to say, after spending an epic Saturday afternoon exploring the second incarnation of the Triennial, that it more than lives up to the sense of great promise created by the first, while possessing some significant differences that came as a pleasant surprise.

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Last night was Toronto’s annual ‘All Night Contemporary Art Thing’, Nuit Blanche. Now in its sixth incarnation, the event has gone from inspiring wonder in audiences to inspiring complex plans on how best to navigate the crowds. Many people start out at 7 pm and go until 12 or 1, which makes sense but creates a frustrating logjam of people at every installation.

AES+F, The Feast of Trimalchio. Image: vvork.com

While it will always be a challenge to bring universally pleasing, high impact, accessible art into public areas that lasts from 7 pm to 7 am, I felt that this year was more successful than past years, in part because there were fewer works that involved lining up, and in part because, well, I had a plan.

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I came across a quote from the YBA godfather, Michael Craig-Martin in the Financial Times recently. Speaking about the practice of being an artist, he says, “What interests me is the part of you that you are stuck with, that you can’t control, and it comes out whatever. That’s infinitely more profound: you are who you are, even when you don’t wish to be – you can’t not do it.”

Still from whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir, by Eve Sussman. Image courtesy redartprojects.com

His quote echoes an issue that I’ve had for some time with much of the emerging art that I see; the idea that the artist must maintain control over it. Of course, ultimately we can never get away from ourselves, so it’s true that all art is self-portraiture, but generally speaking, I much prefer art that leaves open what Craig-Martin identifies – that part that can’t be controlled.

Speaking of control, we saw the newest work by Brooklyn-based artist Eve Sussman and her collaborative team Rufus Corporation at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was screening as a part of Future Projections, the festival’s artistic programme.

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Patriotism is defined as a “love of one’s country.” Nationalism is a more complex thing, referring I suppose to one’s nationhood, as distinct from one’s homeland. It’s a topic explored in the new show at MOCCA in Toronto, which opened on Friday, days before the anniversary of September 11, 2001.

ANTUAN, Left or Right, (detail). Image: mocca.ca

Titled Patria o Liberdad! On Patriotism, Immigration and Populism, it is a collection of video art that aims, according to curator Paco Barragan, to address “the complexities of the concept of “nationalism” in a moment in which national identities are being either severely put into question or impetuously vindicated.”

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Although I don’t blog about public art in Toronto, since it could create a conflict with my position on the City of Toronto Public Art Commission, that doesn’t stop me from blogging about public art elsewhere.

The entrance to the new Sofitel Hotel in Vienna. Image: VoCA/Scott Barker

I was in Vienna, Austria recently and saw the most fantastic use of art in Jean Nouvel‘s new Sofitel hotel. Surprisingly unremarkable from the outside, there was an artwork by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist that greeted us at the hotel entrance and really wowed us on the rooftop restaurant. I’m not sure if they have a percent for art program there, which we have in many cities across North America (it gives one percent of project costs over to public artworks in newly built properties) but the hotel owners really gave an impressively enormous amount of space and visibility over to the artwork.

The awning over the hotel’s entrance was lit up from underneath with an image that has viewers peering into Pipilotti’s magical ‘heaven’. You literally see up her nostrils. Then, you enter the very black elevator up to the roof top lounge and restaurant.

The restaurant ceiling. Image: VoCA/Scott Barker

The entire restaurant – from the chairs to the carpet, walls and bar is covered in matte, dark grey. The only colour exists in a spectacular ceiling mural by the artist that covers the ENTIRE ceiling, which is also punctured with small circular video screens. Through the screens you can see Pipilotti cavorting around, sticking her fingers down to pull you up into the ceiling.

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Although I stopped going to art fairs a while ago, after having been to many over the years both as a ‘gallerina’ and as a critic including Art Basel, Basel Miami, Art Chicago and Frieze, they remain popular venues for collectors, curators and, of course dealers and artists to hang out and do business.

Kristine Moran, Sidestep. Image: modto.com

New York’s Armory Show is one of the most prestigious and it takes place from March 3 – 6 in Manhattan.

Canada’s Art Dealers Association is – as per usual – organizing some programming around Canadians participating in the fair, but this year they are celebrating Canadian expat artists in New York with a series of discussions and tours of the show.

It’s a pretty good list of artists that I thought I’d share with you.

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Big congratulations to the 2011 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts!

Robert Fones, Can-D-Man, 1971. Image: ccca.ca

They are: Photographer Geneviève Cadieux, visual artist Robert Fones, performance and visual artist Michael Morris, filmmakers David Rimmer and Barbara Sternberg and painter Shirley Wiitasalo, each for distinguished artistic achievement. Metalsmith Kye-Yeon Son won the Saidye Bronfman Award for excellence in fine crafts.

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As some of you probably know, I do the publicity for the Reel Artists Film Festival, which is put on each year in Toronto by the Canadian Art Foundation.

Shooting the film Picture Start, showing artist Rodney Graham. Image: courtesy Helen Yagi.

This year, four days of films on art and artists take place at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox, and will feature some of the world’s greatest artists, including:

Sol Lewitt – Canadian premiere
William Kentridge – Canadian premiere
Wanda Koop – WORLD premiere
Carl Beam – Toronto premiere
Shuvinai Ashoona
Ai Weiwei – North American premiere
Pipilotti Rist – Canadian premiere
Jenny Holzer – Toronto premiere
Olafur Eliasson – Toronto premiere
Damian Ortega – Canadian premiere
Christian Boltanski – Toronto premiere
Nam June Paik – WORLD premiere
The Chinese art market – Toronto premiere
John Baldessari – Canadian premiere
The Vancouver School (Picture Start) – WORLD premiere
Andreas Gursky – Canadian premiere

Last night, I previewed William Kentridge: Anything is Possible, about the famous South African artist. It is a must-see for artists, particularly anyone interested in drawing, animation, theatre or opera.

The film offers incredible insight into Kentridge’s artistic process, which is complex and encompasses many different approaches and ways of working. He also describes how his childhood experiences and the history of South Africa have influenced his art.

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In honour of Marshall McLuhan’s 100th birthday year, a new website, Marshall McLuhan Speaks, launched today, which allows viewers to literally hear the communications guru speak, through video clips.

McLuhan’s Understanding Media. Image: canadiandesignresource.ca

In the clips, you can hear McLuhan himself on his best-known sayings, “the medium is the message”, “global village” and others. And there’s an intro by the novelist Tom Wolfe.

McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy. Image: amandinealessandra.com

Interestingly, McLuhan, who studied at Cambridge and taught at the University of Toronto among other universities, had a lifelong interest in the number 3, as in the trivium – the three ways: grammar, logic and rhetoric – which he studied at Cambridge.

Check out the website – a fantastic resource – HERE.