In recent years, among Torontonians, there seems to have been increased interest and passion for the city.

I heart Toronto. Image: igougo.com

Spacing magazine, Yonge Street, Blog TO, Torontoist, Murmur, the ROM and the AGO, Waterfront Toronto’s plans for the city (heavily covered by the Globe and Mail’s Lisa Rochon), they all speak to wanting to better our urban environment.

A recent article in the Toronto Star says:

“For decades, there has been talk of an actual, physical museum, where Torontonians could learn about the history of this piece of land from the post-ice age era through our ongoing waves of immigration.

As recently as 2007, the museum project was (to be) built inside the old Canada Malting silos on Queens Quay. But then came the recession,…and the funding and political will fell through (again).”

So instead, the City’s Culture division has designed an online museum that tells Toronto’s story. The Toronto Museum Project is a website that gets things started. We were introduced to the TMp by a friend - it’s a great way to bring communities together through the city that we all share.  The museum’s online status - and global reach - and the link between objects and people, strikes us as particularly relevant and modern.  It’s bringing communities and cultures together through artefacts.  It’s an intriguing idea that more museums might develop.

The TMp chronicles the 11,000-year story of Toronto. Their website takes objects rarely seen by the public and allows individual voices to give new meaning to these objects.

You learn about the Torontonian as you do about the object that they chose to write about.

Gloria S. chose as her object, the “charred and melted remains of a flag burnt on August 27th, 1971 by Anti-Vietnam War protesters outside of the Officers’ Mess, Fort York NHS, Toronto, Canada.”

She writes:
“In the 1960s and through the early 1970s Greenwich Village was my home. Weekends and after work I spent my time sitting on the walls of the fountain in Washington Square.

“I think it was then that I realized my earlier civil rights causes and struggles were linked somehow with other struggles. A social conscious revolt by many of the youth of the day was being waged against a stoic, uncaring society. This society was content to go on with the ‘business as usual’ motto.”

“We wanted the world to know that we cared; we wanted change and we would die for change.”

For more information, please visit the Toronto Museum project website HERE.

SmallTalks is a series of very short podcasts hosted by the fascinating artist Darren O’Donnell, who, “like a log drifting downstream, will snag people on the bank to slow his progress toward death, and chat with them about their aspirations.”

Artist Darren O’Donnell. Image: 2.bp.blogspot.com

Created in response to a life with too much time spent on the road, Darren will be interviewing people around the world and describing the sensation of weak knees in the face of vast heights.

Darren talks with people that he meets and finds interesting, and even offers introspective commentary from a restroom. (He’s trying to use the restroom as a place to rest, he says.)

All SmallTalks are available HERE or you can follow Darren’s twitter feed for updates HERE.

Read more about Darren O’Donnell’s work, including Mammamlian Diving Reflex and Social Acupuncture, HERE.

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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Scott Treleaven was born in Toronto, Canada and graduated from the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) in 1996.

Scott Treleaven, My Ever Changing Moods, 2009, ink, photographs, watercolour. Image: kavigupta.com

Now based in Paris, he has shown in Chicago at Kavi Gupta, in New York at John Connelly Presents and has had a limited edition book published by Printed Matter Inc.

He is probably best know for his film The Salivation Army (2002), which caught the attention of the Village Voice in 2003, screening worldwide, most notably in the official Art Basel film program in 2004 and at the Museum of Modern Art in 2006.

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Dogs.We’ve been thinking about them a lot lately. Toronto is full of dogs. It’s a very dog-friendly city, aside from the over-salted winter sidewalks, which can be tough on paws.

William Wegman, Basic Shapes in Color, 1993. Image: dreamdogsart.com

With all the dogs comes bizarre dog owner behaviour. You see more and more people carrying their dogs around, like a living handbag, or a security blanket.  Can’t they walk?  And of course the outfits!  Some owners even dye their dogs fur.

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Do you ever notice how sometimes you go into a shop, or eat at a restaurant, and you can just tell–usually by the outfit and the attitude–that you’re being served by an artist or, more likely, an art student. They seem bored, and clearly dislike their job.

Rikrit Tiravanija makes art. Image: columbia.edu

Every job holds creative potential, and every act is a creative act, as many artists–particularly practitioners of relational aesthetics– have noted. In fact, every situation holds potential. We saw the film Invictus recently, which is, in part about the revelations that Mandela came to terms with while in prison.

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It’s interesting to think about how new technologies are being used, particularly by artists. Google Maps is a tool for finding a location that we’re all familiar with; Google Streetview – recently introduced to major cities in Canada - is a tool for placing yourself, virtually, in a particular location (and being able to look around). Click HERE to check it out.

The Louvre in Paris. Image: eurokulture.edu

Likewise, museums around the world have virtual tours that can put you face to face with the world’s great works of art. The Paris Louvre has an iphone app that puts you up close and personal with the Mona Lisa, or guides you through Napoleon’s apartments. It’s super slick, allowing you to zoom in on works, along with text write ups on the art, the buildings and the architecture. And it’s free. Click HERE for the itunes link.

Now that time and space have collapsed, ‘tourism’ takes on a whole new meaning. Not only can you come close to the art through these technologies, but art responds to you as well.

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Organized as part of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics cultural mandate, CODE is a program of art, music, film and Canadian culture that is available online as a website where audiences can interact and take part.

The CODE Screen website, with a nice piece by Aganetha Dyck. Image courtesy CODE Screen 2010/Peter Dyck.

It’s a great way of bringing Canada’s culture to international audiences. One of CODE’s platforms is for visual art. It’s called CODE Screen 2010 and allows audiences to click through to curated displays of artwork online.  The speed and ease of the site is impressive, and some of the work is excellent.

Many ‘exhibits’ suffer from unfortunately lazy curating, as with the current show by Daina Warren that far too simplistically brings animal-themed work together (aghh!)  There is much work worth seeing, it’s just preferable to take each work by itself, since there isn’t much to be gained from the curatorial themes.

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Nothing to Declare: Current Sculpture from Canada
PLUS
Recent Snow: Projected Works by Michael Snow
11 December, 2009 – 7 March, 2010
The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto

Michael Snow, still from SSHTOORRTY, 2005. Image: Arttorrents.com

We went to the Power Plant’s opening last night of two exhibitions. The first, a fairly simple display of new sculpture, gave us a mix of things, including two wonderful works by Victoria’s Luanne Martineau, whose work we love for its tactility and drama.  It looks like art history put through a blender but rendered in the ‘feminine’ technique of felting. It’s bold, strong and intriguing.

More images and thoughts on what we didn’t like in the show, below..

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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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