Here are some things I suggest checking out, if you can.

Montreal art duo Maryse Larivière and Robin Simpson of Pavilion Projects regularly host art-plus-dinner series, and in a few weeks they will bring the series to Toronto with a screening by the artist Rosa Barba’s 2007 film Outwardly from Earth’s Centre.

Rosa Barba, a still from Outwardly from Earth’s Center. Image: carliergebauer.com

The film tells the story of a fictitious society founded on an unstable piece of land in danger of disappearing, and the dinner will be held at the very arty Oddfellows restaurant.

The evening includes a presentation by curator Catherine Dean followed by a prix fixe three-course menu for $45 involving shredded duck confit, pan roasted sea bream and Pork loin with whiskey maple baby carrots.

Mmmm.

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Sadly, the Leona Drive Project is over. On from October 22 - 31, it was a very well curated project on a suburban street in Toronto that commissioned several artist projects for a site specific exhibition in a series of six vacant bungalows slated for demolition.

All photos courtesy Scott Barker.

We went at night, and instead on focusing on what artist made which piece, we chose to enjoy the work for itself. We think we recognized the squatter’s paradise by one of our favorite collectives The Arbour Lake Sghool and a work by Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins – a car had rammed into the front of a house, where it lay smoking, wheels spinning.

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[Un]Limited Colors: Recent Work by Matthew Biederman
Centre de Design de l’UQAM, Montreal
November 12 - December 13, 2009

Matthew Biederman, Color Deforming a Cone. 2008. Custom software, HD projector, computer, painted extruded aluminum. Image: art45.ca

Some of VoCA’s favorite Canadian artists work in new media: David Rokeby, Rafael Lozanno-Hemmer, David Hoffos, Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, to name a few.

Another artist who is using both new media (customized software, video) and sculpture, music and performance in wonderful, innovative ways is Montreal’s Matthew Biederman.

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David Hoffos: Scenes from the House Dream
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
6 November 2009 – 14 February 2010

David Hoffos, Scenes from the House Dream: Barnett Newman, 2004 Detail of diorama.
Image: canadianart.ca

“I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”
— Gaston Bachelard (The Poetics of Space)

Up in the small city of Lethbridge, Alberta, artist David Hoffos has, for a number of years now, been working on an elaborate 5-phase series of work titled Scenes from the House Dream.

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The 2010 Carnegie Art Award for Nordic art at the Kunsthal Charlottenborg offered a chance to compare new art from the Nordic countries with art being made in Canada. Like a lot of young Canadian art, there was strong work but much of it felt familiar, unsurprising and safe.

Tone Kristin Bjordam, Liquid Landscape. Image: idfx.nl

But much of it was also beautiful, like Tone Kristin Bjordam’s video Liquid Landscape showing drops of coloured ink spilling into water upside down like rainbow-hued mushroom clouds, and a spatially fragmented video/object piece by Egill Saebjornsson that was good, but less complex than David Rokeby’s excellent Giver of Names.

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Alberta is seeing a lot of cultural action these days.

There’s Santiago Calatrava’s controversial bridge, Lethbridge’s own (and VoCA favorite) David Hoffos with a large retrospective coming up this fall at the National Gallery of Canada, and Nigerian artist El Anatsui giving a talk tomorrow at the Glenbow Museum, courtesy of the Canadian Art Foundation, to name just a few things going on.

Burtynsky’s new book. Image: rsvppost.com

Not to mention the Art Gallery of Alberta, which is currently under construction and set to open in early 2010 with Edward Burtynsky: Oil.

From October 9 - December 12, the Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta College of Art and Design launches 2 exhibitions by an American and an Irish artist, that explore the issues associated with the idea of the North and related ideas of the West.

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Artist and curator Dave Dyment curated Zone C at last year’s Nuit Blanche. Among his installations were Michel de Broin’s waterfall and Jon Sasaki’s jaded mascots at Lamport Stadium, both of which helped make Liberty Village the undeniable hit of NB 2008.

Dyment is involved again this year, if rather less officially. He’s curating No Melatonin, a mini-zone in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood, along Queen Street West from Roncesvalles to Dufferin.

A still from Jon Sasaki’s video. Image courtesy Dave Dyment.

He was approached by Parkdale’s business improvement centre to put together a street project. It made sense, since as Dyment notes, many of Toronto’s artists actually live in Parkdale.

In a bid to keep it local and highly effective, Dyment has chosen accessible, easily recognizable works by local artists. As he puts it, “The idea is to entice people.”

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For the third year, from September 10 - 19, 2009 TIFF will feature a program of art films as part of its Future Projections series, at venues throughout the city.

The programme was initiated to call attention to video art, and the upcoming Bell Lightbox building will continue this goal with a street-level gallery that, we hear, will screen video art through a window 24/7. (Great news!)

Isabella Rossellini, Green Porno: Scandalous Sea. Image: wired.com

The 2009 Future Projections features artists and filmmakers such as Isabella Rossellini, Jesper Just, a brand new work by VoCA favorites Lisa Steele and Kim Tomszak and the North American premiere of Mark Lewis’s work straight from the Venice Biennale, in case you missed going, as we did.

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This fall in Montreal and Toronto sees a new exhibition at DHC/ART in Montreal, the legendary art critic Hal Foster at OCAD in Toronto, and the Ten Commandments at the ROM in Toronto.

Ten Commandments: A Fragment
Saturday, October 10 to Sunday, October 18, 2009
The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

A fragment of the Ten Commandments. Image: cogwriter.com

As part of the ROM’s excellent exhibition Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World, which is on view through January 3, 2010, for one week only in October (due to its sensitivity to light and humidity), the ROM will showcase a fragment of one of our oldest copies of the text of the Ten Commandments.

The displayed Scroll contains the text of the Ten Commandments from Deuteronomy 5 and is the best preserved of all the Deuteronomy manuscripts discovered. A biblical scroll, it is written in Hebrew and dated to ca. 30 – 1 BCE.

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It’s summer, and you don’t want to get too serious…so here are some easy shows to check out throughout July. Swing by for free nighttime screenings in Montreal, or get outside for public art interventions in Calgary.

La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse
Montreal

In Montreal, stop by La Centrale’s window to see these screenings, which are about appearance and transformation. From dusk ’til dawn.

Stephanie Chabot, Destroyer, 2005. Image: stephaniechabot.netfirms.com

BLUE MOON
Stéphanie Chabot
2007.
July 29 to August 2, 2009

Blue Moon presents a woman coldly displayed in virtual space accompanied by a soundtrack based on an Elvis tune. Evoking beauty, pleasure, and desire, Blue Moon is a tender take on woman’s complex and sometimes contradictory situation within the myth of romance.

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