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.
Sarah Anne Johnson: House on Fire
Art Gallery on Ontario, Toronto
July 4 - 23 August, 2009
Sarah Anne Johnson, House on Fire, 2008, Chromogenic Print. Image: bulgergallery.com
Winnpeg-based artist, Yale grad and 2008 Grange Prize winner Sarah Anne Johnson debuts a new exhibition titled House on Fire at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
The last time we saw Johnson’s work, it was 2007’s Galapagos Project at Toronto’s Stephen Bulger Gallery. We loved her use of different media including sculpture and photography, and the push-pull between them.
How relevant are art schools today? Do artists really require education beyond basic technical training? Do art institutions hinder, rather than help the creative expression of artists today?
Bruce Nauman, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign), 1967.
Image: truthinart.wordpress.com
And what does Bruce Nauman think?
Read my opinion piece on the brand new news website, The Mark.
Who will win the $70,000 Sobey Art Prize this year?
After last years win by Vancouver superstar Tim Lee (stolen, we think, from Winnipeg’s excellent Daniel Barrow) and won the year before by Montrealer Michel de Broin (who we interviewed HERE and whose pedal powered Buick we covered HERE), this year it’s down to this group:
WEST COAST AND YUKON: Luanne Martineau, whose fuzzy felted pieces we really like for their craft element and references to Minimal art and painters like Philip Guston.
Luanne Martineau, Dangler, 2008. Image: akimbo.ca
PRAIRIES AND THE NORTH: Marcel Dzama, he of the much-copied naive drawings that were so much in vogue several years ago. From Winnipeg, where he lived, Dzama seemingly influenced all of Brooklyn. Now he lives in New York and shows with David Zwirner Gallery, where he’s been making sort of awkward dioramas.
Photographers Marco Antonio Cruz from Mexico City, Lynne Cohen from Montreal, Federico Gama from Mexico City and Jin-me Yoon from Vancouver are the four finalists for the AGO’s $50,000 annual Grange Prize this year.
Federico Gama was born in Mexico City and has been a documentary photographer since 1988. He was won several awards including first prize in the 1st Puerto Rico Photography Biennale (1998); The National Cultural Photojournalism “Fernando Benitez” Award (1999) and Honorable mention in the 1st Photojournalism Biennale of the New Latin American Journalism Foundation in Colombia (2001).
VoCA has long championed Winnipeg as a hotbed for contemporary artists - Guy Maddin, Sarah Anne Johnson and Paul Butler among them.
Since he was included in AA Bronson’s School for young shamans at John Connelly Presents in NYC last year, along with other VoCA favorite Item Idem, young Winnipeg artist Michael Dudeck is fast emerging as one of the country’s most intriguing performance artists.
Michael Dudeck, Parthenogenesis at Pari Nadimi Gallery. Image: courtesy the artist.
Fresh from his first exhibition at Toronto’s Pari Nadimi Gallery, VoCA contributor Whitney Light caught up with Dudeck in Winnipeg:
In his (VoCA recommended) book Art Power, Boris Groys argues for the emergence of the curator as an important figure in art today. Noting that originally, art became art through decisions made by museum curators rather than artists, he goes on to say “Sacred objects were once devalued to produce art; today, in contrast, profane objects are valorized to become art.” It is therefore necessary to have curators. “The artwork needs external help, it needs an exhibition and curator to become visible.”
It seems curatorship has, again, stepped into the limelight.
Peter Callesen, Bound to be free, 2008. Image: helenenyborg.com
We will see what curator Daniel Birnbaum has in store for us at this year’s Venice Biennale in June, but from what I hear from Leah Sandals, who was in Madrid recently for ARCO, the city’s museums had some pretty interesting exhibits on, including one that looks fascinating on the subject of Shadows.
The 80-year-old Vancouver painter, sculptor, installation and performance artist Gathie Falk has long been inspired by the elements of everyday life: fruit, eggs, men’s shoes, women’s clothing, garden flowers and reading a book, among other things. Her work appears to meld feminine and masculine elements in a unique, charming, serious way.
The artist Gathie Falk in her studio, Vancouver, 1983. Image: lac-bac.gc.ca
Charles Pachter, The Painted Flag, 1981. Image: cpachter.com
Food for thought by Ms. Blatchford from a recent issue of the Globe and Mail…
“…Artists, while precious and important to the nation, are not fragile and ought not to be infantilized. They don’t need coddling and protection from government; they don’t need their work to be judged only kindly or only by their friends; they need not be constantly praised; and surely, it is not necessary that every aspect of their lives is subsidized by their countrymen.
On Torontoist.com, Johnnie Walker writes: “In retaliation against the positively terrifying notion of a Conservative majority government, groups like Vote For Environment and the Department of Culture have sprung up to take the battle to the blogs.”
Continue reading the article, and the comments…HERE.
Get involved! Join the Department of Culture - right HERE.
Learn how to vote strategically so as to ensure the Conservatives don’t get a majority - click on Vote for Environment HERE.
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design...