Archive for the art blogs Tag

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Daniel Barrow: 2013 Glenfiddich Prize Winner

Winnipeg-born, Montreal-based visual and performance artist Daniel Barrow, winner of the 2010 Sobey Art Award, was recently awarded the coveted 2013 Glenfiddich Artist-in-Residence Prize, valued at over $20,000. VoCA contributor Catherine Toews had a chance to speak with Barrow via e-mail and he was kind enough to share his plans for the residency, insight into his creative process, and advice
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Loved: Thomas Demand at DHC Art Foundation, Montreal

The DHC Art Foundation in Montreal is small, and wonderful. The exhibitions  that I’ve seen there have been beautifully installed and it’s a lovely experience to see so few works at a time, curated as they are across four intimate floors and into a nearby space.  Thomas Demand is well known in Europe as the photographer who meticulously recreates images
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Toronto Design at the Gladstone Hotel: CUTMR

I stopped buy the Gladstone Hotel this afternoon to preview the works in this year’s tenth anniversary of Come Up To My Room, Toronto’s ‘Alternative Design Show’. It’s celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, and it’s always been a nicely condensed little show in which designers pair up to collaborate on room-sized installation on the hotel’s first floor. Andrew Ashbury
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Fashion’s here but where’s the art? The AGO’s Massive Party, Toronto

If last night’s sold-out Massive Party, the Art Gallery of Ontario’s annual fundraiser, is anything to go by, fashion is most definitely the new art. The Marchesa. Image: flickr.com A Massive Party-goer. Image: VoCA This year’s theme was the slightly obscure Marchesa Luisa Casati, the celebrated Italian arts patron of the early 20th century. And at one point in the
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Thomas Hirschorn: Information Overload at the Power Plant

My experience with Thomas Hirschorn’s work is that it’s often about overkill. And It calls attention to the fake-ness of things, as if to suggest that what we assume is solid isn’t in fact all that stable. It’s just held together with tape, or made from cardboard. Thomas Hirschorn, Das Auge, at the Vienna Secession, 2008. Images: artnews.org Thomas Hirschorn,
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Hot New Design Firm: Reigo & Bauer

Check out my profile of the young design team Reigo & Bauer, in the current issue of DesignLines magazine. The Toronto couple has renovated a Deco-style building into a number of apartments, retaining many original details. They make the most of the space in their tiny apartment, which opens onto a fantastic roof deck. And they have set up their
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Art Books: A Collector’s Bookshelf Part Three

VoCA contributor and artist book collector Bill Clarke is back with a third installment from his collection, this time of books that take the form of exhibition catalogues. Check out parts one and two HERE and HERE, and stay tuned for part four, coming this week. Moderna Museet exhibition catalogue, 1968. Image: courtesy Bill Clarke. Bill Clarke edits Magenta Magazine
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In the News: Aga Khan in Don Mills, Harris vs. Thomson & Zaha in Rome

His highness the Aga Khan, with his Order of Canada. Image: archive.gg.ca 1. His Highness the Aga Khan will participate in the Foundation Ceremony to mark the beginning of the development of the Ismaili Centre, the first-ever Aga Khan Museum for Islamic Art and Culture, and their Park, in Toronto’s Don Mills area. Read more HERE.

VoCA Asks for Your Advice

Ok, ok people, you pummeled VoCA for THIS post, with many comments… Tell VoCA what you want. Image: smh.com.au Some agreed, saying “I feel like this this revulsion I’m experiencing is the desired effect: Trecartin would endeavour to highlight contemporary culture’s more outlandish aspects by combining them all into one loathsome beast” and “bad taste, as well as bad technique
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The Demise of Quality in Craftsmanship

It’s interesting to note, in light of Ryan Trecartin’s films and exhibitions such as the New Museum’s Unmonumental in 2008, that luxury goods makers have come together to lament the loss of quality in craftsmanship seen in recent years. Celine’s resort collection, 2010. Image: lefistnoir.com “All young people want to be designers and very few, makers. We want to try
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