This year’s CONTACT photography festival kicked off with a bang at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) in Toronto. I was pleasantly surprised by this year’s show, Collected Shadows: Archive of Modern Conflict (AMC). An arrangement of images on the deep purple wall at MOCCA: Image: VoCA I had never heard of the AMC, even though it is Toronto
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This is part two of my blog post about Grow Op, the exhibition on this weekend at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel. Artists and designers have created installations – one in each room – on the second floor of the hotel, in the same way as they do for the well-known alternative design show, Come Up To My Room. I always discover
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I stopped by the Gladstone Hotel‘s latest design exhibition last night. Curated by landscape architect Victoria Taylor, it’s the inaugural year of Grow Op, a landscape-based exhibition of experimental works that seek to ‘uncover new ways of expression and meaning through projects that represent a wide range of approaches from the prosaic to the poetic, the elemental to the ephemeral.’
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Today, I went to check out some of the Toronto International Film Festival’s Future Projections installations – art film installations at venues across town, which are screened as an arty component of TIFF. Kelly Richardson’s Mariner 9. All images: VoCA First I stopped by the ROM to see Kelly Richardson’s Mariner 9. Installed in the room adjacent to the main
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I sat down with legendary performance artist Marina Abramovic who was in Toronto last week for the Canadian premiere of The Artist Is Present, a documentary on her work, which screened at the Reel Artists Film Festival. Click HERE to read part one of the interview. Photo: Marco Anelli. Courtesy Show of Force. VoCA: I asked people for some questions
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My first impression, at this year’s emerging design exhibition at the Gladstone Hotel, which is titled Come Up To My Room, was that it wasn’t quite as strong as the past few years. UA Collective. All photos: VoCA. Click on images to enlarge. Looking through my photos, though I’m not sure that’s the case. The work is different, more conceptual
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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
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I visited artist Josh Malcolm in his studio this afternoon. His large oils on canvas were everywhere, and I found them very intriguing. They are very high energy – Malcolm says he’s inspired by European and American expressionist painting. But they’re quite different, and quite challenging. At first glance, they looked, to me very modern…but sort of unfinished. In the
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The other day, I stopped in at the studio of Toronto artist Francisco Gomez. A detail from Empire of Dust, Macca, 2009. All images: VoCA Born in Caracas Venezuela, he moved to Canada in 1991 and studied at OCAD. Gomez generally works in ink and pastel on mylar – an unusual combination that Gomez tells me is difficult, since the
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The other week I dropped in to see one of my new favorite galleries, General Hardware Contemporary, in Parkdale. Not only was owner Niki Dracos super friendly, happily accompanying me in my rush around the gallery (I was late for a talk at Art Toronto) but I was really impressed by the work. Paintings by Anahita Rezvani-Rad. All images: VoCA
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Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design...