Hal Foster and Glenn Adamson at the Ontario College of Art and Design
Nomadic Residency and President’s Speaker Series
Even in Toronto, the country’s largest city (and by default, occasionally considered the cultural capital), my modest Canadian sensibilities still always induce surprise upon the visitation of significant international speakers along the lines of Hal Foster (writer, critic, and foundational theorist for post-modernism) and Glenn Adamson (Head of Graduate Studies, Victoria & Albert Museum). It’s a delight to attend a lecture with the opportunity to ask questions of these cultural contributors and we should always try to take advantage when these prospects arise, as evinced by the long spiralling line-ups. Foster’s talk, entitled “How To Survive Civilization, Or What Dada Can Still Teach Us,” was based on a re-visitation to Dadaism, revolving around Hugo Ball’s mythical performance of his noise poem at the Cabaret Voltaire. The talk continued into comparisons with the development of Dada as a response to WWI with Foster asking why there is no comparable response is to the Afghanistan/Iraq conflict; the Dadaist concept of the modern man as composed of capitalism and mechanization; and concluded by noting a continuation of the interplay of aestheticism and politics from the days of Dada, still present today in artists such as Hans Haacke and Marcel Broodthaers. Foster, the fourth Nomadic Resident at the College (following Rirkrit Tiravanija, ORLAN and Ann Hamilton), also generously allowed time for studio visits and meetings with the Masters of Curatorial Studies students during his short stay from 2 – 6 November.
I have to admit that I wasn’t able to attend Adamson’s talk, “Rethinking Postmodernism”, but I was informed by the OCAD Curatorial students that it was “the best talk they had ever seen!” and I believe them.
Sitting Pretty: The Enduring Role of Portraiture in Contemporary Art
RedBull 381 Projects
5 November – 5 December 2009
Stephen Appleby-Barr, Tibi Tibi Neuspiel, The Collecting Collective (Mark Dudiak, Andrew Kent, Arabella Campbell, Scott Marshall and Cedric Bomford) Paul Butler and Kara Uzelman.
Redbull often contributes strong exhibitions to the Toronto gallery circuit, usually involving artists at the onset of successful careers along with reflecting the type of artwork that uses humour as an apparent subject matter or selling point (I’m thinking of recent examples including Cedric Bomford’s tree/light house, John Sasaki’s deflated mascot, and currently Tibi Tibi Neuspiel’s grilled cheese wax effigies). Sitting Pretty sets up a nice discussion in tandem with the recent and ongoing debates about the Canadian Portrait Gallery, indeed presenting the contemporary interest in portraiture through many different formats and styles: from high-realist portraits of anthropomorphized cats riding horses (Appleby-Barr) to the blacked-out identities of the Canadian Art (“Toronto Now,” Winter 2007) spread of top Torontonian cultural contributors (Butler), to the photographic self-promotional portrait of the Collecting Collective (for both the members and the portrait itself, which requires an exhibition history in order to be considered as a donation to the Vancouver Art Gallery’s permanent collection).
http://www.redbull381projects.com/en/index.php
WE INTERUPT THIS PROGRAM
Mercer Union
6 November – December 12, 2009
Nothing more rewarding than an exhibition composed of archival materials—I recall in recent memory the Art Met Top 100 at the MOCCA and Rochdale College at UTAC. Mercer presents us with an extensive spread of mazed vitrines displaying paper-based document fodder that narrates the production of artists in the 1960s and 1970s that employed the medium of advertising and mass media as a method of artistic dissemination. Nothing much surpasses the 1970s brilliance and humour of Chris Burden’s public access commercials which are always a treat to watch, but it’s also great to see the likes of Lynda Benglis, Nam June Paik and Yoko Ono in front of you (behind plexi-glass) with the bizarre feeling that you are somehow witnessing some unique documentation. Although the materials are pretty amazing as an overall descriptive presentation, I got wrapped up in the preciousness and sacredness of the documents, forgetting that their original formats were presented in easily obtainable off-the-street/in-front-of-the-boob-tube sort of access at the time of their publication (somehow subverting their value?)
“Escapist Action: Performance in Recession,” FADO at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, The Gladstone Hotel Art Bar, and 3072 Dundas West (Junction) November 23- 29 2009
Curator: Don Simmons
Over the course of a week (Nov 23-27), culminating in several evening performances over the weekend of November 26-27, FADO presented some rather satisfying performance art after a long hiatus from last fall’s 7a*11d Festival. The FADO collective has since organized performances by some visiting international artists since the festival (Sandra Johnston, Monika Günther, Ruedi Schill and TallBlondLadies), but I am often left selfishly demanding more consistent programming (although resources – both time and labour – must be maxed as it stands). Artists Ignacio Peréz Peréz and Julian Higuerey Núñez worked out of InterAccess from 9am to 9pm from Monday to Friday holding an Open Barter Market that asked people to visit the space and trade one of their own personal objects for one that the artists had brought with them. The newly collected objects were the impetus for the creation of performances staged on Friday and Saturday evenings, presented in mixed programmes. The theme was performance art within the Recession – which suits the barter market system that potentially forms new avenues for ‘off the grid’ exchange. There was also a performance by Joanne Bristol (Nov.28) who delivered an informative presentation on the economical lifestyles available in the good city of Winnipeg, along with an acknowledgement of the high levels of poverty and crime. Although I was waiting for an explicit theme of Economic Recession in the form of an art exhibition or event in the Toronto art community, I already feel, through this FADO event, like it shouldn’t be dwelled upon any longer, both for considerations of avoiding a consideration of the Recession as a sort of renaissance or source of inspiration and production within the Canadian arts community.
http://www.performanceart.ca/index.php
Painting and Drawing Panels– UTAC and XPACE
7 November – Facing the Screen panellists: Nicole Collins, Michel Daigneault, Monica Tap, and Joanne Tod. Vladimir Spicanovic (moderator)
6 November- Order/Chaos panellists: Sarah Kernohan, Dan Rocca, Luke Painter and Derek Liddington (moderator)
I will point to my previous blog post on 24 November for information on the UTAC exhibition Facing the Screen situated on the new formations and consideration of painting; and I hope that many readers are aware of the previous exhibition, Order/Chaos, at XPACE that was dedicated to the medium of drawing and its related re-considerations. A particularly interesting element to these two exhibitions involves their interplay through panel discussions focused on the respective media of painting and drawing over the course of two consecutive nights. With a collection of artists defending each medium as a sort of end-all-be-all, with allusions to reconsiderations and the bending of beliefs, both panels delivered some good content when reconsidering the changing conditions and contexts for these particular media.
-Ginger Scott
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