Of/By/For: A Dialogue on Representation @ OCAD Graduate Gallery
1 December 2009
Taras Polataiko, Bonnie Devine, and Leah Sandals moderated and organized by Rose Bouthillier
From the burgeoning curatorial talent in the Curatorial Studies graduate programme at OCAD came a substantially in-depth programme. The evening event involved the screening of a couple of Taras Polataiko’s video works including “In the Land of the Headhunters” (2008) which is composed of documentation of audience members from the Kwakiutl Band Council in Fort Rupert, B.C. in a community viewing of Edward Curtis’ 1914 film by the same title.
Video still. "In the Land of the Head Hunters". 2008. Single channel video, 20 min 50 sec, b/w
The screening of Polataiko’s works was followed by a panel discussion including art critic Leah Sandals, the Director of the Aboriginal Visual Culture programme at OCAD Bonnie Devine, and the artist himself along with moderator, organizer and second year curatorial student Rose Bouthillier. Although the screenings required a definite time dedication, they offered the audience an excellent foundation for the proceeding discussion about the artist’s work and the issues that are addressed, namely contemporary Native Canadian cultural analysis through the screen of historical (mis)interpretations and the subsequent investigations into how these representations have changed or how they should and could be interpreted today. The panel discussion involved brief introductions to the panellists’ viewpoints followed by questions posed by Bouthillier. With a naturally slow start to break the ice, the small but hearty audience had a lot to contribute to the discussion with a few getting a bit incensed—with public comments being followed by under-the-breath pointed commentary on the content. This is superb, since I’m always looking for people who give a damn about the issues at hand with any given artist’s work. Especially with the artist present to respond to questions and points of tension, the discussion, which touched upon traditional Canadian sensitive subject matter concerning aboriginal identity, became an excellent exercise in artistic accountability.
Attempted Art Criticism Revival:
BRING IT: The Toronto Alliance of Art Critics says MAKE FACE MOTHAFUCKAS! @ Double Double Land
2 December 2009
Featuring David Balzer, Otino Corsano, Rosemary Heather, Charlene K. Lau, Leah Sandals, Murray Whyte, moderated by Nadja Sayej
AND
Lawrence Weschler: What’s the New Line? @ Cinecycle
3 December 2009
Well placed side by side with one another, these two events made an attempt to place art criticism into the public realm again through the format of open forum debate, pits where ‘experts’ and audience members could get together and discuss what’s at stake right now as far as ‘art-talk.’ At a crucial time when people don’t seem to be getting provoked—either negatively or positively about what’s going on in the art community—this is what I was asking for as of late. Let’s have an argument, let’s recall some Futurist and Dadaist tendencies towards chaos, arguing and chair throwing. These sorts of events demonstrate that other people are also asking for such a forum. Although I was unable to attend the Double Double Land event, the event at Cinecycle with Weschler, a writer and current Director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, was partnered with artists, authors, curators and other offshoots, to attempt a negotiation of where participants’ practices may fall along the standard dichotomist evaluative methods (experimental vs. traditional, conceptual vs. object-based, imaginative vs. realist). It quickly became obvious that these lines are not steadfast, reliable or even coherent, leaving the state of Toronto art criticism no better off than when the evening began. There were some laughs, some disagreements, some drinks and a few raised voices. A good start.
Eyeball: U of T Fine Arts Student Union Annual Undergraduate Exhibition @ 1 Spadina Crescent, University of Toronto
4 December 2009
An annual survey exhibition of the hard work and accomplishments of the undergraduate visual arts students at the U of T Saint George programme. Often a slapstick affair, it is still a rather industrious response to a lack of other venues for display within both the U of T campus(es) and the larger community. Using the space they already occupy for classes and studios, the students’ work takes over the corridors of the entire 1 Spadina Crescent building: corkboards, classrooms, elevators and stairwells. There’s a significant mix of materials along the hallways, ranging from classroom exercises to more fully realised conceptual projects. There are often performances spread throughout the evening as well to round out the variety of the U of T undergrad programme. Despite its rough appearance, every year is a busy success with many visitors, tasty snacks, and a guaranteed variety of work, with young curators trolling the aisles writing down names of new and accessible talent – it’s win-win.
Pleasure Dome Fall 2009 Programming
You Are in a Maze of Twisty Little Passages, All Different, Daniel Cockburn
5 December 2009
Tony Conrad and Marie Losier in Person
11 December 2009
Right along with FADO, Pleasure Dome has seasonal programming which provides an excellent compliment to the regular circuit of gallery openings and catalogue launches when it’s active. Both national and international in scope, the Dome’s programming ranges from screenings, performances and other hybridized events throughout each of its seasons. Two notable events this Fall were a screening of a series of works by Cockburn, a recent Berlin DAAD resident who has a practice generally based in Toronto, along with a larger survey screening of the works of SUNY Buffalo Media Arts professor and experimental film maker since the 1960s onward Tony Conrad. Although only an hour and half from Toronto across the border, it was a somewhat rare opportunity to experience a serious survey of Conrad’s oeuvre that I evidenced to have tested the boundaries of film’s physical properties (cutting and reassembling, cooking, and pickling film stock and then projecting) producing many works that are indeed visual endurance tests for viewers including scratches, flashing lights and abstracted blinking colours. Pleasure Dome is a much needed and welcome component within the greater Toronto arts community, and its programming is both further reaching in scope, presenting events that include more experimental sentiments than can usually be accessed within the city.
Misinformed Informants
FADO Performance Art Centre @ XPACE
Performances on 17 December 2009, exhibition until the 19th
Guillaume Adjutor Provost, Corina Kennedy, Sophie Castonguay, Julia Mensink, Stacey Ho, Joshua Schwebel, Henry Adam Svec
Curated by Lisa Visser.
From another young curatorial talent, Lisa Visser, was the evening of performances and subsequent physical exhibition Misinformed Informants organized through FADO over the weekend of the 17th to the 19th. Potentially right on point with the esoteric nature of performance art.The theme of the works within the programme was the address of issues of miscommunication, skewed perception and inaccurate re-telling. Performances ranged from the more didactic to the more obscure and confusing, with the disclusion of a work by Josh Schwebel which was the subsequent epitome of the curatorial intent as far as mis-communication in my opinion. Schewbel mailed in his proposal for the show with an intentionally incorrect address. Canada Post still managed to deliver the proposal to Visser, who subsequently rejected the application because the denial was intrinsic to its original intent. Schwebel’s name is therefore only included in some of the didactic/promotional materials accompanying the show, which is both confusing for viewers and for the participants themselves: were artists’ fees paid? Does he get to place the exhibition on his resume? Was the work fulfilled or ultimately rejected? Do we care? A well realised show.
Missed but wished I could have gone:
Will Kwan Multi-lateral exhibition walk-through with Annie Onyi Cheung and Minna Lee
Justina M. Barnicke
20 December 2009
An excellent exhibition of Kwan’s work at the JMB sorely lacked an artist’s talk as a compliment. At least this walk-through would have provided a forum to discuss the works that speak to many pertinent issues. I always appreciate a substantial exhibition by a talented and younger artist (yes, in that combination), but I also feel that programming around these exhibitions is also required in order to give it more life. The exhibition programming at the JMB is never very involved for a variety of reasons, possibly beginning in its operational funding and this exhibition’s pairing with the holiday season, although the contextual audience is at the ready within the university setting and the exhibition was robust.