Walter Phillips Gallery

From Toronto I moved to Banff, AB to take the position of Curatorial Work-Study at the Walter Phillips Gallery at The Banff Centre. From a large city with countless galleries, events, performances and talks I arrived in a town where I found myself working for the only institution of cultural significance. Imagine working for an institution that is actively contributing critical material to the broader contemporary art dialogue, filled with people in studios furiously making art, large facilities at the ready that include print making, fibre, wood and metal, paper making and ceramics; but, it’s the only arts institution with national and international scope in a tiny town full of local residents who either do not care to understand what goes on at the Centre or consider it an unsightly hazard ruining a mountain landscape (the Centre is located half-way up one of the mountains surrounding the town) – of course there are also residents and outside visitors who attend the concerts and dance performances. Regardless, the Centre is isolated, no argument; this condition is internally acknowledged by the Visual Arts departmental who understands the website as the institution’s highest priority because it knows that hardly anyone is going to make the trek deep into a protected national park nestled in the mountains to go see an art exhibition or conduct studio visits. This is the anomaly of the Banff Centre – full open access combined with full isolation.

A view from the Centre

I wanted to share a couple of experiences I have had while at The Banff Centre for anyone who may not know what the heck this place is, or who are already interested and looking to apply to a visual arts program:

Artist Residencies: Two began at the same time as I started work at the Walter Phillips Gallery, with about 20 participating artists working diligently for seven weeks – both a Masters Class: The Object of Art and the Art as Object run by Ken Lum and a Thematic Residency: Towards Language run by Greg Staats. It was wonderful to see how their studios progressed from empty white rooms to dirty dishevelled spaces….although some stayed vacant and minimal, which is equally relevant. I really got a sense of how different people work and the sort of production that can be achieved here. It’s different than working at a fine arts degree in a university because people here are doing only what they want to be doing and are rather self-sufficient (what we can call ‘professionalized’). Some are younger artists who are in between a BFA and MFA while others like Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Adrian Stimson, and Alex Janvier are well established and respected artists.

Symposium: Painter House Conversations: I had the opportunity to sit in on a series of sessions that addressed issues surrounding the representation of aboriginal art (both historical and contemporary) in concern to the curatorial, educational and artistic work of participants from the UK, United States and Canada that included: Ryan Rice (Curator of Exhibitions and Programs, Institute of American Indian Arts), Jolene Rickard (Associate Professor, Art History and Visual Arts, Cornell University), Candice Hopkins (Aboriginal Curator-in-Residence, National Gallery of Canada), Jesse McKee (independent curator and recent graduate, Royal College of Art), Jean Fisher (tutor, Critical and Curatorial Studies, Royal College of Art) , Mark Nash (Professor and Head of the Department of Curating Contemporary Art, RCA), Paul Chaat Smith (Curator, National Museum of the American Indian), Adrian Stimson (artist and independent curator), and Kitty Scott (Director: Visual Arts, Banff International Curatorial Institute and the Walter Phillips Gallery). I was responsible for audio recording, additional note-taking and coffee-making during the week-long event, but however glamorous my official duties were, the opportunity to meet and chat with these professional curators was a privilege. In particular I got to meet with Jean Fisher who worked as an exhibition reviewer for Artforum in the 1980s to cover artists and exhibitions that were peripheral at the time because they included aboriginal artists, women and other social minorities, worked as an independent curator with these same peripheral artists out of political motivations and is founding editor of Third Text; she shared some of her experiences with me and offered some perspective on the significant changes in curatorial practice from the 1980s to today.

Curatorial Speakers’ Series – Nicolaus Schafhausen and Chris Eamon: This programme is organized by the Walter Phillips Gallery, so one of my occasional responsibilities is to provide introductions for these speakers and help with minor technical requirements during the talks. Since everyone simply ends up drinking and sharing suppers within normal circumstances during visits within the Banff Centre, interactions are made to be much more relaxed. I was initially very nervous when I was included to attend a supper at a gourmet restaurant as part of the Painter House Conversations’ events and was sat next to Schafhaussen, the Director of the Witte de With in Rotterdam (Netherlands), who had just arrived to give a talk as part of the Speakers’ Series. These are the exact sorts of circumstances that occur frequently while at the Centre. When you are placed within the same room/studio/supper table with artists, curators and writers, it is up to you to seize the experiences as opportunities to make connections, strike up conversations and learn something from these experts. The environment of the Banff Centre allows for these situations to happen for you and all you have to do is learn to take advantage.

International residents and workers: Before I arrived at the Banff Centre I didn’t have a true understanding of the sort of placement of the institution within the international art scene, basically expecting it to be filled exclusively with Canadians. The promotion of the institution as an international cultural hub is true as there are people who have travelled here for shorter residencies (4-7weeks) and longer 3-6 month contracts, like me, from around the world – England, Germany, Switzerland, United States, Sweden, Russia, Italy, Norway, Iceland – and those are just ones that I remember off-hand. I’ve certainly learned about different cultures more than I ever did living in Toronto or Vancouver, if only because here I can talk to people directly and become friends with them; they are not located within isolated communities keeping to themselves like in a larger city, but instead they are all working, drinking and suffering from isolation anxiety together.

Studio parties and pillow talk: always bonuses – and evidently where much of the interesting gossip and fun is exchanged.

The Banff Centre is a microcosm of the art scene in every Canadian city I’ve experienced: peripheral, confusing to the general public, internally focused and masturbatory with its sights set on international rather than local promotion. If embraced, the microcosm effect makes it easier to shake off feelings of isolation so one can learn to take advantage of the innumerable exceptional events that I have had the opportunity to experience here. I agree with what previous Banff Centre residents told me before I arrived, that “everyone must spend time here.” Whether it’s for the social connections, for the development of a continually shifting roster of artists to build curatorial ideas from, for meetings with international art and curatorial stars, for a network of artists interested in similar practices and philosophies, for the studios with facilitators that can assist in making ideas into realities, or for, of course, the epic nature and mountainscapes that surround you.

If anyone out there in XBLOG-reading-land is considering a residency or a work-study position at the Banff Centre, wondering about what sort of facilities are available (or not) for what you’d be interested in pursuing while you’re here, or are already on your way and want some information on the town of Banff and it’s bizarre quirks, I welcome any and all questions here on XBLOG!

Downtown Banff am

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 19^th

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 17^th to the 19^th. 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.

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?)

http://www.mercerunion.org/

“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

Curator: Bogdan Luca
Artists: Shannon Dickie, Alex Fischer, Shlomi Greenspan, Hyoki Kang, Michael Lawrie, Meghan McKnight, Amanda Muis, Alex Sheriff, Jol Thomson, and Jeff Tutt

Facing the Screen addresses the medium of painting’s interrelation to technology by presenting paintings by student artists from across the GTA who source and produce their artworks through digital means. From peering around the exhibition, one can observe a mixed invitation: canvases that resemble more traditional explorations into the physical qualities of paint; hybrids of projection and canvas that seem to be located in between materiality and computerized images; and works that are fully digitized using internet and projection technologies. When the canvas is positioned next to the computer screen, in both physical and ideological set-ups, the amount of information transfer, both material and immaterial, from one to the other is easily perceived. The connection is in the referential dimensions of rectangular frames, in the surface skins that are produced through applying paint to a surface or after pushing into the computer screen with your finger to create rainbows and waves, and in the amount of control and manipulation one can apply through both mediums in order to create imagery.

Because the use of digital technologies in contemporary art practice seems at once like an obvious connection, it’s smart of curator Bogdan Luca to address this relationship by combining the work of young artists with the input of professionals within the same field who can together expose the topic for an open discussion. The use of digital technologies has moved past the initial criticism of having associations with dishonest representation – Photoshop isn’t considered as a tool for hiding flaws or creating visual trickery and the use of quick-n-dirty digital photos or Wikipedia for easily sourced references is common place. With these opinions since surmounted, the younger artists, as well as the more established painters, promote the use of digital technology as a valuable tool in art production – or they are now proudly admitting to that use.

There is a shift in the degree of implicit incorporation of technology by the two generations of painters: the younger represented in the exhibition (listed above) and the older represented in the accompanying panel discussion on Novemebr 4th that included Nicole Collins (absent), Monica Tap, Joanne Tod, Michel Daigneault and moderator Vladimir Spicanovic. During the panel each artist gave a short description of their practices, elaborating on particular aspects that included the use of technologies such as digital cameras, internet imagery and video. From Daigneault describing in visceral terms the surface of a canvas like the skin or screen of a computer to Tap relating her use of video technology to capture moving images from bus and train seats during her travels – the use of technology can be considered as more of a tool or sensible association in their practices. As I explored the works by the younger artists it was apparent to me that technology was a much more natural extension of their painting routine- from Shlomi Greenspan’s, The Bicycle Thief (2009) which is a painted canvas overlaid with an projection of an animation that replays the different stages of his painting’s development, to Michael Lawrie’s Efficient Mondrian (2009) which is a projection of Mondrian-esque images, randomly generated from text updated through the artist’s Twitter feed (https://twitter.com/emondrian). Many of these younger artists will have had a longstanding relationship with technology, using email, internet and cell phones since childhood, or at least from junior high school onward; these technologies are understood as integrated components in their everyday social, educational and creative lives. In North America, any generations before my own were not ensconced in the kind of all-access communication and information stream that is now flowing around us today that has effected the way we process information, think and create which is evinced in this exhibition.

In Facing the Screen, the adoption of digital imagery in many of the works initially appears to be opposed to the physicality associated with traditional notions of painting as a malleable substance that can be pushed and manipulated over a surface. With the addition of projections, a further integration of non-physical source materials transforms the paintings into a sort of technological performance, causing this physicality to be totally renegotiated. We will always want to believe that painting is always still going to be painting; because of its seemingly longstanding stoicism and consistency, it is not often addressed in a way that challenges its identity to the degree presented in Facing the Screen and the panel discussion. It doesn’t seem as though painters are scared, desiring a return to the traditional comfort of being a substance along a surface, because I believe both younger and older generations remain enamoured by painting’s original qualities. However, the works by the younger artists are indeed stretching boundaries for a medium that makes me begin to conclude that, yeah, maybe painting’s not always going to be painting sometime in the near future.

-Ginger Scott