Blog Break

I've been called away on family business, so there will be a bit of a break in blogging. I'll be back at it by the middle of next week. See you soon!

Save the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography !

The Government has announced that the CMCP building at 1 Rideau Canal in Ottawa will be taken over by Parliament for office space and meeting rooms. The CMCP is the only museum in Canada devoted to the photographic image. It was created in 1985 after intense lobbying by the photographic community and opened its $16M state-of-the-art facility in 1992.
We are firmly opposed to this arbitrary decision, delivered by the Government and National Gallery without warning or consultation. This is not just a photographic community concern. The loss of this public art space concerns us all.

To join the fight to save the CMCP, please take a moment to sign the petition:

www.ipetitions.com/petition/CMCP/

For background information on this announcement, please visit:

www.savecmcp.ca/

Please circulate this petition through your network with apologies for cross-posting.

Michel Campeau: "It is imperative that the CMCP be returned to its former status among international institutions dedicated to photography. The building that was designed for the CMCP when it was founded must house it once again. To accomplish its mission, it is urgent that a francophone curator be hired to fill a vacant post. An increase in the budget is also needed for the CMCP to maintain its operations, acquisitions, and influence."

Donigan Cumming: "The loss of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography has sparked a national effort to stop this government's systematic erasure of Canada's cultural heritage. As established Canadian creators, we need to send a strong message to Ottawa. The CMCP was created by artists coming together and making their views known. We can do this again. We owe it to the next generation."

Vera Frenkel: "The Harper government's appropriation of CMCP premises for routine office use follows on its grab for party receptions of a beautifully renovated building designated for the Portrait Gallery of Canada. Colonizing cherished and hard-earned cultural resources for bureaucratic bumph on the one hand and private parties on the other signals that the fog is rolling in. What is it that these jokers don't understand about this sentence: 'Canada's most powerful ambassadors are its artists.' Or this: 'Every citizen is entitled to experience Canada's visual history.' The collections of the CMCP and the Portrait Gallery are being hidden from view; a criminal deprivation, in my opinion, of a citizen's right to know who we are through the inspiring work of our great artists, many of whom are internationally admired photographers. This extraordinary double blunder is already embarrassing Canada elsewhere and together with other foolishly destructive decisions will cost this government the next election."

New Paintings: David Bolduc

I hardly know what I can add to the discussion of David Bolduc. A masterful artist, who loves to move paint around on the canvas. Rigour, repetition of form, mathematical precision, colour field influences: lyrical abstraction with an increasing level of texture and intensity as the years have gone by.

Click here to see Linda Corbetts's documentaries/interviews with Bolduc, done for the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art Database project.

Some of the luscious paintings now showing at A.K. Collings Gallery.

Jay Wilson: New Sculpture

You Can Do It! (wall installation approximately 65" x 27": Toothpicks, safety matches)

You Can Do It! (Detail)

I love this Wilson installation for its quirky Boy Scout humour, and equally, for the obvious patience and process. Viewed close, the work brings to mind a polynomial equation graphed in 3-d. In fact, mathematics and modularity are important underlying concepts in his practice. His first degree was in mathematics and biology, but at the age of 26, an encounter in Toronto with a large scale temporary architectural intervention by Tadashi Kawamata had a profound impact.

Kawamata's Colonial Tavern Park installation, Toronto, 1989.

A few years later, Wilson left his position as a zookeeper, and enrolled at Ontario College of Art.

Wilson made art, but primarily worked as a graphic designer for a number of years. The art he created during this period was concerned with letter forms and print. The influence of his design background remains obvious in "You Can Do It!". However, his encounter with Kawamata remained as a strong subconscious motivator. The urge to create conceptual work led him to an M.F.A at York U., which he completed in 2008.

In his new three-dimensional pieces, Wilson's diverse interests and expertise come together in a a beautiful and astonishing way. These biomorphic forms are constructed of modular 6-point elements, which aggregate in a random yet predictable fashion. They are temporal and fragile, but as sturdy as the Golden Gate Bridge. The obsessive hands-on process requires the contribution of other artists and friends to bring each work to completion.


"mediumorangeyellow": toothpicks, flocking approximately 16"x 21"

The more time an artist spends in the digital world, the more the desire to work with the senses, and with a co-operative, actual, real-time social group of like-minded souls.

Jay Wilson's words:

"Lately I’ve been working on labour-intensive works that involve hand-gluing thousands of toothpicks together. I invite assistants to come and help me in the studio. We chat, build and listen to music. I like to engage in one thing so that I can think about another.

My process-based practice uses convenience, play, mistakes, logic and intuition, pattern and colour, and juxtaposition. The work is complex in arrangement, involves changes in composition, scope and tempo of process. It is both highly structured and developmentally random. It is complexity and the lack of hierarchy that is the work’s thrust and provokes questions as opposed to declaring answers, definitive statements of central themes."


These works are on the cusp of something. I do not know what. But I am determined to follow Wilson's career. Watch and wait.

Jay Wilson: New Sculptures
A.K. Collings Gallery
April 23 to May 17, 2009

Own Art

Why not in Canada?

Arts Council England's Own Art scheme celebrates its fifth anniversary this week. Own Art operates "to make contemporary art affordable and accessible to all" by offering buyers interest-free loans from L200 to L2000 to spend on contemporary art. The loans must be repaid over 10 months, and may be applied to a range of artworks, including paintings, photography, sculpture, glass and more.

The program was established for the following reasons:
-to encourage new buyers and audiences for the visual arts
-to develop the visual arts economy by encouraging an increase in the sale of work by contemporary artists
-to support a breadth of practice from traditional to the innovative, by artists at all stages of their career

Since its launch five years ago, the program has generated L6.5 million in income for artists through more than 12,500 loans.

Playing For Change

Playing for Change is a charitable organization founded by Grammy award-winning producer and engineer Mark Johnson. The foundation's mission is to "connect the world through music". The bricks-and-mortar part of the mission is to build music schools and art schools around the world. Two projects are well underway in South Africa, and the foundation has also been supporting Tibetan refugee centres in India and Nepal.

This music video produced by Playing for Change is an inspiring demonstration of the internet's creative commons philosophy at its best. "Thirty seven musicians from five continents assemble together to create one unified track. The musicians have never met in person and connect through their music. Each track is added to the song as the musicians are recorded live outside across the globe. The end result is a remarkable human connection and a powerful song."

All Citizens Shop

I hear that there is a new breed of pioneer settling the Canadian prairies: avante-garde artists. I've always believed farmers and artists have a great deal in common: they are entrepreneurial and independent, they have an appreciation for beauty, they persevere against all odds, and if they won millions in the lottery, why, they'd just keep on doing what they do until that money ran out, too.

Tyler Brett and Serena McCarroll are two graduates of Emily Carr University of Art + Design who fled Vancouver to settle in the town of Bruno, Saskatchewan, population 590. They have opened a gallery on main street: "All Citizens", which as you can see, is next to the senior's clubhouse. I confess that I am not familiar with Serena McCarroll's work, although I have seen Tyler Brett's work at Clint Roenisch Gallery in Toronto, where he exhibited with Tony Romano as part of T&T .

You can visit www.allcitizens.org to see what's happening in Bruno, browse the gallery and buy something from the on-line store:

Billy Mavreas: "YESbunny" poster

Cole Johnson: "Friends" block print


(thanks to Cliff Eyland for his akimblog post )

Marcel Dzama: Department of Eagles

Marcel Dzama: Even More Calamities (storyboard for "No One Does It Like You" video). 2008. Ink, root beer base, water color, and paper, 22" x 14"





This beautiful video for "Department of Eagles" premiered at MoMA on March 24, 2009. Produced by Directors Bureau. Direction: Patrick Daughters and Marcel Dzama. Costumes and Sets: Marcel Dzama.

I have tried in vain to discover who was responsible for the choreography. Please post a comment if you know.

If you click through to the MoMA site, you'll note that Dzama is identified as a New York City-based artist...of course, we know that he's from Winnipeg.

Cultural Universals in Music and Emotion

Earthenware pot: contemporary Mafa culture
Photograph by maremagna

Dave Munger at "Cognitive Daily" has a fascinating post today on the cultural universality of the perception of emotions as conveyed by music.

"The Mafa people, who live in the far north of Cameroon in the Mandara mountains, are one of the most culturally isolated groups in the world. Since many of their settlements lack electricity, there are some individuals who have never been exposed to western movies, art, or music.

Because of their isolation and very different musical tradition, they can help answer a question that has perplexed music scholars and psychologists for generations: are there musical "universals"? In other words, do the emotions conveyed by music depend on what we've learned through our culture, or can anyone perceive the emotion intended by a composer of a given musical work? Does "good" or pleasant music have cultural boundaries?"

Click through to read the entire article, if only to listen to the audio clips of Mafa music, which to me felt like a spring-time riot of buds and shoots bursting out of the ground. A little more web research revealed that the Mafa only use music as a celebratory medium, primarily around planting and harvesting. Curious about Mafa art, I was able to find the above example of an extraordinary hand built earthenware vessel, with human teeth.

The Grange Prize: Cast Your Vote!

The art world could hardly be described as a democracy, being filled as it is with experts and academics ready to pass judgment on what does or does not qualify as "fine". Here is a rare opportunity to have your say, and make your opinion count.

Now in its second year, the Grange Prize recognizes the work of Canadian and international contemporary photographers, awarding $50,000 CAD to a winner chosen through an online public vote from among two Canadian and two international artists. The Art Gallery of Ontario works each year with a different partner museum in a country other than Canada. The partner museum for 2009 is Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City.

The four photographers in the running this year are:

Jin-me Yoon: "Her photographic and video-installation works pivot on explorations of identity and place that the artist links to her autobiographical experiences of moving to Canada from South Korea at the age of eight."


Lynne Cohen: "The extraordinary places photographed by Lynne Cohen are perplexing environments. Uncanny and devoid of human presence, these spaces are yet complete with tell-tale traces suggesting imaginative if, at first look, troubling narratives."


Marco Antonio Cruz: "Cruz understands documentary photography as the exercise of a point of view that is ethically and politically engaged, yet aspires to an aesthetic clarity."


Frederico Gama: Photographs of young immigrant labourers in Mexico City who "use fashion to break away from the stereotyped figure of a passive Indian sprung from an idyllic past."

Both the Canadians in this contest present work with a certain creepy flatness that I found extremely compelling intellectually. Disengagement, anomie and isolation are strong thematic elements in both Cohen's and Yoon's work. Many of Yoon's images are stills from video installations, which does not to my mind technically qualify as "photography", so she seems an odd choice in this short list. The two Mexican photographers could not be more different from the two Canadians. Gama's images would be at home in National Geographic, and are more editorial than artistic in nature. It was Cruz's black and white photographs of blind people which really grabbed me, for their technical skill, humanity and Arbus-like capture of moment and gesture.

What do you think?

Take a look at the Grange Prize website to read more about each photographer, to see many more images....and to cast your vote.

Sweaterbones: Peggy Mersereau

Peggy Mersereau is an artist with a passion for beauty, skill and fibre. For Mersereau, the smallest possible footprint is a moral and aesthetic imperative. I recall our first meeting. She was concerned about the post-opening-party bottles which littered the back room of the gallery. Specifically, and politely, she was concerned that I might toss them in the garbage. She quietly gathered them up and took them home, for proper recycling.

Mersereau collects sweaters and shirts from thrift shops, friends, wherever. She seeks out garments which have not been made by children or exploited workers, and which are made of beautiful, pure, wools or silks. She has literally hundreds upon hundreds of these, stored and sorted by colour, pattern and fibre, in bins in her studio. These garments and carefully dissected, so that the large pieces, or "sweatermeats" are reclaimed. The sweatermeats are sliced and rolled to make beads, which themselves are re-constituted as sculptural pieces to be worn or displayed:

or recreated as non-functional vessels:


The remaining seams, cuffs, hems and plackets are the "sweaterbones": the structural exoskeletons of what was once a covering for the body.

In the gallery installation, these sweaterbones fly, lift and gather, like a flock of birds, bats or flying squirrels. A rocking chair invites a knitter. But how many more sweaters does the world really need?

The sweaterbones collect and fall into a heap in the corner.

These remnants become the sweaterballs: solid, through-to-the-core authentic. What Donald Judd is to steel, these little Mersereau sculptures are to fibre, only on a huggable, very human scale.


Silk shirts are cut into components for handmade lace collages:




"Sweaterbones": Peggy Mersereau
A.K. Collings Gallery
April 2 to 21. 2009

John and Yoko in Montreal: 40 Years Later

Opening today at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts:

"In 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s famous Bed-in, held in Suite 1742 of Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel, made headlines around the world. Forty years later, from April 2 to June 21, 2009, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts celebrates this legendary event with Imagine: The Peace Ballad of John & Yoko, organized in collaboration with Yoko Ono. Rekindling the philosophy behind John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s commitment for today’s world, this comprehensive exhibition will provide a picture of the historical and political context in 1969 that formed the backdrop to the Bed-in. To enable the widest possible audience to understand, be moved by and perpetuate this still-topical peace message, admission to the exhibition will be free at all times."

Yoko Ono is 76 years of age. She continues to be controversial and attracts scorn and admiration in equal measure. As a performing artist and musician, her practice has not always been easy to understand, and so it has been easy to mock. This continues to the present day: one of our national papers published an exceptionally mean-spirited and shallow article attacking Yoko Ono personally and attacking the original Bed-in and the Bed-in redux currently at the Beaux-Arts in Montreal. There was also a shameful mock-obituary in a N.Y. art blog on April Fool's Day. My sense of humour can be pretty dark, but the obit was not even remotely funny. I won't dignify either of these journalistic efforts by providing a link. If you are interested enough, I am sure you can do some digging and find them for yourself.

Do we judge artists by their lives as lived or by the art that they produce? When both the life lived and the art produced is hard to categorize, and defies expected norms, the artist and the art work are open for attack. The unfamiliar makes people feel uncomfortable, or worse, worried that they are being taken advantage of in some way. Nobody wants to be made to feel stupid, or to feel they are being conned, and a hostile reaction is often the result..

What it is that has made Yoko Ono such a lightning rod ? Beyond her art, and the "she-broke-up-the-Beatles" complaint, I would argue that the more hateful of the personal attacks have been energized by elements of racism and gender bias. Among other things, she was vilified as a bad mother because she "abandoned" her daughter Kyoko. The wrenchingly sad truth is that the child was abducted by ex-husband Tony Cox, who changed the child's name, and hid her away in a far-right apocalyptic Christian cult based in California known as "The Walk". When Yoko Ono's husband John Lennon chose to allow himself the pleasures of a home life and hands-on parenting, this was taken as further proof of her inadequacies as a real woman and her status as a controlling bitch. Years later, her husband was murdered before her eyes. I am sure there are those who blame her for that, too.

It is hard to imagine a life which has at once contained such privilege, and such personal tragedy. Through it all, Yoko Ono has continued make art. Whether you like it, or understand it, is not really the point. The point is that there has been a continued drive and passion to create, and to communicate. That's what makes an artist.

The original Bed-in was a piece of performance art. It was intended to be thought provoking and ambiguous. The interpretation of the piece was left to the discretion of the individual. There were no dissertations or explanatory speeches or catalogues to indoctrinate the audience. When pressed, Lennon and Ono gave statements which in isolation sounded obscure or inane. Yoko Ono in particular has never been a very gifted verbal communicator. That is not her metier, and so I do not judge her art by the words she uses. Recalling the advice of Peter Schjeldahl, let us start with the assumption that the artist is sincere, and has something interesting to say. Look, listen, and allow the experience to percolate. After that, if you feel that you are being scammed, or conned, then walk away. Maybe it is just not your cup of tea.