Brad Copping: Prairie Portage Primer

A very nice interview and video tour of Brad Copping's exhibition, "Prairie Portage Primer", on view at Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery through September 2, 2012. I was honoured to have been asked by curator Heather Smith to write the catalogue essay.

VSVSVS: Graffiti Removal Removal

VSVSVS is a collective of young artists based in an industrial space in the Port Lands on Toronto's eastern waterfront. Current members include Stephen McLeod, Wallis Cheung, Miles Stemp, Laura Kreviazuk, Ryan Clayton, Anthony Cooper, Jemma Egan, Laura Simon, and James Gardner.

"Graffiti Removal Removal" is a public art project which VSVSVS has recently done as part of Art of the Danforth 2012 . This festival  is a welcome newcomer in the Toronto free-art, community-engagement scene. Bracketed roughly by the Greenwood and Woodbine subway stops, "Art of the Danforth" celebrates a stretch of the Danforth that has yet to see much in the way of gentrification. The festival runs from May 20 through June 10 this year, but "Graffiti Removal Removal" should be around for some time to come, or at least until someone removes the removal removals.

Graffiti Removal is what you get when city workers, or private property owners, attempt to erase graffiti by painting over it. You see these erasures everywhere, as floating and layered blocks of colour which almost, but not quite, match the tones of the underlying surfaces on the original buildings or fences. The resulting forms can be pretty interesting, if unintentionally so.

I have not asked the members of VSVSVS, but their project seems to be the logical extension of ideas introduced in the wry mocumentary short film "The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal" (2001, director: Matt McCormick, narrator: Miranda July,  based on an original idea of artist Avalon Kalin).

"Graffiti Removal has become one of the more intriguing and important art movements of the early 21st century. With roots in abstract expressionism, minimalism and Russian constructivism, Graffiti Removal is both a progressive continuation of these movements and an important step in the future of modern art. What makes graffiti removal particularly intriguing, though, is that the artists creating it are unconscious of their artistic achievements."

Here is a clip:



And so, we have "Graffiti Removal Removal". Works of "removal art" are unintentionally made by city workers and property owners who have the conscious intention of erasing that which they do not sanction as art. With the addition of carefully chosen colour and occasional sculptural elements, VSVSVS consciously and deliberately "removes" the graffiti removals in such a way as to elevate the erasures. The graffiti removals now become validated and sanctioned works of ART as we more commonly define it: that is, work created purposefully and thoughtfully by professional artists. As is always a trademark of VSVSVS at their most successful, this project manages to be tongue-in-cheek and utterly serious at the same time. Unsanctioned artists make graffiti, which the city and the property owners do not consider to be art. The city and property owners make erasures, which they do not intend to be art, but which are now defined as such as a result of the intervention of professional artists. Next up?

Three of my favourite works in this series can be seen in the laneway which runs from Greenwood to Linnsmore Crescent, behind the stores on the north side of the Danforth. (Shot with my iPhone, and not the best. Go see for yourself, if you are in Toronto.)

The door, the post and the stairs have been painted in the same colour as the removal removals.

Sculptural elements are sometimes included in the removal removals: note the addition of spray-foam insulation on the right of the door. Note, too, the dash of aqua at shoulder height to the left of the door, nicely enhancing the divot which a truck has taken out of the corner of the building...

...and a pink-painted padlock installed on the pole.

The colour of the removal removal on this fence was inspired by the weathered siding on the adjacent garage.

The property owner attempted a white-wash removal of an entire wall of graffiti, but could not paint around the permanently parked van. VSVSVS helpfully added the text, reading "WHITE PAINT" (vinyl lettering, thus itself easily removable).

Melanie MacDonald: DO NOT PASS GO

We had a wildly successful opening night party on December 17th for Melanie MacDonald in our temporary space at 1142 Queen St. West in Toronto. We were also very pleased to receive some nice coverage from Murray Whyte of the Toronto Star, and Mike Landry of "Things of Desire". Altogether, a successful Queen St. West debut for the artist, and for A.K. Collings Fine Art.

DO NOT PASS GO is a one week-only event, and will be dismantled on the afternoon of Tuesday December 22. For those of you who won't be able to attend, here is a sampling. MacDonald works in acrylic, and the paintings range from 24x 24 to 36 x 48.


From MacDonald's artist statement:
"My latest work is a continuation of my series of board game vignettes. Monopoly was the starting point for this series--a suggestion from a friend--and I expanded it to include Trouble, slot hockey, Chinese Checkers, and some more obscure games. With these recent paintings I've returned to Monoploy but I've created chaotic scenes of the board in disarray--the game suspended in a state of disorder before it begins or having come to an abrupt, messy ending."


"These paintings are partly inspired by "Soprano Home Movies" episode 78 of the television drama's final season. In it, Tony and his wife Carmela spend a weekend at his sister Janice and brother-in-law Bobby Bacala's cottage. During a game of Monopoly, and argument ensues over the rules and a fight erupts between Bobby and Tony. The game board is upset in the brawl and Tony loses the fight, ending up on the floor with Monopoly game pieces stuck to his face."


"Even though the structure of Monopoly depicted in these paintings has collapsed. the board, the pewter tokens, the plastic houses, chance cards, and Monopoly dollars all continue signifying as vestiges of order, economics and fair play"

Any questions about MacDonald's work, or requests for appointments for private viewings can be directed to:
akcollings(at)sympatico(dot)ca

Melanie MacDonald: Home Court Advantage

Melanie MacDonald is an emerging artist with a remarkable facility for capturing light and reflection. Working in acrylic on canvas, she paints highly realistic, somewhat off-kilter, close-up depictions of everyday objects. Paintings in the current series consist of vintage board games, ceramic figurines, and dishes: images from a pre-digital world of domestic kitsch. Two generations removed from Mary Pratt, MacDonald similarly explores the quotidian and seemingly mundane aspects of domesticity as a means of providing a symbolic allusion to the human condition.


MacDonald was included in Carte Blanche 2 (2008), flagging her as one of Canada's best and most promising emerging artists.


Kitsch, by its nature, undercuts the precious and turns the precious inside out as cheap, all too accessible objects. We can supposedly have it all through kitsch, but the desire to have it all is evidence of an inner void that longs for a kinder, simpler world. (Philipp Blom, To Have and to Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting, 2002)


Artist Statement:

"I regard my contemporary domestic paintings as visual poems marking the brief, curious, moments that punctuate the everyday. I attempt to realize small particulars within a close-up domestic foreground. In this kind of kitchen-sink realism, objects are isolated, set apart, and gathered together' without any deliberate, overriding purpose. My wish is to see and hold small moments caught on the fly, the fleeting shapes of ordinary living as they shed light on what is constant in our human condition. In the tradition of the still life, my paintings arrest time for the sake of contemplating the transient nature of our lives.

As Dennis Lee has observed in his exploration of Al Purdy's poetry, the everyday physical world can at times seem other-wordly, an alternate galaxy that is both utterly present and wholly transparent, a window into some ineffable dimension where [the individual] is at once lost and at home (Dennis Lee, Body Music, 1996). It is this kind of window that I attempt to realize with paint on canvas."

Melanie MacDonald
"Home Court Advantage"
July 3 to August 8, 2009
A.K. Collings Gallery

Ties That Bind, Part 2

Svava Thordis Juliusson is a sculptor who works with zip-ties and other found materials. In "Ties That Bind" she has installed sculpture from the "Svona, Svona" series, and the "Nerve" series. "Svona, svona" is a term of consolation in the Icelandic tongue, the equivalent of saying "There, there", while gently patting a crying child on the back.

The work is as delicate and ephemeral as hoar frost on a window: extremely difficult to capture in a photograph. In some instances, the shadow made by the sculpture is more prominent than the piece itself, giving the sense that the work is at once present, and not present.


Juliusson was born in Siglufjordur, Iceland, immigrating to the Canadian prairies at age ten. She began undergraduate studies at the Alberta College of Art and Design in 1993 and completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at NSCAD University in 1997. Juliusson completed her MFA in studio at York University in 2007.

"Svona II" is a larger and more robust work, approximately 6 feet outstretched. It is constructed of heavier cable ties (approximately 3500 of them). Suspended from the ceiling, it has an oddly anthropomorphic quality, and seems to bow in a formal, albeit icy, gesture of greeting. The cable ties glitter and have the property of capturing even the weakest rays of ambient light. The work has a shimmery glow when the lights are turned down.





Two examples of the smaller works which comprise the "Nerve" series are seen below:




Artist Statement

"I am interested in using and manipulating traditional sculpture techniques and various non-traditional sculpture materials to express my concerns and ideas. There is often a blurring of that which locates me as an artist who is compelled to consider for example the pigeon and that which causes me to reflect on rearing children and planting a garden. The studio investigations, which often commence at the kitchen table or the laundry room, tend to oscillate between a curiosity of the methods and materials of object making and the desire to articulate a response to my surroundings and certain events such the much publicized outbreaks of Avian Flu, Hoof and Mouth disease and BSE; which have become illustrative of the beginnings of the 21st century."

"Ideas around transformation are at root of my current studio investigations. After recent move, a recent graduate degree and recent entry into my fortieth decade, I became overwhelmed with my surroundings and specifically the objects, the material or stuff that I have accumulated in cupboards, closets and bins in my home and in my studio. This is not the ordinary kind of clutter; there are containers full of Styrofoam balls and some that contain only shards of plaster; and others that are full of bungee cord remnants and pieces of old linoleum. So rather than taking it all to the landfill as was my first instinct, I have begun to re-assemble, or re-invent the accrual. Some of it has been already configured directly on the walls of my studio, and other works were developed on paper. Simply put however, the project is about recycling – a topical and highly politicized issue that relates to my ongoing desire to respond to current events - and the idea that all of my detritus can become something else."


"tiedwithgreenredyellow" (metal packing straps, coloured zip ties, approx 50" x 40 ")

"Ties That Bind" will be on view at A.K. Collings Gallery until June 27, 2009.

Ties that Bind: Part 1

June is Wedding Month and in keeping with that, the next exhibition at A.K. Collings Gallery is entitled "Ties that Bind".

The opening reception will be on Sunday May 31, from 2 to 4.

Robert Malinowski and Erin Glover are two young artists who will be departing for their honeymoon in Paris on the weekend following the opening. They have produced a series of delicate drawings which are romantic and just a tiny bit odd...capturing the truth and intensity of married life.

Svava Thordis Juliusson is a sculptor who works with zip ties and other found materials. She will be installing sculpture from the "Svona, Svona" series. (this is a term of consolation in Icelandic, roughly meaning "there, there"). Juliusson's work and the Glover/Malinowski collaborative drawings relate thematically, and her work will be discussed in my next post.



Artist statement for "Ties That Bind": collaborative drawings by Erin Glover and Robert Malinowski:

"In our most recent work, we have staged small vignettes that unveil personal encounters in public spaces. The mixed media pieces sew together delicately rendered drawings and gem – like photo based images onto the same surface. The work is intended to hold conversation between the two of us as artists, as well as tell an intimate story as you travel through each image. We have both carried solo artistic careers in our respective media for the past seven years, but relish an opportunity to work together on collaborative projects. Our duet work has grown to hold a history of its own."


"Robert’s drawings depict moments excerpted from every day. The figures are shown overwhelmed by thoughts or emotions or both. Rendered as pencil drawn portraits, the characters are perfectly composed except for their heads which appear to fragment and float away from their bodies. Replaced by hearts, letters, numbers, or a variety of combined symbols, the identities are lost in an eruption of penciled markings."


"Erin’s work paints a series of domestic tokens. A gathering of garments that wrap, cover, and protect; and furniture pieces that shelter and embrace. Each item is shown empty, but carrying shapes and forms that reference the body. The collected personal objects and furniture are all worn from use and tend to adopt grand and layered personalities when planted into the new compositions. These works are small pockets of private space."


"In our collaborative work, the space is a shared landscape between the domestic tokens and the story book portraits. Sometimes, through the process, the negative space becomes more important. Large expanses of unclaimed white allow for tension and connection to grow between the figures and the objects in each piece. In our newest pieces, the figures and the household items will be shown close together, often overlapping. Robert will draw people huddled on a sofa and Erin will carefully paint a quilt over and around them. Erin will paint patterned sheets on a bed and Robert will gently pencil lovers sleeping underneath."


"It is critical to our development as artists to continue working together as an artistic team. In the process of producing collective artwork there is an natural critique that occurs. With each artistic mark, a partnered response. We are each others art community, critic, and collaborator. It is an invaluable experience to have the opportunity to work so closely with another artist to develop an ever growing series of pieces."


A.K. Collings Gallery
Hours:
Fridays and Saturdays, noon to 5
(Sundays, by invitation, for Artist Receptions)
otherwise, by appointment

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

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 )

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.

Overheard in the Gallery

"I may not know much about art, but I know what I like."

If I had a loonie for every time I've heard this, I'd be able to buy....maybe not a Peter Doig, but I am sure you catch my drift.

I think what many people mean when they say "I know what I like" is "I like what I know". The real rewards come from exploring the edges of what you know, and then stepping beyond those edges. Contrary to the conventional image of the "unapproachable gallerist", most are very happy to talk about their passion to anyone who expresses even the slightest interest. So, when you visit a gallery, ask questions: you'll have more fun!

E.H. Gombrich ("The Story of Art") approached the question of taste in a characteristically gracious manner:

"The old proverb that you cannot argue about matters of taste may well be true, but that should not conceal the fact that taste can be developed. This is a matter of common experience which everybody can test in a modest field. To people who are not used to drinking tea one blend may taste exactly like the other. But if they have the leisure, will and opportunity to search out such refinements as there may be, they may develop into true 'connoisseurs' who can distinguish exactly what type and mixture they prefer, and their greater knowledge is bound to add to their enjoyment of the choicest blend."

(If Gombrich had used 'scotch' as his example rather than 'tea', then I'd have succeeded in mentioning 'scotch' twice in this blog in less than a month. There now, I've done it!).

By the way, a loonie is currently worth about three quarters of a U.S. dollar, and a little more than half a Euro.

Cybele Young at the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington

The Visual Arts Centre of Clarington is another public gallery that we love, and that loves us back. Located in Bowmanville, about 40 minutes east of Toronto, it is situated riverside, in the 100 year old Cream of Barley Mill. Do not underestimate this gallery based on its suburban location and small size: director Richard Toms and curator Maralynn Cherry manage to deliver very sophisticated programming while still fulfilling their community mandate.

It is well worth the drive from the city to see Cybele Young's exhibition, which opened Sunday and runs for the next four weeks.

Young is a Toronto artist who exhibits and is collected nationally and internationally. Her miniature and poetic sculptural works are made of Japanese papers with copperplate etchings. She depicts quotidian objects in odd juxtaposition: Chestnut husks on a milk carton, a shopping cart rising skyward courtesy of a hot air balloon, a view camera pointing at a circa 1975 office chair on wheels.

These are familiar tactics to the mnemonist who is able to remember long lists of unrelated items by making visual images that link them together a very personal and idiosyncratic fashion. The artist is building and rebuilding an internal lexicon. We viewers are invited to read along with her and make our own connections. The work comes from that place where where episodic memory meets semantic memory.

Young hints at this process in her artist statement/poem:

"I knew a lot when I was sixteen,
quite a bit at twenty two
some at thirty
but now, honestly, I know very little.

I know the smell of the yogurt container in which I housed
my grade four caterpillar collection.
I know the cat-like shape of shimmering metal near the train
tracks down the street.

Memories and impression inspire me and I know that if I
Don't harness them, and others that jump out at me from the
neighbour's garbage or the bottom of a soup pot, I lose them
and all the knowledge they might hold for me.

So I make art as a way of building a personal dictionary.
I have faith that by creating new words from abstract and
familiar forms, they will compose their own sentences, and
make up new stories."


The wall installations and the groupings of multiple sculptures in large shadowbox frames are impressive. However, I find the smaller works containing two or three elements to be the most engaging. They are haiku poems, dense with interpretive possibilities. These pieces resonate deeply, and while they are lovely and tiny, they are neither twee nor precious. The artist's sincerity and astonishing skill allows the work to be simultaneously playful and serious. Anyone who has spent sufficient time with small children knows that play is in fact serious work. As an artist, Young seems able to tap that unfettered creativity that most of us sadly have lost somewhere around the age of ten.

Young has also extended her practise to the production of stop-action animation. The videos are mindlessly mesmerizing. That is not an insult: it was a tonic to move away from the consciously analytic and sink into the process and the gesture of her work. She tells me that she may put one or two of her films on youtube. If she does, I'll download and post them here in the future.