Jon Davies' Top 15 (plus bonus: movies!) I'm too lazy to editorialize too much, so I'll keep it short. These are in no order, and I'm sticking just to Toronto because it's easier.
1. Carla Zaccagnini: no. it is opposition. Art Gallery of York University, curated by Emelie Chhangur. 17 September – 7 December, 2008.
What could have been a Borges Lite gimmick ended up one of the most playful, well-put-together and compelling shows of the year, the exhibition's meticulously doubled structure bringing out the best in Zaccagnini's sometimes brilliant work.
2. Sadie Benning: Play Pause. The Power Plant/Images Festival. March 11 – May 1, 2008.
The Images Festival and The Power Plant scored a coup by landing one of the few showings anywhere of Sadie Benning's masterpiece – an incredibly imaginative and queerly moving two-screen animation that posits the polymorphously perverse "Ze Bar" as the heart and soul of a depressed War-on-Terror-era Midwestern city. Sublime.
3. Daniel Barrow: Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry. World Stage/Images Festival. April 10 – 12, 2008.
Greatest Living Canadian Artist™ Daniel Barrow goes to a dark, dark place with this serial killer-themed performance, years in gestation, that courageously ends on a note of absolute despair. Yes, he was robbed of the Sobey Art Award, but we loved his installation in the nominees' show at the ROM: he gave over the microphone and the overhead projector to strangers!
4. Swintak: Self-Aware Shed. YYZ Artists Outlet. September 6 – October 18, 2008.
I loved loved loved the video documentation of Swintak being an off-screen bossy boots and ordering around her shed, the gallery and the whole world: Night! Day! Night! Day!
5. Charles Atlas: Hail the New Puritan (1987). Pleasure Dome/Images Festival, curated by Kathleen Smith and Ben Portis. April 9, 2008.
It was an intensely emotional experience watching this thrilling, candy-coloured portrait of young choreographer/dancer Michael Clark and his 80s London demimonde – our flaming dandy ancestors on screen at their loveliest.
6. Jon Sasaki: I Promise It Will Always Be This Way. Nuit Blanche. October 4 – 5, 2008.
I couldn't take my eyes off of this troupe of goofy dancing mascots – the dolphin was my fav – a thoroughly entertaining spectacle but also so rich with pathos and desperation and depletion and boredom as well.
7. Stories, in Pieces. Justina M Barnicke Gallery, curated by Aileen Burns. July 10 – August 24, 2008.
Buried in the summer – hopefully people saw it! – this small but ambitious Canadian group show of elusive-narrative art was a perfectly polished gem – props to Myfanwy MacLeod and Jon Sasaki in particular.
8. Nomadic Residents presents Orlan. OCAD. September 30, 2008.
OK, I fled before the Q&A as usual: was her horrible translator revealed to have been a joke by the grande dame at our expense? Orlan's insane hybrid Franglais was a dizzying, near-incomprehensible delight, even if her more recent work can't compare with the plastic surgery carnivalesques of yore. [images on flickr]
9. Rosalind Nashashibi: Bachelor Machines. OCAD Professional Gallery, curated by Charles Reeve. June 25 – September 7, 2008.
Nashashibi's eye for composition, formal innovation and all-around intelligence made these enigmatic 16mm film installations a treat to be repeatedly savoured – and put the Prof. Gallery in my good books after their awful Rirkrit Tiravanija maiden voyage.
>>>
I know I shouldn't be concerned about nepotism – that's what an art scene is built on – but I decided to segregate things by close friends or that I was involved in myself. Do I not get out of my circle as much as I should? Should I feel bad about this? Discuss.
10. Artur Zmijewski, April 15 – May 3; Life Stories: Maayan Amir and Ruti Sela, Meiro Koizum and Tova Mozard, curated by Chen Tamir, September 10 – October 11; Jean-Paul Kelly: And fastened to a dying animal, October 16 - November 15, 2008. Gallery TPW.
I may be on the board but I can objectively say these were three amazing shows. Congrats to Kim Simon for dragging Artur Zmijewski's staggering video Them kicking and screaming to Toronto, and for Chen Tamir's curation of the fabulously weird documentary-portraits-gone-awry in Life Stories, and Jean-Paul Kelly's astounding domestic melodrama And fastened to a dying animal.
Artur Zmijewski, Them (video still)
11. Andrew Lampert: THE PURPOSE CROSSED. Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film, Durham, ON, curated by Jacob Korczynski. August 9, 2008.
NY film geek Andrew Lampert took the piss out of the tried-and-true live projector performance genre with his delightfully shambolic, two-man comic chaos in an old barn – it would have made Jack Smith proud.
12. Margaux Williamson: Teenager Hamlet 2006. Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects / TIFF Future Projections. September 4 – 13, 2008.
So my friends made this and I wonder if people who don't know them could ever love it as much as I do. Margaux brings a huge amount of visual and verbal wit to bear on her playful make-believe portrait of her Queen West neighbourhood (its young denizens divided into groups of "Hamlets" and "Ophelias" and interviewed by the stars) as seen through the lens of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
13. Angelika Pietruk, Laura McCoy and Kathleen Phillips. Trampoline Hall, curated by Lauren Bride. June 9, 2008.
National treasure Lauren Bride changed the rules of the Trampy Hall game by writing all three lectures herself, resulting in a wonderfully odd mix of confession and self-erasure. The Q&A sessions in particular raised more Q's than A's since the speakers often couldn't answer on Lauren's behalf.
14. Ei Arakawa: The Color Ball. The Power Plant. November 22, 2008.
So I had to handle the video projection (of clips from films ranging from Parsifal to Showgirls) that Ei Arakawa scored his performance with. Maybe it's because I almost had a crate dropped on me, but I've never felt the adrenaline rush of live performance before this. Arakawa and his co-conspirators exploded – unpacked, rearranged, broke open – Scott Lyall's installation The Color Ball in 45 minutes of beautiful, death-defying entropy: it was a hurricane of constant movement and expertly carried-out destruction/construction.
15. Barry Doupé: Ponytail. Pleasure Dome, November 29, 2008.
Animation wunderkind Barry Doupé's first feature melted the mind, as did much else at Pleasure Dome's A Lower World: Excessses and Extremes in Film and Video fall season: Our first-ever gallery exhibition, Mike Kelley's Day Is Done, Ryan Trecartin's I-Be Area, the Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn screening that no one came to… (shame!)
And since nobody asked, here are the best films I saw in a terrible movie year - though I have yet to see The Wrestler, Wendy and Lucy or The Class: 1) Let the Right One In (YES!)
2) Man on Wire
3) WALL-E
4) Synecdoche, New York
5) Happy-Go-Lucky
and the rest in no particular order: 6) Savage Grace
7) The House Bunny ("the eyes are the nipples of the face")
8) Milk
9) A Christmas Tale
10) TIFF 2008 – Lowlight: 90-min lineups for tickets. Highlights: I Want to See, The Beaches of Agnès, Hunger, Salamandra, Still Walking, 35 Shots of Rum, Lorna's Silence, and Sounds Like Teen Spirit.
Jon Davies' Top 15 (plus bonus: movies!)
I'm too lazy to editorialize too much, so I'll keep it short. These are in no order, and I'm sticking just to Toronto because it's easier.
1. Carla Zaccagnini: no. it is opposition. Art Gallery of York University, curated by Emelie Chhangur. 17 September – 7 December, 2008.
What could have been a Borges Lite gimmick ended up one of the most playful, well-put-together and compelling shows of the year, the exhibition's meticulously doubled structure bringing out the best in Zaccagnini's sometimes brilliant work.
2. Sadie Benning: Play Pause. The Power Plant/Images Festival. March 11 – May 1, 2008.
The Images Festival and The Power Plant scored a coup by landing one of the few showings anywhere of Sadie Benning's masterpiece – an incredibly imaginative and queerly moving two-screen animation that posits the polymorphously perverse "Ze Bar" as the heart and soul of a depressed War-on-Terror-era Midwestern city. Sublime.
3. Daniel Barrow: Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry. World Stage/Images Festival. April 10 – 12, 2008.
Greatest Living Canadian Artist™ Daniel Barrow goes to a dark, dark place with this serial killer-themed performance, years in gestation, that courageously ends on a note of absolute despair. Yes, he was robbed of the Sobey Art Award, but we loved his installation in the nominees' show at the ROM: he gave over the microphone and the overhead projector to strangers!
4. Swintak: Self-Aware Shed. YYZ Artists Outlet. September 6 – October 18, 2008.
I loved loved loved the video documentation of Swintak being an off-screen bossy boots and ordering around her shed, the gallery and the whole world: Night! Day! Night! Day!
5. Charles Atlas: Hail the New Puritan (1987). Pleasure Dome/Images Festival, curated by Kathleen Smith and Ben Portis. April 9, 2008.
It was an intensely emotional experience watching this thrilling, candy-coloured portrait of young choreographer/dancer Michael Clark and his 80s London demimonde – our flaming dandy ancestors on screen at their loveliest.
6. Jon Sasaki: I Promise It Will Always Be This Way. Nuit Blanche. October 4 – 5, 2008.
I couldn't take my eyes off of this troupe of goofy dancing mascots – the dolphin was my fav – a thoroughly entertaining spectacle but also so rich with pathos and desperation and depletion and boredom as well.
7. Stories, in Pieces. Justina M Barnicke Gallery, curated by Aileen Burns. July 10 – August 24, 2008.
Buried in the summer – hopefully people saw it! – this small but ambitious Canadian group show of elusive-narrative art was a perfectly polished gem – props to Myfanwy MacLeod and Jon Sasaki in particular.
Myfanwy MacLeod, Bedsheet With Holes, 2005. Courtesy Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver.
8. Nomadic Residents presents Orlan. OCAD. September 30, 2008.
OK, I fled before the Q&A as usual: was her horrible translator revealed to have been a joke by the grande dame at our expense? Orlan's insane hybrid Franglais was a dizzying, near-incomprehensible delight, even if her more recent work can't compare with the plastic surgery carnivalesques of yore. [images on flickr]
9. Rosalind Nashashibi: Bachelor Machines. OCAD Professional Gallery, curated by Charles Reeve. June 25 – September 7, 2008.
Nashashibi's eye for composition, formal innovation and all-around intelligence made these enigmatic 16mm film installations a treat to be repeatedly savoured – and put the Prof. Gallery in my good books after their awful Rirkrit Tiravanija maiden voyage.
>>>
I know I shouldn't be concerned about nepotism – that's what an art scene is built on – but I decided to segregate things by close friends or that I was involved in myself. Do I not get out of my circle as much as I should? Should I feel bad about this? Discuss.
10. Artur Zmijewski, April 15 – May 3; Life Stories: Maayan Amir and Ruti Sela, Meiro Koizum and Tova Mozard, curated by Chen Tamir, September 10 – October 11; Jean-Paul Kelly: And fastened to a dying animal, October 16 - November 15, 2008. Gallery TPW.
I may be on the board but I can objectively say these were three amazing shows. Congrats to Kim Simon for dragging Artur Zmijewski's staggering video Them kicking and screaming to Toronto, and for Chen Tamir's curation of the fabulously weird documentary-portraits-gone-awry in Life Stories, and Jean-Paul Kelly's astounding domestic melodrama And fastened to a dying animal.
Artur Zmijewski, Them (video still)
11. Andrew Lampert: THE PURPOSE CROSSED. Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film, Durham, ON, curated by Jacob Korczynski. August 9, 2008.
NY film geek Andrew Lampert took the piss out of the tried-and-true live projector performance genre with his delightfully shambolic, two-man comic chaos in an old barn – it would have made Jack Smith proud.
12. Margaux Williamson: Teenager Hamlet 2006. Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects / TIFF Future Projections. September 4 – 13, 2008.
So my friends made this and I wonder if people who don't know them could ever love it as much as I do. Margaux brings a huge amount of visual and verbal wit to bear on her playful make-believe portrait of her Queen West neighbourhood (its young denizens divided into groups of "Hamlets" and "Ophelias" and interviewed by the stars) as seen through the lens of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
13. Angelika Pietruk, Laura McCoy and Kathleen Phillips. Trampoline Hall, curated by Lauren Bride. June 9, 2008.
National treasure Lauren Bride changed the rules of the Trampy Hall game by writing all three lectures herself, resulting in a wonderfully odd mix of confession and self-erasure. The Q&A sessions in particular raised more Q's than A's since the speakers often couldn't answer on Lauren's behalf.
14. Ei Arakawa: The Color Ball. The Power Plant. November 22, 2008.
So I had to handle the video projection (of clips from films ranging from Parsifal to Showgirls) that Ei Arakawa scored his performance with. Maybe it's because I almost had a crate dropped on me, but I've never felt the adrenaline rush of live performance before this. Arakawa and his co-conspirators exploded – unpacked, rearranged, broke open – Scott Lyall's installation The Color Ball in 45 minutes of beautiful, death-defying entropy: it was a hurricane of constant movement and expertly carried-out destruction/construction.
15. Barry Doupé: Ponytail. Pleasure Dome, November 29, 2008.
Animation wunderkind Barry Doupé's first feature melted the mind, as did much else at Pleasure Dome's A Lower World: Excessses and Extremes in Film and Video fall season: Our first-ever gallery exhibition, Mike Kelley's Day Is Done, Ryan Trecartin's I-Be Area, the Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn screening that no one came to… (shame!)
Barry Doupé, Ponytail (video still)
And since nobody asked, here are the best films I saw in a terrible movie year - though I have yet to see The Wrestler, Wendy and Lucy or The Class:
1) Let the Right One In (YES!)
2) Man on Wire
3) WALL-E
4) Synecdoche, New York
5) Happy-Go-Lucky
and the rest in no particular order:
6) Savage Grace
7) The House Bunny ("the eyes are the nipples of the face")
8) Milk
9) A Christmas Tale
10) TIFF 2008 – Lowlight: 90-min lineups for tickets. Highlights: I Want to See, The Beaches of Agnès, Hunger, Salamandra, Still Walking, 35 Shots of Rum, Lorna's Silence, and Sounds Like Teen Spirit.
Thank you bye.
- sally mckay 12-30-2008 4:49 pm
The Barry Doupé: Ponytail still from his video is gorgeous.
- L.M. 12-30-2008 5:24 pm