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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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L.M.'s Top Ten List of 2007 art things.
1. Fastwürms, DONKY@NINJA@WITCH @AGYU
What the fuck's wrong with Harwood, he has them at number four on his list and Sandra Rechico doesn't do much better by giving them a number three spot. And what other Canadian artists can draw so many people to their opening, that you actually have to avoid half of the crowd, ...because ...well ...it's complicated, trust me ...very awkward.
I really thought enough time had passed. ...I suppose I'm expected to apologize.
2. Rebecca Diederichs in Persona Volare's Granite Club, The Tree Museum, Gravenhurst, Ontario.
Whenever I was in her studio this past summer, she would show me a humungous amount of painted clothes pins, and yammer on about something or other to do with the painting of a humungous amount of clothes pins. I'd nod a lot, and wonder what the hell is she doing anyway. The finished installation was gorgeous. (I am not worthy to even hold her ladder steady, only Chantal Rousseau is.)
3. Julie Voyce at Tom Thomson in Owen Sound, Ontario
Even though she's all grown up now and no longer frames her work with mismatched dollar store materials held together with drywall screws and staples, the crazy still shines through with the rigour.
4. Chris Ashley's HTML Drawings.
5. Favourite jpegs that have appeared on this site (finally side by side as they should be)
(It looks to me like Allyson Mitchell's Hungry Purse has totally vanquished T's Michael the Archangel)
6 The Walrus for publishing and PAYING for work from amazing artists like Kate Wilson and Shary Boyle among many others, plus their recent issue on the Arctic was brilliant in every way.
7. Artfag
Tangerines in Red Net BagSimpleposie
8. The Royal Winter Fair plus Rob Cruickshank's GIF of our sexy friends at SEMEX™
9. I continue to love VVORK.
10. My Fucking Dog, yes my fucking dog.
Who turned out to be even more fun than this image of him that I first saw on a Lab adoption site six months ago. Bigger too. (and his breath doesn't stink anymore)
Simpleposie's top eleven is here.
R.M. Vaughan's* Top Ten List:
1. The Conrad Black Trial
Without a doubt, Lord Black of Crossharbour missed his calling. His endurance-performance of lofty moral rectitude was way, way better than Daniel Craig's chin acting in Casino Royale. Same hair, though.
2. Love/Hate: New Crowned Glory in the GTA (or whatever that show was called) at MOCCA.
Crab and cluck all you want. I was in that show but you, dear reader, probably were not.
Score for me - 1. Score for you - 0.
3.Canadian Art Toronto Issue
See above, add one score in my column.
4. Ben Affleck's Gone, Baby, Gone
A really good crime flick made even better when one considers the fact that all those loving pans of darling, baby doll Casey Affleck were shot by his big, sexy, hairy older brother. My brother's never put me in a fucking movie, has yours?
5. The red "Oriental" lanterns on Spadina.
Chinoiserie is back! Next, I want the City of Toronto to issue pink parasols to all people of Asian and female persuasion, while all the men get those adorable beany caps with the tassels on top. And I want opium dens in every basement on Dundas between Bathurst and University. I have a LED ornament in mind for the Gay Village, but I'm not sure said bauble wouldn't get confused with a raspberry donut.
6. Nuit Blanche
Because I wisely went to visit my 81 year old mother in New Brunswick instead, and spent the night watching CMT (a Toby Keith special, too!).
Score for me - 3.
7. The Closing of SPIN Gallery
Now, don't get me wrong. It's a heart-sucking tragedy that "Stew & Ju" have gone out of biz after so many years of hard work. The reason the closure is in my Top Ten is because if anybody had any lingering doubts about the future of Queen West West, they will now have to come to terms with cruel reality - apart from a few holdouts, the "gallery strip" is finished. This is sad, of course, but knowing is better than worrying. Goddamn you to a sweltering Hell, or to an American Apparel outlet, Richard Florida.
8. Circa Nightclub
How Toronto that our city's most glamorous celebrity spinout will be enacted by a piece of overvalued real estate.
9. Kent Monkman's performance at the ROM
I like Kent. He is a very talented painter. He is also a very talented installation artist, and a very talented emerging filmmaker and a nice guy, and very handsome, and very smart ... but, but, but ... as a performer, he's no Conrad Black. I find this comforting, because otherwise that bitch has it all.
10. That fucking carbuncle growing out of the ROM
I don't care if Dubai has a Daniel Libeskind, or Singapore has one or Las Vegas has one: archistar-fucking is not civic planning. "Crystal" my ass. With all that ass-up aluminum siding, it looks like a trailer park ravaged by a twister. I will never "get used to it". I will not "learn to love it". It will never be endearing nor ironic nor reclaimable. It even made Kent Monkman, a man who has agents just aching to turn him into an underwear model if his artist gig doesn't work out, look bad. I want my money back, and yours too.
Fucking Carbunkle by Daniel Libeskind
* Worst Art Critic in Canada™
Andrew Harwood's Best of 2007 Art’n’Stuff
1. Wildflowers of Manitoba Noam Gonick and Luis Jacob, video installation for TIFF at MOCCA. Ok I have wanted to do a radical faerie/hippie fag piece for years using geodesic domes and cute live models, but you beat me to it! I loved this show more than I can describe!!! I wish that it had a longer run!!!
2. Luis Jacob and Keith Cole, A Dance for those of us whose hearts have turned to ice …., version at Birch Libralato – what can I say except that Sarah Milroy, Glove & Snail Art critic, was afraid to laugh at this work in her review of Miami Beach/Basel Fair. She was critiquing the fair for its over-commercialization, yet when she saw Dance – the only thing not really for sale, she couldn’t cope. I am sure that Luis and Keith would have been delighted to know that Milroy was able to laugh at their art. For Christ sakes, Sarah, please call a gay man, for styling, before getting your picture taken for a magazine: re: Canadian Art’s “Hot Toronto” issue. I know you love Stephen Shearer’s drawings, but you don’t have to have hair like them!! You are one hot MILF (according to my younger straight male art friends & I can see it too!) and a really astute reviewer and I loves ya, but I know so many amazing hairdressers!!! “Quasi-portly”, indeed, this what Milroy called Cole in the same review. How is that you are the Glove & Snail art critic and you don’t even know who Keith Cole is? Get outta Holts (Leah McLaren’s got that covered already!) and into the art scene!! Cole’s work has been reviewed in McLean’s, not necessarily known for its hip art coverage, and he was also on the cover of C Magazine (the most improved art mag in the country I may add)!!! I think there’s a Chapters just east of Holts on Bloor for research FYI?
a. Luis & Keith thanks for such a great piece that was humourous, fascinating and represented Canadian fags at Documenta!!! (I think a first at Documenta for Canada – is there still homophobia at certain levels of international art events? What next: out of the closet Canadian Fags representin’ at Venice ? What will the white ladies that run the art world in Toronto say about that?)
b. Sorry about the Council’s lack of interest in initially helping you guys out!! (Or is there still h-phobia at certain Councils?) More questions than answers boys – keep ‘em coming!!!!
3. Auto Emotion: Autobiography, Emotion And Self-fashioning, curated by Helena Reckitt and Greg Burk, The Power Plant – (yes the receptionist at PP said you were called Greg now.)
Thank the goddess they hired Helena Reckitt ~ this was one of the best shows I have seen at the Power Plants since AA Bronson’s exhibition. Auto Emotion was a powerhouse survey of contemporary art and performance. Marina Abramovic’s works were like wonderfully odd restorative tonics and a great compliment to Nemerofsky-Ramsay’s saccharine Madonna makeover, what a superlative range of art. Just a note to folks down there at PP , the Toronto art scene is not as cold and even conceptually-based as you have alluded to with your “Toronto Show” this year ~ get with the program. You guys kinda tend towards the conservative side!! Some artists who have shown there repeatedly need to come out of the conceptual closet so to speak ~ ya know who I mean!!
4. Fastwürms, DONKY@NINJA@WITCH @AGYU It was so great to see all of Kim and Dai’s shows from Zsa Zsa, TAAFI and PPCA re/presented . Thanks to Philip Monk and Emelie Chhangur for championing their work!!! Würms you made outstandingly handsome installations at York – I know you worked all summer on Donky and it paid off!!!! Wow~!!! I gave a lot of head at that reception.
5. Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, Dead!, Dead!, Dead!, was just Gorgeous!, Gorgeous!, Gorgeous!! (I did a show at Zsa Zsa once called Crafts!, Crafts!, Crafts!) This exhibition was a stunner. The Puritan puppets were so charming and creepy, all at once; they were my favourites, in an already stellar show. The Foundation’s installation crew also needs to be lauded as they help tp make your curation/collection practice even more beautiful! Who couldn’t resist a charm bracelet that once belonged to Ms. Pepsi herself – Joan Crawford!! Hendeles is, unlike any other curator I have seen, able to present works that deal with the humourous and whimsical, but also with the darkest of human subjects in the same exhibition, maintaining clear and ever thought provoking relationships between objects and ideas. In the last several years I have left her Foundation’s exhibitions thinking about them for days, sometimes weeks and sometimes longer. No web site just get the hell down there and see it in person.
6. Michael Bartosik, Dome, at Nuit Blanche – Oh my god that was brilliant Bartosik!!! Anyone who can make a dome out of florescent light tubes rocks my world!! It was so beautiful to see that fluorescing structure come out from behind the trees on the knoll on the corner of Trinity Bellwoods Park. Pure Magic against the dark night sky. I am sure Bucky Fuller would have crèmed his slacks if he was alive!! I am so sorry the drunks tried to wreck it!! Janet Morton’s Femmebomb, was also über spectacular for Nuit Blanche!!
P.S. (Scotia Bank put some more god damn money into this “all night culture thang” it might even get better – ya cheap bastards. You should feel guilty for how much free f’n PR ya got and how little $$ ya put into this venture – you’re, like a bank – pony up the dough ya cash hookers! Hire more independent curators damnit –we’re starving in this town! Same with that god awful Illuminati Festival (Luminato – WTF was that?) – you’re freakin’ L’Oreal!!! pony up the cash too - ya cheap corporate hoes!)
7. Jade Rude, The Rambler Rebel and Tristan Zimmerman, Untitled at The Ministry of the Interior. Extra special props to Jason MacIsaac for opening a fab store/gallery, earlier this year, that blurs the lines between art, design, furniture, craft, urban decay, and interior decor!! Jade Rude’s The Rambler Rebel was an installation used a spinning hunk of aluminum (“consumer grade” – her fave) in the front window of the space and on further inspection was a life-size unfolded origami version of a car. David Cronenberg eat your heart out!! Crash meets Jade Rude!! I know that Rude is quite a formalist – but honey the content of this one is truly profound!! Tristan Zimmeramn’s Untitled, was an interactive sculpture of brass horn parts, that let viewers place their iPod ear pieces to portals around the edges of the piece so that they could here their own tunes amplified through a variety of tuba, trombone and trumpet flutes – old school meets new school – private becomes public – just dazzling, amazing and charming.
8. Mercer Union’s Renaissance: the following shows at Mercer Union portray the gallery’s comeback as a real artist-run centre in Toronto from its past overly oppressive post-conceptual stridency – thank the goddess!! - Michael de Broin’s Shared Propulsion Car & Anitra Hamilton’s, Beater are actual social and cultural critiques of car culture (Jade Rude, too). Yay!! I Love the social experiment aspects of these artists. Janet Morton’s, overgrown was so inspiring and lovely – using recycled and textile materials – so – so homemade modern ~ I can’t stand how exquisite this show was!! An exemplary statement of how an artist can look at nature and culture. Instant Coffee’s Nooks, took Jenifer Papararo’s Vancouver kitchen nook and turned into social spaces! I am sure her kitchen table has seen its share of snowstorms – wink, wink!! This show was tight, fun, sexy and playful – what IC does best and when they really work together and it really works. Dean Baldwin’s Minibar, - he hand rolled me a mini cigarette and I got to smoke it inside the installation – great hospitality and wicked installation Baldwin, Toronto the good forget about it. KUDOS MU!!! Please keep up the great work!!
9. Marianne Lovink, Molecular Mechanics at KATHARINE MULHERIN CONTEMPORARY ART PROJECTS – Lovinks’s aquatic/molecular worlds in blacks and whites were divine!! If I had access to acid in high school – I think this is how I may have viewed my biology textbooks!! Trippy and elegant. Her new works using stretched and coloured pop bottles on sculpted metal racks had a very ‘60’s feel, but f’n fresh! Lovink is also an artist who bridges nature and culture in ways that questions our relationship to nature – on a micro-macro level. God germs and cells can be so sexy!!
10. Suzy Lake, Beauty at the End of the Season, Paul Petro Contemporary Art - I have to admit that I hated this show the first time that I saw it. The more I visited the show, the more I loved it. There was a sense of humility to this body of work that was almost shocking. It was a gentle and loving reminder of our mortality and that we are all aging. Yet, Lake’s photographs of rosebushes were stark, homely, unadorned and ultimately quite emotional. There is a great risk for the artist to talk about aging, beauty and femininity in a way that she has not explored before and especially in a Paris Hilton wanna-be cultural era. Her close-up photos of faded roses, using the peeled skin of c-prints, are such magnificent reminders that our dermas are not only aging, also that even faded beauty is still beautiful and necessary to the cycle of life!! Beauty at the End of the Season was thoughtful, subtle and had resonant meaning way beyond its exhibition. Congrats too, on the fabulous reviews on Lake’s work in the feminist retrospective in L.A., too. Well-deserved recognition girl!!!
Honourable Mentions:
RIP SPIN Gallery – Thanks for the great shows and always, always interesting parties – I wish you the best of luck in the future!! Hip Hip Hooray for Juno Youn and Stewart Pollock!
11. 18 Illuminations @ McLaren art Centre, Barrie - Carla Garnet & Corinna Ghaznavi, curators
12. Kent Monkman @ MOCCA
13. Andy Fabo @ SPIN
14. EAT THE FOOD @ MOCCA - Camilla Singh & David Liss curators
15. Stephen Andrews @ Paul Petro Small Works + Multiples
16. Heather Goodchild @ Kmart
Ivan Jurakic's Top 10 List
(In No Particular Order...)
1. Modest Mouse "We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank"
Isaac Brock's sprawling epic alternates between cranky and tender. Alongside The Shins "Wincing the Night Away", it was great to hear punk finally growing up.
http://www.modestmousemusic.com/
2. Kent Monkman "The Triumph of Mischief"
Monkman's bookend installations at the Art Gallery of Hamilton and MOCCA are a transgressive triumph masquerading as a sumptuous turn of the century salon. Smart, subversive and sexy.
http://www.mocca.toronto.on.ca/
3. Isaac Julien "Western Union"
One of the most beautifully filmed and choreographed multi-channel videos I've ever experienced. During an overstimulating trip to NYC, this ambitious cinematic installation at Metro Pictures mesmerized me.
http://www.isaacjulien.com/home/
4. Jens Hoffman's "To Curate or Not to Curate"
I've been keen on Hoffman's critique of big biennials since "The Next Documenta Should Be Curated By An Artist", and sure enough his recent article in Can Art didn't fail to provoke my thinking.
http://www.canadianart.ca/art/features/2007/09/15/to_curate/
5. Leslie Feist
Not only did "The Reminder" garner four Grammy nods, but "1234" is in heavy rotation in an iPod ad. Damn the haters. It's great to see a Canadian performer that doesn't suck (that would be you Celine and Avril) reap the rewards.
http://www.listentofeist.com/
6. Kara Walker "My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love"
A disturbing exploration of race, segregation, slavery and American folklore. Alternately frightening, infuriating and spellbinding.
http://www.whitney.org/www/exhibition/kara_walker/index.html/
7. Millie Chen's "Watcher" 6, 35, 39 and 91 D'Arcy Street
With all the hype surrounding nuit blanche, Chen's subtle intervention of projected silhouettes in the windows of several homes along D'Arcy Street could have been easy to miss. The fact that she lived in some of the same homes while growing up cemented how great this piece was.
http://www.milliechen.com/
8. John Massier's "Hallwalls and Elsewhere" blogspot
I'm not that into blogs (sorry kids), but Massier's is one I look forward to every week. Nicely put together, easy to navigate, opinionated, and always linked to all sorts of art news and great music. Where does he find the time?
http://jmassier.blogspot.com/
9. No Country For Old Men
The Coen Brother's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's hard-boiled southern thriller is a dark gem. Capturing the moral ambiguities of the novel without losing any of its terse energy. Add a superb cast, and you've got their best movie since Miller's Crossing.
http://www.nocountryforoldmen.com/
10. Metalocalypse
Screw Gorillaz. Here's the ultimate cartoon band. Dethklok is not only the most popular heavy metal band in the world but also its 12th largest economy. Turn your amp all the way up to 12 and prepare for mayhem.
http://www.adultswim.com/williams/music/dethklok/index.html/
note: Ivan is in an interesting show opening soon at Gallery 44.
Tino's Top Ten 2007
1. Quick Lobotomy - by Faux Reel (Nuit Blanche)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7Pa-YxPHQk
http://torontoist.com/2007/10/lobotomies_for.php
The Joy of the Humour.
2. Andre Kertesz - Polaroids/Stephen Bulger Gallery
http://www.bulgergallery.com/dynamic/fr_exhibit_invitations.asp?ExhibitID=145
The Joy before the Object.
3. Maura Doyle - Birch Libralato Gallery
http://www.eye.net/arts/galleries/article/678
The Joy of the Imagination
4. Jenny Holzer - Projections/Luminato Festival
The Joy of Poetry (see photo)
5. Darren Stehr Toronto Critical Mass Photos
Pure Joy #1
http://www.lulu.com/content/1528476
6. The Tall Bike Ride -- Benny Zenga/Winking Circle
http://thewinkingcircle.blogspot.com/2007/07/tall-tall-bike-takes-to.html
Pure Joy #2
7. Michel de Broin - Bike Car Thingy (Mercer Union)
The Joy of Art.
http://www.micheldebroin.org/projects/spc/3.html
http://www.mercerunion.org/show.asp?show_id=563
8. Vanessa Renwick - Portrait #2: Trojan (USA 2006 video 5 min) ...
Images Festival
http://www.odoka.org/filmography/portrait_2_trojan/
The Joy of Hope.
9. Shannon Gerard & Stef Lenk - Playing Doctor - AGYU
The Joy of the Body.
http://www.shannongerard.org/tinars.htm
10. Moods by Matias (Music) - http://www.liberation-musicale.com/
The Joy of Sound. Design Art by Sandy Plotnikoff.
Vol. 1 - Sleepy
Vol. 2 - Summer
Marc Glassman's Best Films of 2007
Criteria: All films had to be released for one week in a Toronto cinema
Best Picture, English language International
- I'm Not There
- No Country for Old Men
- Into the Wild
- Atonement
- A Mighty Heart
Best Performance, Male
- Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
- Emile Hirsch, Into the Wild
- Gordon Pinsent, Away from Her
- Philip Seymour Hoffman, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
- Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises
Best Performance, Female
- Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
- Ellen Page, Juno
- Helena Bonham Carter, Sweeney Todd
- Laura Dern, Inland Empire
- Tang Wei, Lust, Caution
Best Supporting Performance, Male
- Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James
- Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War
- Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
- Ulirich Muhe. The Lives of Others
- Tommy Lee Jones, No Country for Old Men
Best Supporting Performance, Female
- Vanessa Redgrave, Atonement
- Nikki Blonsky, Hairspray
- Jennifer Jason Leigh, Margot at the Wedding
- Marie Josee Croze, Diving Bell and Butterfly
- Laura Harris, Severance
Best Director
- Todd Haynes, I'm Not There
- The Coen Brothers, No Country for Old Men
- David Lynch, Inland Empire
- Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell & Butterfly
- David Cronenberg, Eastern Promises
Best Screenplay, adapted or original
- Coen Brothers, No Country for Old Men
- Diablo Cody, Juno
- Beatrix Christian, Jindabyne
- Christopher Hampton, Atonement
- Andrew Currie, Robert Chomiak & Dennis Heaton, Fido
Best Canadian Film
- Away from Her
- Fido
- Brand Upon the Brain!
- Congorama
- Missing Victor Pellerin
Best First Feature
- Away from Her
- Michael Clayton
- Control
- Missing Victor Pellerin
- Red Road
Best Animated Feature
- Paprika
- Ratatouille
- The Simpsons Movie
- Bee Movie
- Shrek the Third
Best Foreign-Language Film
- 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
- Offside
- Black Book
- 13 Tzameti
- The Lives of Others
Best Documentary
- My Kid Could Paint That
- No End in Sight
- Manufacturing Dissent
- Sicko
- In the Shadow of the Moon
Current links on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan.
CBC
BBC
Guardian UK
Al Jazeera English
[Abuse of very interesting but copyrighted material is to be found in our comments section]
Image courtesy of Kate Wilson
In these bleak midwinter moments...a seasonal greeting from greygoo.
Two current installations in Toronto by Warren Quigley:
"Love Motel" at Fly Gallery, 1172 Queen St. W., Toronto until Jan. 08
"Moveable Garden" at Harbourfront, Toronto until end of Feb. 08
(on lawn (snowfield) west of York Quay Centre)
Eric Glavin's Top Ten List
#1 Mike Kelley Petting Zoo installation at Skulptur Projekte Münster:
#2 Geoffrey Farmer The Puppet Kit (Personality Workshop) at Le Biennale de Montréal:
#3 Snap Judgements at The National Gallery, Ottawa.
#4 Fiona Banner: The Bastard Word at The Power Plant, Toronto:
#5 Carlo Cesta International House of Sunshine at Diaz:
#6 Jon Sasaki : Wishing For Three More Wishes at Gallery TPW. Toronto:
#7 Hito Steyerl's film Lovely Andrea at Documenta, Kassel:
#8 Nestor Krüger at Goodwater, Toronto:
#9 Film Fort at Art Gallery of Mississauga.
#10 BGL at Diaz:
Joester's Top Ten "Research" Hits
Mr. Nobody, you have totally inspired me! I've had a copy of the camper guy rant for years on my "found footage" DVD, and it's always a show stopper. That tape also has a great spring break video with the phrase "you are the worst fucking shitter-bonger in the history of fucking shitter-bongers". I too have been time wasting on you tube but I am going to use it in my art so I get to call it "research". So here's what I have learned doing "research".
10. suburban white kid moowalking around the kitchen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oucafFKaJmk
9. "You won't fall over!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD-y8F1Fa7g
8. Blurry and beautiful moonwalker
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAV101jlVzM
7. just asking for it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZSvHKU7ytc
6. Soccer fan moonwalk victory dance with long dark section at the end so the song finishes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNqg3FdLY6A
5. Contains the phrase "doin' sweet tricks on a Segway"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCaMRX7CKPk
4. Number one Segway accident video. I suggest downloading it (figure it out yourself) and looping it endlessly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBO43zwgj-g
3. Best how to moonwalk video ever. No question. You will actually learn how to moonwalk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf6GKZmtf0o
2. Great time wasting flash game
http://www.handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD/game.asp
1. THE CAKE IS A LIE, and the Weighted Companion Cube.
Top
darling, we couldn't make it much past 2, let alone 10, but if you're willing to disregard our disregard, here are our choices for the best exhibitions of the past year (curiously enough, neither were reviewed by us in our regular little endeavour):
-Shary Boyle and Doug Paisley at the Pleasure Dome: perhaps grafting plaintive pop songs on to her projections is cheating slightly, but nevertheless, the closest we've come (in Toronto) to weeping at an art event.
-Auto Emotion at the Power Plant: brilliant display of curatorial skill; thorough, ambitious, and funny (unfortunately rare in art shows, let alone video art shows). For all the reaming we gave them for their Toronto show, we must give credit where (and when) credit is due.
mr. nobody's Top Ten List:
BUT FIRST THINGS FIRST!
Ethel & the Mermen are playing at the Smiling Buddha, 961 College Street (just west of Dovercourt), this Wed. Dec. 19. Show starts at 9:30, after their set, the Dubterraneans, with our brilliant friend Carlo Cesta and 45 of his brilliant friends, will play a set.
Back to mnobody:
Seems like I spent the past year hangin’ out in my basement playing music and watching youtube. Of course I could include a lot of the fly gallery shows in my top ten but that would be a little lazy of me. The fact is I was a real slacker about getting out to see some art this year so I’ll entertain you with my top ten you tube picks.
#10 The Legendary Stardust Cowboy, Paralyzed The inspiration for Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust character, this guy is just plain nuts. I love his stage energy, gives me hope as a wanna-be rock star. Best bugle solo and I have to admit I have stolen his line, ‘I have suffered for my music, now it’s your turn’.
#9. Gas Producing TV Evangelists (A Farting Preacher Potpourri) Just when I think the passing of time has bestowed a certain wisdom upon me, my love of this video proves that alas, I am becoming more juvenile. sigh, or should I say plfffft!
#8. Redneck Granny This video had me running around for a week saying ‘toodles’ to anyone who would listen. Toodles!
#7. I Was Robbed by Two Men Next time I am walking alone at night in the big city and some guy tries to mug me, I’ll be able to defend myself because all those years of doing the Jane Fonda Workout paid off.
#6. Winnebego Man! This may be the angriest man in the world. Let the expletives fly!
#5. Squirrel Melts Yet more proof that a hunk ‘o’ cheese and some mayo will make anything taste good. Notice that we don’t actually see ‘The Huntress’ or anyone eating these things in the video…..hmmm.
#4. The Library A Japanese t.v. show where a group of ‘students’ torture each other and try not to make any noise in a public library. Of course there will probably be an American version soon with David Hasslehoff hosting it and the subtlety will be completely lost.
#3. Gabelstafel fahrer - fork-lift driver. Here’s one for L.M. This could be made into a sitcom called ‘Oh that Klaus’, or something like that. Warning: not for those afraid of fake blood, or forklifts. Perhaps this inspired the recent ads for the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board commercials, like this one or this or this.
Am I the only one who finds these hilarious?
#2. Finnish Disco Lesson Holy Crap! This man has the moves! You don’t have to speak Finnish to understand that he is sendin’ out the viibe.
#1. My Lovely Horse I love Father Ted, it is one of my all time favourite comedy shows. This is from an episode called ‘A Song for Europe’. Father Ted and Dougal decide to enter the Eurovision contest and this is the obligatory video. I was so inspired that I bought a bass guitar and started a band called ‘My Lovely Horse’. We only lasted two gigs.
That’s all folks! Well actually, if this wasn’t enough mindless entertainment for one day, you can always check in with my youtube page for a growing assortment of favourites.
Sandra Rechico's Top Ten List
#1 Kim Adams at Goodwater:
#2 Corinna Schnitt's video in Eat the Food at MOCCA:
#3 FASTWÜRMS at AGYU:
#4 Michelle Allard at Diaz (it was 2006-2007 so that counts as half):
#5 Allsion Hrabluik at Diaz:
#6 Ludwika Ogorzelec at the Toronto Sculpture Garden:
#7 Michel de Broin at Mercer Union:
#8 Andrew Wright at Peak Gallery:
#9 Projections at all the U of T galleries:
#10 David Merritt at Jessica Bradley Art Projects:
Sunday Devotionals
The magnificent Marion Williams.
(I posted this last one before but it was a while ago in the comment section and, as someone else wrote, it's "so good it makes you wanna kill yourself.")
Just received a goody package from Ginny Kollak the curator of Stripes, a group exhibition I am in at the Tang Teaching Museum in Saratoga Springs, New York. (on until Dec. 30, 2007)
David Eppley 2007 vinyl tape
Tim Rollins and K.O.S.
David Diao Little Suprematist Prison 1986 acrylic on canvas
Lorna Mills Lucky Hubble, Infomint, Bletchingly 2007
Installation photos are always nice to get, but nothing is as awesome as this image on the poster she sent from a concurrent show at the Museum called West African Masquerade
by Phyllis Galembo.
Ngar Ball Traditional Masquerade Dance, Cross River 2004 Nigeria
A few minutes of sweet geometry from Anthony Easton's blog.
Phillip Glass on Sesame Street from 1971:
It's that time of year again. Send in yer top tens for 2007. Starting us off, unprompted, the jewel of Alberta, and always one of the very shiniest marbles in the bag...Anthony Easton!
Anthony Easton's Top Ten Aesthetic Events, 2007
1) Lars and the Real Girl, 35 mm Film, 2007
There was an article earlier in the year featuring discussion about whether to make costume design into two categories, one for modern films and one for costume films. I think they should do this, if only because the costumes of Lars, the fair isle sweaters, chinos, barn coats and of the real girl, cast offs, polyester knits, sensible twin sets combined into a pas de deux of unrelenting melancholy. The rest of the set design, from the books in the town doctors library, the bed spreads of Lars' brother, the church basements and even the exteriors also made this a film where the objects were infused with memory stronger then the people.
2) Ted Kerr, Photographs, Mandolin Books
Ted's a new friend from Edmonton, and has had at least 3 shows this year in the city. They were all good but the show that he had as a stopgap, for two weeks at the end of November was great. Ted is unrelentingly positive, and optimistic. He thinks the world will be all right, but he makes this optimism palpable. The images at Mandolin, were black and white, blurry, printed big on vinyl, all of the marks of student laming—and if they were of snow bedecked trees, sunsets at dusks, and one lone raven, they would have been a disaster. But they were of this dance troop he is part of, people dressed in black dancing in public in the squares and markets. They are a contemporary and postmodern recreation of mummers, with all of the messy bodies and firsting/lasting that accompany that word's history.
3) Robert Rauschenberg, Cardboards and Related Work, Menil Collection (image: Reynolds Wrap (Cardboard), 1971)
LCD Soundsystem finally wrote the last hymn of nostalgia for 70s New York, and "New York I Love You But You Are Bringing Me Down", was released around the time that this show was put up in the Menil. It is a useful corrective, that the city was better before money. That Rauschenberg was able to create works of great visual sophistication, that he was able to document and (literally, physically) deconstruct, combine (pun intended) and then stitch together the history of his own falling apart, simultaneously as the cities falling apart, with greasy trash, and then have them reproduced 30 years later in a high end hard back, with gorgeous printing and monumental essays, touches the feelings of worship, awe, and exhaustion that mark the frayed edges of work being made today. (Not only music, it also reminds me of the work of Dash Snow, in a bunch of ways)
4) Mark Wallinger, State of Britain, Tate
Unofficially he won the Turner for this, officially he won it for that piece where he dressed as a bear and wandered around that Berlin museum for a few nights. State of Britain, with its recreating with much care the work that has been de-facto limited or banned by the state, and then have the state pay for it, is a brilliant end game…but what makes it even more moving is that he actually cares, that someone is basically without irony, in a post ironic age, might be the last refuge of the avant-garde.
5) Chuck Close, Portraits, AGO, Toronto
I like how its about the reproducibility and the distribution of images, how the jacquard loom is so very digital, and I loved how formal it was, how image durnk I got on those black and white daguertypes, how almost in a daze I was, in how they become clear and blurred like a stone in a pool of water. Shame the writing wasn't very good.
6) Jason de Haan, When the Ocean Meets This Guy, Stride Gallery, Calgary.
20 foot boat, 20 foot room, narrow stairs, the boat is white and looks more like a Judd then someone that will actually float. It will have to be destroyed at the end of the show but he has marine maps on the walls just in case it somehow makes it to the ocean. Not only was it a gorgeous refutation of the modernist instinct towards size, colour, heroics and form making—it had an almost mystical hope, but not in the hippie wank way that the phrase mystical hope suggests.
7) Nokomis, Found Fabric in Embroidery Rings, Retail Establishment
Nokomis is a fashion company in Edmonton that prints images on t-shirts and makes the occasional cute skirt. It has a look. They moved to a much bigger space this year, and as part of it, they now have 20 foot walls with giant windows. They used this space up not by making one huge piece, but making termite art, a slow building up of visual metaphors. The strongest of these are maybe 60 embroidery rings with vintage fabric, carefully calibrated according to colour, form, pattern and line. There is the pink perpendicular lines that moves past the edge of the frame, a couple of pucci rip offs that curl into a kind of infinite circle, and others. Better then almost any of the clothing.
8) Chuck Liddell Fan Art
I can imagine teenagers drawing Zac Efron for Teen Beat, I can even imagine (and have read) the erotic epics written by middle aged, middle class, middle American housewives about House/Wilson, Logan/Green, or Potter/Snape. But what I didn't imagine until I saw it on the website, was truckers and red necks carefully and lovingly recreating the best fights, the facial ticks and the bulldog body of UFC's own Liddell. There is something in the barely sublimated hero worship that slips out from the usual readings of homoeros/homosocialism into something more saintly.
9) Alexander McQueen's Collection in Memory of Isabella Blow
Her death was a major loss, and McQueen told us that working was a better cure then mourning.
10) Bridget Riley, Red with Red 1, 2007, Oil on Linen image via art fag city
Edward Said asks, in On Late Style "Are there unique qualities of perception and form that artists acquire as a result of age in the late phase of their career?" Riley answers, the colours become richer, the lines become fatter, but the movement retains its affect over the body. He goes on to say that some work has a "special maturity, a new spirit of reconciliation and serenity". The pistachios, ice blues, and sea foams of her new lithographs have this serenity, but this painting manages to extend her practice, making it resemble viscious fluids and offal. It maintains the security of pattern and line, while still being "intransigen(t), difficult, and unresolved.." Riley is deeply under rated as a painter for a lot of reasons, her control, her wrestling with the decorative, her beauty and sublimity, her print work, her gender, her refusal to become gestural, maybe even her Englishness, but this is a last, brilliant, and important work, one that should convince us that she is one of the, if not the best English painter of the 20th century. (Those better then her maybe: Hockney, Hodgkin, Freud, Spencer or Bacon)
Richards Storms at Birch Libralato Gallery
129 Tecumseth Street, Toronto until December 22, 2007
MSC Napoli 2007 oil on canvas, 22" x 26"
Beirut 1 2006 oil on canvas, 24" x 20.25"
Windsor Shopping Plaza 2006 oil on canvas, oil on canvas, 26" x 22"
Beirut Letterbox 2006 oil on canvas, oil on canvas, 30" x 36"
Alex Colville Child and Dog (1952)
Happy Krampus Day to all my insensitive European friends!
And for a special Krampus Day treat I give you Cindy und Bert.
Cindy und Bert are very bored mit Krampus day.
Sunday Devotionals
The greatness that is Clara Ward and the Ward Singers
Clip from the Flip Wilson Show
Clip from the 1968 movie A Time To Sing
Clip from Newport Jazz festival 1962
People who are interested in poultry should listen to This American Life's current Poultry Slam episode. People who are interested in puppets should also listen. People who are interested in poultry and puppets (you know who you are) should drop everything they're doing and listen to it right this minute.