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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Timothy Comeau's Top Ten art picks for 2004:
1. David Hoffos at TPW in September
2. The Fuck New York video and it's followup
3. Hive party in June at Studio 99
4. Niagara Falls Artist Program at Mercer Union in December
5. Allyson Mitchell's show at Paul Petro in March
6. Fastwurms with Michael Barker at Zsa Zsa at the end of August (the canon blew smoke!)
7. French bookstores in Montreal
8. Diane Landry at YYZ
9. Instant Coffee's make out party in March
10. Realizing that the new OCAD building was great when I wanted to show it off to a visiting friend from out of town.
Kineko Ivic's top 10 picks in no particular order:
1. Brad Phillips: Silver Springs at Greener Pastures
2. Frieze Art Fair London
3. Tal R at CFA Berlin
4. Erik Parker at Leo Koenig NY
5. Daniel Richter at Power Plant Toronto
6. Hernan Bas in Miami (Design District)
7. New bar for the art crowd, Sweaty Betty's (previously Luft Gallery)
8. Strange and quirky shows at Mind Control Toronto
9. Dana Schutz at Zach Feuer Gallery NY
10. the new MOMA, NY
MK's Top 10 of 2004:
1. Nicolas Fleming's "L'histoire d'un vieux sac" (Story of an old bag) at CDEx, Montreal. A beautiful and honest piece, wherein a painter asks questions about his medium by exploring it in a performative context. My top wish for 2005 is to see more artists extending themselves in this way: experimenting without being sloppy; making radical choices but not being careless; and though being somewhat deliberate, still imparting a warm and human sensibility in the work. (http://michelle.kasprzak.ca/blog/entries/archives/00000058.htm)
2. Being one of the ringleaders of Geostash. A high-tech treasure hunt where artists execute actions developed by other artists for specific urban places. It was an experience full of surprises. (http://www.year01.com/geostash)
3. Two things at the Whitney Biennial: Slater Bradley's single channel video installation "Theory and Observation", and Aïda Ruilova's wonderful roomful of short videos. They were two extremes to the show: Bradley's piece was subtle and meditative; Ruilova's were overtly quirky and slapstick. (http://www.whitney.org/biennial/)
4. "Listening Post" at Ars Electronica. This piece won the "Golden Nica" for Interactive Art at Ars Electronica. Except it wasn't interactive at all. The piece did an excellent job highlighting the awkward categorization of new media work at festivals, and it was also a mesmerizing, well-crafted data-choreography piece. (http://earstudio.com/projects/listeningpost.html)
5. John Kormeling's ferris wheel for cars at the Power Plant. Wheee! (http://michelle.kasprzak.ca/blog/entries/archives/00000038.htm)
6. Istvan Kantor winning the Governor General's award. Proof that the awards have not lost their edge. (http://www.cbc.ca/arts/stories/govgenart030304)
7. The Guggenheim's "Seeing Double: Emulation in Theory and Practice" show. This show, that concerned itself with ephemerality and particularly the problem of preserving digital art, was interesting but most of it didn't work. It was somehow comforting that not even the Guggenheim could just wave its magic wand and bring all these wayward pieces into line. Many questions without answers, which is nice to see in a big museum. (http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/emulation/index.html)
8. Caroline Martel's "Le Fantôme de l'Opératrice" (The Phantom of the Operator) at the Toronto International Film Festival. A beautifully wrought film chronicling the fate of the telephone operator. (http://www.artifactproductions.ca/)
9. [murmur]'s new installation in the Annex. More psychogeography by phone from the indefatigable [murmur] collective. (http://www.murmur.info)
10. "Pain Couture" at Fondation Cartier, Paris. A whimsical selection of bread meets fashion by Jean-Paul Gaulthier. It was one of those summer "lite" shows, but hey, I'm at number 10 and I'm allowed to start venturing into questionable shows. At least this show titillated the nose as well as the eye: the smell of freshly baked bread was intoxicating. (http://parisvoice.com/04/summer04/html/art/style.cfm)
Sally McKay's Top Ten Art Picks for 2004
(culled from posts on this blog)
1. Judy Radul's installation, Empathy With Victor at the Power Plant was, in my opininion, a brilliant bit of philosophy that deftly folded fiction, fact, and consciousness into a tight narrative package. But what do I know? Anyhow, I was out-voted in the subsequent poll.
2. Copenhagen, the play by Michael Frayne about phsyicists Werner Heisenberg and Neils Bohr, was an intense study of quantum physics in it's romantic, mind-bending power and it's very real power to produce gigantic war-winning, life-destroying bombs. The narrative took a great shift, swinging the onus of evil off of Nazi-employed Heisenberg and onto A-bomb deployer, Bohr, who left Denmark for USA and worked for the Allies.
3. Rat King Mini Rock Opera was Maggie MacDonald's contribution to February's Tin Tin Tin event organised by Carl Wilson. A chorus of chanters in rat-masks. A soulful leading lady with a voice to melt your heart. A scary dad and jittery rat king boyfriend. Who want's more? What more is there?
4. OCAD's Art Criticism Panel spawned a massive slunge of comments on this blog. The question "is art criticism dead?" really hit a nerve. The topic has been popping up all over the place, and while many find that the murky abstractions of this discussion set their teeth on edge, I totally dig it.
5. Kraftwerk ...damn that was good!
6. Triplets of Belleville was screened in the park by CBN. Nothing beats sitting around on the damp grass with a bunch of other chilly, drunken cyclists. Really!
7. Gene Threndyle's piece for Wade took place in the same park as the screening listed above. Trinity Bellwoods Park is smallish by some standards, but well-used. Sports, culture, dogs, kids, and just plain sitting around all seem to find enough space. I spent most of my time off at TBP this summer, but this particular afternoon, with scads of killer whales spinning and drifting in a sunny, watery underworld, ranks as one of my top days in the park.
8. Janet Cardiff's 40 piece motet really blew me away. I keep thinking back on it, particularly the impression I had of a kind of cyborg experience, an electronic delivery of throat and breath and resonance that seemed slighty unnerving in its perfection. Is this mimesis?
9. James Hartle's kooky drawings really break down the boundaries between art and science. It sucks when the scientists can do their own art too! Sigh ... I guess feeling redundant is just part of life on the cultural fringe. Anyhow, Hartle's proficient use of the overhead projector was inspiring for future performance-type projects, and his broken-up cat drawing sparked a fun discussion about Cubism.
10. Lorna Mills' art show spurred a lot of speculative rambling and babbling on my part, and I won't go on about it again now. But I loved that show.