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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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The latest Instant Coffee bulletin has a small rant about Les King. If you ever go out on Queen St. in Toronto you know the guy. He is an artist who sells his work on the street with the line, "Would you like to buy an original drawing?" Here's the Instant Coffee post, and a response from my friend Von Bark who has probably purchased more of Les King's drawings than any one else I know.
Instant Coffee: We ventured out for the first time in a while into the Toronto gallery world. At an opening we witnessed exactly what makes an "Outsider Artist" actually an outsider artist. At many openings Les King attempts to sell his amazing depictions of the metaphysical and on too many ocassions is kicked to the curb for his unconventional ways of trying to get by as an artist. How can gallery owners and patrons be so fucking crass and intimidated by an artist just trying to get by and have a place to sleep. He is an outsider artist not because he hasnt been trained in the accepted field of education but because he has been made an outsider by the self righteous "insiders". So glorify the romantic past of artists being shunned by the elite but realize what that elite is now. If you can't buy a 10 dollar drawing then thats your business, but have the decency to stand up for someone who needs a break and is honest about they are doing. Les is an amazing artist and deserves basic respect for having the balls to do what he does.
- Jay Isaac and Jenny Bishop
Von Bark: So Les got kicked out of an opening? He was probably bothering people, and not stopping. If Les understood human politics he wouldn't be an outsider. If Les knew how to stay out of people's way and not bother them so much then... well... Les is persistent. A lot of people are persistent. The people who run the world are persistent...
Haida Gwaii blockade, Day 5, March 26, 2005.
Thanks to Roberta Aiken of Byrd's Eye View Photography for permission to post this image here.
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas—creator of the Rock 'n' Raven Haida Manga cartoons mentioned earlier on this blog—has posted a comment about the Haida Nation blockade of logging company Weyerhaeuser on Haida Gwaii (aka: Queen Charlotte Islands). The photograph above is from the Haida Gwaii Info Centre, part of the Islands Spirit Rising campaign. There's tons of good information on the Haida Nation website, thanks for the link, Michael.
There is also an excellent article providing background and context at The Tyee. Apparently a solidarity action is being planned for Toronto. There is information about how to get involved at OCAP's website.
UPDATE: Chris Lloyd has a show on at the Art Gallery of Calgary right now (up until June 12). Go see it!
Chris Lloyd is still writing to the Prime Minister of Canada. I met Lloyd in Halifax in 1999, when the project was already underway, and we published one of his letters in Lola magazine that summer (although his website states an official start date of January 1, 2001). Lloyd's letters have been online since 2003. The diaristic style may seem unremarkable in the present day morass of blogdom, but this guy is a kind of pioneer in this strange, now common, activity of transmitting your personality, avatar-like, into a public realm. By mailing trivia about his life to the Prime Minister and announcing that fact in art galleries and magazines, Lloyd was an early adopter of that funny humble/arrogant stance of the small-time, self-made celebrity. I like the project for its extreme Canadian-ness. In this little country, it almost seems plausible that the Prime Minister might actually give a shit about the life details of his people. The fantasy is comforting and claustrophobic at the same time. Of course, I don't think Lloyd has had any discursive response from any of the PM's over the years, but he continues on as if in dialogue. Here's a quote from Friday's post:
Today is Good Friday; do you have any special plans? Any church services? Do you spend the weekend with your family? Are you a member of any secret societies? How was your visit with Bush? I saw you on the front page of the National Post and bought a copy from a newspaper box. I figured since I usually don't read the 'Post I'd just keep the cover page to use in a painting, so I left the rest of the paper in the box. It wasn't until later in the day I remembered that there was an article in that edition about my show. So I bought another copy. The article by Julia Dault isn't half bad.
Just a quick note to say that I am very much enjoying the Toronto art and related topics blog: Ron Nurwisah, Boy Reporter. Nurwisah is a good writer, and he casts a sharp, politically oriented art-eye on the city.
Murray Whyte had a really good story in the Toronto Star yesterday about performance art and activism, describing the generative phenomenon of public street interventions in Toronto. Refreshingly, he mixes together the work of people who identify as fine art artists (like Germaine Koh, Free Dance Lessons, and Jillian McDonald) with urban activists (like the Toronto Public Space Committee, Reclaim the Streets, and Critical Mass). In between are those whose self-labelling is more blurry (like The City Beautification Ensemble ... and of course many others, some not specifically mentioned by Whyte).
In an earlier post, there was some discussion of "the general public" and how we artists do or do not need to strive for more popular appeal. But the idea of a general public is in many ways a false construction. Why, exactly, do artists so frequently extract themselves (ourselves) from their (our) neighbours to posit this "them-not-us" relationship? Whyte's article celebrates a batch of urban activity that explicitly sets out to break down such boundaries. Here are some of my favourite quotes from the article:
Jillian McDonald:"I've done some of these kinds of projects in sanctified art spaces, like galleries, and it's always less successful," says Jillian McDonald, a Canadian performance artist in Brooklyn. "People who come to those kinds of spaces know what to expect. And I really love the delight that is possible for myself, as well as the audience when you're outside of that, in public, because anything can happen."
Germaine Koh: "I'm not interested in somebody coming to the work with the question `is this art?' The more interesting question is simply, `What's going on here? Why is this person in the storefront, and do I need to call the cops?' They jump to the issues right away, rather than being able to push it aside into a definition that's more comfortable."
Dave Meslin: "Any time you do anything in public space that goes beyond this monotonous habit of non-engagement is an intervention," he says. "It's a culture jam just to smile at someone, or make eye contact."