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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Sticker by Swintak
I am a Sol LeWitt fan. Last night at the opening for AGO's Swing Space, I got stickered by Swintak. Swing Space is the AGO's smart strategy for programming during massive renovations. The focus is on contemporary art, and the shows on right now are pretty good. Swintak had Lawrence Weiner fan stickers too. All three were showing together as part of the ongoing project Wallworks (*see note below), in which artists work directly on the walls. Like a lot of artists my age, LeWitt and Weiner (and Ed Ruscha, who at least had a bloody sense of humour) opened the door for me to contemporary art. But that's not to say they should be revered in perpetuity. Swintak, a smart young Canadian performance and installation artist, outshines both these "forefathers of conceptual art" (as curator David Moos described them). LeWitt's piece—a big swooshy rainbow stripe painting, more reminiscent of Frank Stella than of LeWitt's signature ethereal grids—spanned all four walls of the gift shop. Weiner's text filled a wall in the room adjacent to the gift shop. Classic Weiner, instructions for installation had been gifted by the previous owners, and rendered by AGO staff with, surprisingly, a fair amount of input from Weiner himself about paint colours and so forth. The text said something about chains holding together and/or breaking apart ... I didn't transcribe it. Swintak's piece was on the opposite wall, framing the doorway to the gift shop. Yes the gift shop was rather prominent but, in it's nomadic reno-incarnation, just a shadow of its former venerable self.
C. A. Swintak, The thing that won't let you walk away, 2005. Taken from AGO website.
At first glance, Swintak's piece looked like old-style (Rauschenberg) assemblage, ie: just a bunch of random junk stuck to the wall. But this messed up recreation of daily life clutter is doubled, one side a mirror of the other. Blue jeans and socks cascade from under a bed with rumbled sheets. Newspapers, dirty dishes, crumpled panties and dust balls are reflected in perfect symmetry. It's like a digital image, except it's all real stuff, glued to the wall. Swintak's level of detail is good. Every inch, from the empty beer can frieze to the lacy, ladies' slip-covered columns is considered and duplicated. Beyond the elegant non-illusion of reflection, the work reads as a personal portrait (or self portrait), with possible (subtle) feminist reading. The woman to whom this clutter belongs is undeniably a blue jeans girl, but she also owns a pair of red high-heeled shoes with matching underwear. She isn't fussy, she drinks beer, she reads the paper. She doesn't sweep her clutter under the rug, in fact, she'll even put it on display. Juxtaposed against Weiner and LeWitt, this piece is full of life and female agency. I really like the AGO's decision to mix it up. Weiner and LeWitt have been dragged out of history into an engagement with Swintak's contemporary take on conceptual art. Swintak is given a dose of high-profile respect, and her bright, grounded practice can handle it.
*NB: Wallworks started with Weiner, LeWitt and Swintak, whose works are all shown in proximity, but the project is ongoing and according to AGO PR will result in 20 pieces over the next 2 years. Raymond Pettibon also had a piece installed last night which I completely misread. It's about surfing dudes. I'm sooo not a California girl... I thought the big blue wave was supposed to be sky, that the reference to "curls" meant nice hair, and that the floating heads were angels of people who'd died from AIDS. Some days I should not be allowed out of the house. UPDATE: Sarah Milroy on Rayond Pettibon here
Get this: I've been given the assignment (by FUSE magazine) of writing a review of the proceedings of an artist-run centre conference...and I'm really looking forward to it. The book just came in the mail, I've skimmed it and I'm raring to go. It's called Off Printing: Situating Publishing Practices in Artist-run Centres (or in French, Tiré à part: situer les practique d'édition des centres d'artistes). For those other nerds out there who can't live without this book, there is an order form available here at the RCAAQ website. It costs $28.
Normally I'd leave critiquing art gallery PR to Simpleposie, but YYZ's "ScenoArt" poster insert thingy is totally absurd! I saw the show, by Sue Gallagher and Andrew King, and it wasn't a spoof. I quite liked Sue Gallagher's piece, in which scenes from old films with dancing couples are split horizontally and reflected, so it looks like the dancers are spinning around neck-deep in a glassy pool. Anyhow, I really want to point out the poster. It's in all caps, for starters. One side is devoted to surreal vision statements from the curator (also a YYZ board member), complete with three claims of ownership and one statement of copyright, and accolades from what appears to be her professor from school (I hope I'm wrong about that). The other side is devoted to the artists, which amounts to their bios and statements blown up in big fonts with weird spacey typesetting and a statement from the curator/board member saying, "Are we not compelled to look for the ones that reflect us and our own work best?" Luckily for those not on the YYZ mailing list, the whole thing is online, typography and all, at www.scenoart.ca. Hooray!
Also mysterious: NOW magazine spelled "penis" as "penus" in today's letters section, both in print and online. Did they do it on purpose?
I've posted a new review here, about Melissa Doherty's recent show at Red Head Gallery, and Roberta McNaughton's current show at Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects.