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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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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.
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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.
Top SevenDarling, Our memory for these things is awful. All this criticism business takes it out of one, but nevertheless, we assayed, and have come up with 7 entries. Last year, we seem to remember only mustering up 2 examples. At this rate, we'll get to an even 10 next year.
1 - Daniel Barrow, Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry
A new performance that further elucidated his particular peculiar world of the shy, the shunned, the damaged and the perverse: the fey drawings, the floating objects, the effetely tragic narrative; the headiest of vintage Barrow. Not only has his command of narrative deepened, his performance style has sharpened: his apathetic, lisping narrative voice feels like one's inner defeated child weeping softly in one's ear. Surely among Canada's greatest treasures. Which brings us to 2008's greatest failure: The Sobey Award. Already a laugh-fest with David Moos' nationally absurd nomination of the internationally absurd Terence Koh, the fact that Daniel Barrow was passed over merely confirms what we already suspected of this country's institutional curators: a pathetic lot, with not an ounce of imagination or originality to be had. Fire them all, now.
2 - Cathy Opie, An American Photographer (Guggenheim Museum, NYC)
A dazzling, moving collection of work, and a startling, invigorating exhibition. Her mid-career retrospective at the Guggenheim marks her entry into the contemporary canon of American photography. Consider Opie's oeuvre, its profound, unabashed queerness, consider the institutional monumentality of the Guggenheim, and consider just how much more exciting is her show. Yes, beautiful work, deeply personal work that mines (and exhausts) ideas of community and representation; yes, a questing photographic eye, yearning for meaning and beauty (rare enough these days, in the art world, where content is a hurdle to sales); also a shining example of curation that matters: a thoughtful, daring, highly original act of historicization. If only the institutions north of the 49th parallel were this singularly risk-taking.
3 - Ryan Trecartin, I-Be Area
The Pleasure Dome is to be lauded endlessly for a voraciously ambitious fall program: A Lower World was the result of the magical panache that can be the result of living and working beyond one's means. The timing of the screening of Trecartin's latest opus was slightly off, but a marvelous coup nonetheless. Torontonians were able to see, first-hand, the continuing formation of a (so far) deserved mega-reputation.
4 - Carte Blanche, Vol 2: Painting
Yes, yes, yes, there were a host of dubious production choices and decisions that can easily smack of unfairness. And yes, amid the choruses of complaints of Not Doing Things the Right Way (what IS it with Canadians and due process?) some of the critiques levelled at the organization of this tome of contemporary Canadian painting are valid and right. And we aren't particularly impressed by the resultant show. Still, the book stands on its own, and no one else seems to be devoted to or championing this country's artists the way MaryAnn Camillieri seems to be. A sumptuously designed object that can be a genuine ambassador for Canadian painting; people should have been positively throwing funding at her. But no (what are people throwing money at? Well, MoCCA seems intent on giving Matthew Teitelbaum, one of this city's wealthiest residents, a cheque for $20,000). So we would like to extend a hand of hearty congratulation to Ms Camillieri for having the cojones to do something profoundly un-Canadian: committed, concrete self-promotion. We eagerly await Carte Blanche Video, Sculpure/Installation, and Performance.
5 - People Like Us: The Gossip of Colin Campbell (Oakville, ON)
Too long in the coming (see: Canadians, failure to self-promote and-). A tenderly curated show that highlighted just how intimate, warm, and funny video can be. A massive installation comprised of roughly 15 hours of single-channel narrative video that seemed inviting and accessible. A tour-de-force primer of the foundation and generation of community. Campbell's verve, intelligence, and camp should be the stuff of enduring international legend. Furthermore, the sensitivity and humanity of this show only throws into high relief the cold, alienating, and ultimately pointless techno-masturbation of Gareth Long (the partner show at Gairloch Gardens).
6 - The Quebec Triennial (Montreal, QC)
Yes, we complained about much of the work here, but much of it was also excellent. More importantly, the sprawling show was ballsy, forward-looking, unashamed to promote and be definitive about its participants. It just shows how valuable is a sense of cultural identity (as opposed to WASPy anglo Toronto -- we're looking square at you, Power Plant -- too careful and prissy and conceptually precious to actually care about decisively curating their own city's art, or too juvenile and sloppy -- ahem, MoCCA -- to do so without self-sabotage). With shows like these, Toronto and Vancouver, with all their pretense of being international art cities, deserve to be left in the dust of Quebec's thrilling art production.
7 - Sophie Calle, Prenez-Soin de Vous (Montreal, QC)
The DHC/Art Foundation in Montreal brought in this astounding installation of a conceptual artist at the height her powers, and everybody but Heaven knows how much filthy lucre they threw behind it, but they did 'er up right. They paid due reverence to the relentlessly, exhaustively encyclopedic nature of this project of public revenge, sprawling it up, down, across, and all over two buildings. A coup for Canadian curation.
Tino - The Most of 2008 Selections
The Most Emotionally Powerful
Luminato - Regent Park Paste-ups by Fauxreel
According to Fauxreel, "The buildings of Regent Park are in the process of being torn down and rebuilt, so the idea is supposed to make the residents literally become part of the physical landscape, challenge some of the pre-conceived notions that other Torontonian's have of these people and stoke the discussion surrounding the displacement of some of Regent Park's residents as they are kicked out of their homes for this re-build…"
Photo by Richelle Forsey (Torontoist)
The Most Peace-loving
Yoko Ono Imagine Peace
"When I was going to the Buddhist temple and would see all these beautiful white flowers in the bushes," she explains. "In the temple itself you could buy these tiny slips of paper, which said you'd received good health or money or whatever. This was a very old tradition. I liked the idea but I wanted (to make the good-fortune message) in your own handwriting."
The Most Poignant
The Village Pet Store And Charcoal Grill / Banksy (New York)
"New Yorkers don't care about art, they care about pets. So I'm exhibiting them instead."
The Most Local
Michael Brown - Urban Canoe Trip / Arcadia Gallery
A 10-day peformance crossing Toronto from West to East by Canoe
The Most Clever
Postcards - Sandy Plotnikoff / Eflux (Utrecht)
http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5335 (Utrecht)
http://www.masterhumphreysclock.nl/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandyplotnikoff/sets/72157605688887282/
The Most Practical
Actions: what you can do for the city: Foamy Velour - Sarah Ross
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal
The Most Earth-Friendly
Elinor Whidden / Creative Activism, Toronto Free Gallery
"This Project is titled Steel Belted Snowshoes. I have fashioned a pair of giant snowshoes made from shredded tires gleaned from the side of the roadways. Then I will be wearing these snowshoes while walking in the Alberta wilderness documenting through video and photographic mediums. I would like to create a dialogue that epitomizes the image of 'The Western Frontier.'"
The Rocky Mountains is a perfect site to continue her exploration of finding a way to survive and readapt in a society that is increasingly threatened by contemporary car-culture.
The Most Biting
Rafael Sica (Brasil)
"Using a very expressive drawing, Sica frequently gives his subjetcs an existentialist treatment, but in a very caustic way. The most interesting, though, is the fact that his strips are always impressive experiments in form." (Image Making Machine)
The Best Attitude
Specter / Fauxreel / City Renewal Project
"That came about because I had an opportunity to use this warehouse that was being demolished to turn in to turn in to condos. My friend who had a lease on the space was having issues with her landlord so she was just like, 'go crazy, do what you want with it'. Since condos were going to be built there, I felt that it was important that the project had some relation to transformation. Urban condo development often alters the neighborhoods they are put up in. It was a bit of a reactionary piece, but we weren't trying to be very heavy-handed with it. There are many layers to it. It's not just 'condo developments are bad.' We understand that people need places to live and if that there is space in the city that isn't being used, they have the right to do that with it."
However, we'd like to see some of these spaces revitalized and integrated in to the existing communities, rather than being eyesores, or having nothing to do with the architecture or surrounding neighborhood. Unfortunately, our city (Toronto) doesn't have a design committee, so developers go wild and miss the point of what makes neighborhoods thrive. They push out the small mom and pop shops, the artists and local character. Rather than being political and heavy handed, we wanted to make fascinating work with humor involved. And who knows, maybe after seeing one of the spaces you might think 'that reminds me of this store that was by my house when I was a kid and they turned it into a Starbucks!'
The Most Inspiring
Man on Wire - Documentary
"A look at tightrope walker Philippe Petit's daring, but illegal, high-wire routine performed between New York City's World Trade Center's twin towers in 1974, what some consider, 'the artistic crime of the century.'"
What a beautiful documentary filled with madness, vision and genius. Jaw-dropping and deeply inspiring. Incredibly he filmed everything from the idea to the execution.
Sunday Devotionals - Eartha Kitt
I Want To Be Evil 1962
C'est Si Bon
Just An Old Fashioned Girl (via Anthony Easton)
An Englishman Needs Time
Email from Julie Voyce:
But we say it all in French so it sounds really really pretty. Joyeux Noël à vous et putains!