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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Guest Top Ten
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Ken Montague's Top 10 art list (no particular order)(links by SM):
Ken says: "You wanted it, and you got it...peace + love, k."
- Bjork / Outdoor concert on Olympic Island (fireworks. sublime.)
- The Simple Life, starring Paris Hilton / Episode 1 (it's the only one I've seen, but it was beyond funny.)
- Snapshot Now @ Jamie Angell Gallery (Jamie's best group show ever)
- Elizabeth McIntosh @ Greener Pastures (get pregnant, get happy... beautiful work)
- 20 Years of Run-DMC @ eyejammie / Chelsea, NY (nostalgic.)
- Opening of DIA Beacon / Beacon, NY (heavyweight art. especially the Richard Serras.)
- Development of the "Hospital District" on Queen West (especially the re-opening of wonderful Luft on Ossington, Clint Roenisch's smart new venture, and Stephen Bulger's clean, modernist space - "better fits" for all... )
- New Saatchi Gallery, County Hall / London (neat, old-school interior space for showing new British art)
- Janet Cardiff @ Louisiana, Copenhagen (perfect environment for her sound experiments.)
- A.A. Bronson @ The Power Plant (Barr Gilmore did a good thing.)
Guest Top Ten
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Dave Dyment's Top Ten
- best exhibition: tom sachs at the deutsche guggenheim
- best group show : soundtracks at blackwood, AGO, power plant, etc.
- best retrospective: christian marclay at bard college
- best show i didn’t actually see: pierre bismuth at the AGYU
- best record : the hidden cameras’ « the smell of our own »
- best single : outkast’s « roses »
- best live show : radiohead at the ACC (do you mean skydome? -ed)
- best film still not released : larry clark and harmony korine’s « ken park »
- best sitcom : the BBC’s « the office »
- best shows to look fwd to in 2004: mark lombardi at the AGO, john kormeling at the power plant, mark leckey at mercer union, rodney graham at the AGO
Guest Top Ten
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Anthony Easton's Top Ten
Anthony says: "Living in the hinterlands, most of this top ten is found via the web and magazines, and my trips to Seattle and Vancouver in May."
- Johnny Cash-Bauhaus Coffee Shop- Seattle
A show of half pop, half folk work inspired by Johnny Cash (foot by foot paintings of stars, targets, guns and dollar bills) it could have been cute, or hipster obvious or just a little over cooked, but 6 months before his death, it seemed a prescient, tender memorial. There were at least two dozen of these, hung on every spare wall, hung in twos or threes or even alone, in red, blue, white or silver--like all that was good and pure about America forced into these tiny canvasses. Even if it was not really about Mr Cash, it would have been amazing.
- The Anniversary Party-1.6 gallery-Vancouver
A group show from new graduates at Simon Fraser University, some of it was clichéd (a gas station like a beacon in the dark night) but most of it was really wonderful in how it looked and what it said. There was the large C-Print of an Andy Warhol billboard looking over Sunset boulevard like a bemused God, and then there was the tiny Susan Bozic black and white of three hollywood signs, rotting from decay, that was technically gorgeous, and hidden in a back room.
- Bernadette Phan-Equinox-Bau Xi-Vancouver.
Organic forms over power canvases, some as small as my palm, some 6 feet tall. A wonderful flowering over, could have been decorative, but the colours were too challenging, and it could have been twee, but the gestural rawness of the mark making betrayed that, it could have been ab-ex but she was having too much fun. The best thing about it was the delicate tension between these three elements.
- Vicky Christou-Untitled- Tracy Lawrence-Vancouver.
White tick marks on a wood board, to show how much time art takes, and how performance is as important as the finished work; graphite grey blobs on canvas, which are the best textured pieces I have seen in years, and other white on white works, which remind me of how varied such limited practices could be.
- Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay - I am A Boy Band-Edmonton Art Gallery-Edmonton
The concept here is insanely simple, a man dressed as a boy band sings a 16th century English madigral. But its funny, erotic, deeply aware of precedent and part of an avant garde sound show in the last bastion of modernism.
- Chris Gergly-The Apartment Series-
More C Prints from Vancouver, which seems to be the favourite medium of that city, these apartment buildings were for swinging singles, married couples on the prowl, newly liberated gay men and young kids doing vague and artistic things for money. To cross the threshold into field stone, broad carpets, slick wood, gold letters and steel elevators was to own the world for a while. There is an immutable sadness in the lack of care that marks them and by extension this paradise on the Coast.
- Richard Prince-Nurse Paintings-Art Forum, Sadie Coles HQ London.
The pieces in reproduction have an intimate destruction, printed they seem to recycle themselves, from marred pulp to high art, thanks to post consumer paper. In life though I imagine the work to be much different, they are huge, 6 feet by 4 feet, 5 feet by 3 feet, 6. 5 feet by 5 feet. They are the size of men who live them. They would intimidate those who are smaller. (Center for Nursing Advocacy responds to the show here.-ed)
- Palaeolithic Sculpture found in Southern Germany
It's 30,000 years old, and so it's a little perverse to have them on a top ten list for this year, but we did not know they existed until very recently. Delicate ivory carvings of women, men, animals, and most excitingly the first depiction of anthropomorphism. The work makes me wonder if we can call them totems, if the work had a ritual function outside it's obvious aestheic care, and whether these questions matter now.
- Grayson Perry, Tate, London
My first reaction to him winning the Turner was Yeah-pottery! I deeply care about this kind of work, and thought that it was a triumph of craft over art, but then I thought a bit and realized the politics of Emin, Lucas, Hirst and the Chapmans is the same politics as Perry, and he won for his gender bending alter ego Claire. But they are really excellent pots, and he is one of the better embroiders recently.
- Ryan McGinley, work for Vice, New York and Montreal.
He is easy and loose and fun, handsome boys fucking and laughing and playing about, rock stars in hotel rooms, the details that others miss-like the shade of green in a hoodie or the curve of haunch, or a sock being pulled off a foot, or the beauty in door frames, slag heaps, details of urbanity that only a citizen of the urban space would grok.
Guest Top Ten
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Matt King's Top Ten (links by SM)
Matt says: "Here's my top ten list, but I will add that this is a Top Ten for Sculpture Only - and I should add that this is a totally biased New York Based list."
- Robert Smithson - @ Dia:Beacon - A pile of dirt and a mirror, 35 years ago. Does anyone take these risks anymore?
- Tony Cragg - for not succumbing to the impulse towards assemblage.
- Pam Lins - "In Spite of This" @ Ten in One - for leaving sawdust and pushpins inside her weird wall sculptures. Super cool.
- Franz West - not the massive pieces at Gagosian, but the smaller ones in back. Such a disgusting and awkward use of paper mache warrants some kind of award.
- David Altmejd - "Clear Structures for a New Generation" @ Ten in One (2 on the list! you go, gallery) - despite some sloppy construction, the gluey rhinestones in the wig creeped me out. Now that takes talent.
- Ross Knight - for making industrial materials interesting and not in "a Jessica Stockholder kinda way."
- Vincent Fecteau (for image follow link and scroll down - ed.) - back room @ Feature - A summer camp arts 'n' crafts instructor takes on micro PoMo architecture. Works for me.
- Joel Shapiro - @ Pace - I know, Joel friggin' Shapiro? But yes, this is the first interesting work he's done in years. As if someone came in the studio and shook his pieces up until they almost fell apart. Rock on!
- Liz Larner @ 303 - those bases, that color. Los Angeles must be super nice.
- Ken Price / Josiah McElheny - dual prize for pushing the envelope on sculptural "eye candy." I'd like to see this work show up on Antique Roadshow some day.
Guest Top Ten
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Emily Pohl-Weary's Top Ten (well...eleven, actually)
Em says: "I couldn't come up with art shows, per se. But after very little thought, I did come up with my fav cultural experiences. Here is my list, in no particular order."
- Playing Civilizations 3 (and the add-on, Civ3: Conquests) and all the Nancy Drew mystery games (for ages 11 and up, heh).
- Sifting through a huge stack of Lisa Smolkin's sad but tough emotional superhero paintings one day in her kitchen.
- Reading M@B and touring with him.
- Editing Tamara Faith Berger's new novel (The Way of the Whore--a feminist, modern-day retelling of the biblical tale of Mary of Egypt) for Gutter Press.
- Being part of Kiss Machine's secret room with Paola Poletto.
- Reading my way through the Toronto Public Library's collection of mysteries with intelligent female detectives who aren't cops.
- Working on Paula's Mystery Adventure with Sally M and daydreaming about a million other projects.
- Shopping at Quimby's bookstore and taking my time perusing the zine section.
- Reading graphic novels by Joe Sacco and Phoebe Glockner for the first time.
- Indulging my secret passion for bad Hollywood movies and TV: Charlie's Angels, Daredevil, Kill Bill, Alias, Angel, Charmed (I know! Ugh!) and Dead Like Me.
- Collaborating with Shary Boyle for my anthology, Girls Who Bite Back.
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
More top tens are on their way. Meanwhile...