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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Art in Toronto has faced some challenges lately, in the form of a vague call for self-definition. Various variables have played a role in this strange sense of urgency to encapsulate art activity in Toronto. I don't have a handle on it, but here are the influencing factors as I see them:
1) Instant Coffee's diaspora. This collective made a big impact promoting a local, relational, art-as-social interaction party/exhibiton vibe in this town. Now that one of the most prominent founding members, Jenifer Papararo, has morphed her career, both geographically and conceptually, to take up the role of Curator at Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, the immersive momentum of the group has dissipated in TO. If art's not a big party...then what is it?
2) RM Vaughan's infamous calling-out of Vancouver photo-conceptualists in Canadian Art. This topic causes an allergic avoidance response in many Canadians, me included, and I can't actually bring myself to dissect it all here. There has been some heated and informative debate on the topic over at Simpleposie. Browse the links, you'll find it. The upshot, however, is a kind of frisson of regional competition. Q: What's Vancouver got that we ain't got? A: Art stars.
3) uTOpia 1 and 2. These Coach House Press publications focussed some hyperbolic-yet-often-insightful attention on the downtown TO culture that generates art in Toronto. Links were made between development on Queen St. West, commercial galleries, psycho-geography, graffiti, public art, the latent multi-cultural kinetic force of the suburbs, urban planning policy (including Superbuild funding for recent big architectural initiatives) and the eerie manic energy that is being generated by the two mere-blocks-apart downtown art hotels, the Gladstone and the Drake.
4) The fact that the Toronto Alternative Art Fair International became, over a very short space of time, functionally indistinguishable from the official, trade-show, we're a World-Class City sales event called the Toronto International Art Fair.
5) The emergence and closure of a mutitude of indpendent art ventures that blurred the boundaries between institutional curation, entrpreneurial commerial galleries and the venerable tradition of DIY Candian artist-run culture such as: MOCCA, Diaz, Jessica Bradley Art Projects, the closure of Zsa-Zsa, the move of both InterAccess and TPW to store-front spaces at Ossington and Queen, Le Gallery, and many more (I've left a lot out). 6) "We Can Do This Now." This Power Plant exhibition was a timely disaster that claimed to represent current art activity in Toronto, but utterly failed to encapsulate any of the above.
In light of all this kerfuffle, I really enjoyed the big videos currently on display at PREFIX Institute of Contemporary Art. 25sec.-Toronto, by Berlin artists Angelika Middendorf and Andreas Schimanski, featuring various personages in the Toronto art scene, shot against a slick white-screen background, pontificating on their hopes for art in Toronto to a grand total of 25 seconds each. From what I could tell from conversation at the opening, the display drew a predictable response of suspicion, shame, sour grapes and chagrin from the audience. People who were included in the line-up were gosh-shucksing all over the place, while those who weren't nit-picked the choices. I personally noted a marked lack of attention to the blogosphere, particularly the omission of Jennifer McMackon who's incisive Q&A blog, Simpleposie, does a lot to instigate art talk in Toronto these days. But that's not a big surprise, Canadian art-types have always been slow to grasp the potentials of the internet. Nor is it really important to the project.
This display made no pretense to be totally comprehensive. Instead, a range of participants were showcased, from some of the most established gallerists, curators and artists to some of the most newbie. Everyone looked vulnerable; as Tanya Read of Fly Gallery and Mr. Nobody fame pointed out, the unforgiving white light enhanced everyone's wrinkles, pouches and flaws. As video and performance artist Andy Paterson pointed out, everyone looked "wider" than they really are. Despite the tight 25-second timeline, the camera lingered long enough for embarrassed smiles, fidgets and the inevitable Candian that's-just-just-my-2-cents-worth shrug. The end result was a picture of good-vibe enthusiasm; a committed pile of folks making culture happen here. I loved it, and it made me feel happy that I live and work in this town.
On Thursday night there were a big pile of openings in Toronto. True to form, I didn't get to most of them. I did go to MOCCA for their fabulously promoted show of Toronto's most loved and hated art trolls, which I can only assume is an answer to the Power Plant's recent, sad attempt to portray the Toronto art scene with the worst-named exhibition ever, We Can Do This Now (discussed on this blog here.
The opening for LoVe/HaTe: New Crowned Glory in the G.T.A. was packed packed packed. I had my badminton racket with me. My hair was frizzy due to a long day of riding around town and attempting to play badminton in the park in the wind. I didn't stay very long and made virtually no attempt to look at the art. From what I could see, the big elegant gallery looked a bit of a mess, which is usually a good sign, as far as I'm concerned.
RM Vaughan and Jared Mitchell collaborated on a series of banners spoofing Toronto's ongoing Live With Culture campaign. These were up near the ceiling so I could see them above all the chatting faces of the various nice people I haven't talked to in way too long. I'm already familiar enough with this project, featuring RM as the stand-in model in slothful track-panted repose, that every time I notice one of the original ubiquitous civic banners featuring tight-bunned modern dancers in mid-leap my first thought is, "Oh, RM and Jared have got their work hanging on King Street."
I was also really happy to see Lisa Neighbour's Hulk again. I wrote about this piece years ago, here when it was first exhibited as part of a Persona Volare show on College Street. Lisa had another great illuminated work, a big necklace made from glowing doggy chew toys. L.M. pounced on it to do some squeezing, in case they squeaked, and then terrorized the poor sweet staff person who gentley and rightly requested that we not touch the art, by proclaiming that she "knew the artist" and that the stricken waif could use her cell phone (L.M. doesn't have a cell phone) to call Lisa and confirm that it was okay. It was the kind of over-crowded scenster opening that seemed to call for acts of cruelty, and indeed, one of the more fragile floorworks, a prostrate peson made of smallish cardboard pixels, was soon carried out, funeral-style above the shoulders of four strapping staff-dudes, because it had been stepped on one too many times.
I have no idea what else was in the show. It all looked a bit scruffy. I normally prefer a rough and clumsy gawky show to one that is primped and styled with high-end polish, so I will go back and take a better look before I make any kind of definitive claim that the thing was badly thrown together. Aside from the works I've described, only two other pieces caught my attention in the midst of the social mayhem. One was a pile of pieces of construction debris, painted orange on one side, that lay scattered on the floor underneath the title wall. This may have been a curatorial design feature rather than an artwork, but I liked it. The other was a big purple balloon suspended in the courtyard with art by Fiona Smythe on its two flat sides. Fiona Smythe is one of those artists who can do no wrong, in my books, but I didn't think the pop/commodity implications of the inflation, nor the elevation, served her normally transgressive, immersive and detailed icons very well.
I also got to the Prefix Photo opening. Details are here.
These are the pieces I am putting in the Titles show curated by Yam Lau, Sunny Kerr and Tania Ursomarzo of WayUpWayDown who describe the event as an itinerant exhibition.
23 June, 07- 8 September, 07
Opening on Saturday, 23 June, 2007 from 2-5 pm
Balfour Books
601 College Street, Toronto, ON M6G 1B5
416-531-9911
noon-11pm daily
The full list of participating dirty thieving vagrants: Klaudia Biala Flavio Trevisan Juro Osawa Tania Ursomarzo Yvonne Singer Stephanie Chabot Marcin Kedzior Gordon Lebredt Yam Lau Mary Porter Janice Gurney Cheryl Sourkes Lorna Mills Scott Sorli Rachele Riley Andy Patton Evan Quigley Paulette Phillips Michael Maranda David Scott Armstrong Becky Singleton Barbara Balfour Stephanie Shepherd Sandra Rechico Andrew McAllister Craig Rodmore Sunny Kerr Alex Xie
My pieces are on the pulp novel table, in a messy gloppy stuck pile since I printed and glazed the covers front and back, the stuff will probably melt together in the humidity. Right now they're all bendy like rubber.
I will get an image of Sandra Rechico's piece, as soon as possible, and respectfully turn it into a jigsaw puzzle.
piano made from cell phones
by Joe McKay
We should be a jigsaw puzzle blog for the rest of 2007.