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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
Digital Media Tree this blog's archive OVVLvverk Lorna Mills: Artworks / Persona Volare / contact Sally McKay: GIFS / cv and contact |
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My charming new school...
Yesterday at grad student orientation at York University we were reminded that the campus isn't really safe for women walking alone after dark (bad news), but there is a free shuttle bus that we can take that will keep us all super duper safe and sound (good news). While standing in one of several administrative lineups I noticed a taped-up campus-wide memo about a sexual assault perpetrated by a guy on a bicycle*. Today, while in another requisite lineup, I noted yet another campus-wide memo about another different sexual assault perpetrated by a white guy with a bald head.
It was a beautiful day today and the campus was swarming with co-ed groups of frosh being herded around and forced to do charming embarrassing little indoctrination activities. The first group I saw were engaged in a friendly tousle in which the (very young) women were paired up against the (very young) men and instructed to wrestle. The second little bi-gendered pod I saw were marching and chanting military style:
Call: What are you here for?Super-duper charming! Makes me feel like re-reading Neal Stephenson's The Big U.
Response: Stroke my pussy.
Call: What are you here for?
Response: Stroke my pussy.
Refrain: Stroke my pussy, stroke, stroke, stroke my pussy (repeat)
* I must admit that, given the extreme remoteness from downtown of the campus, the fact that there was a cyclist on campus made me feel somewhat reassured, despite this particular cyclist's unsavoury activities.
Lots of shows coming up...September being what it is...
Neutrinos They Are Very Small
Rebecca Diederichs, Gordon Hicks, Sally McKay, curated by Corinna Ghaznavi
opens at Render Gallery in Waterloo on September 13th. We will also have a Saturday afternoon closing event later in October with performance lecture and an all ages Art and Science Lab. Come and party in the "Top Intelligent Community of 2007!"
Quantal Strife
Scott Carruthers, Crystal Mowry, Marc Ngui, curated by Sally McKay
opens at McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton on September 13th. Come and party in Steeltown! (Also watch Hamilton Life for a profile on the exhibition).
Granite Club - Persona Volare at the Tree Museum
Carlo Cesta, Michael Davey, John Dickson, Rebecca Diederichs, Brian Hobbs, Lorna Mills, Lisa Neighbour, Chantal Rousseau, Lyla Rye, Kate Wilson, and Johannes Zits
opens at the Tree Museum near Gravenhurst on Sunday September 16, 2007 noon to 5pm. Come and party in the woods!
In celebration of the Tree Museum's 10th Anniversary, Personal Volare is also mounting an exhibition at York Quay Centre The Road North/The Road South, September 14th. Come party at the Harbourfront!
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 I'm a novice when it comes to big international art exhibitions, but like all bloggers who've been to Documenta XII, I feel compelled to make a report. >>read the report (with pictures)>> |
At the CNE this week I sat inside this Snowbird and this light armoured vehicle. My main impression in both instances: "Man, this thing is small." The L.A.V. —which carries 10 including the gunner and driver—seemed a particularly tight squeeze. My petite friend and I were hunched over and bumping knees as the slightly-less-than-patient man in camo answered our questions and showed us where the light bulbs were. I'm not claustrophobic, but I was very glad the door and hatch were both open.  Also this band was playing...  It sure feels like war time around here, what with the news reporting near-daily Canadian casualities and all. I remember when I was a kid the idea of Canada going to war again was unimaginable and terrifying. Now I find it dismal, sad and mind-numbing. 2009 seems like a long way off. |
L.M.'s recent post prompted me to re-read ArtFag's latest rant about recent curatorial mis-steps in big group shows that set out to define Toronto art (specifically, the Power Plant's We Can Do This Now and MOCCA's Love/Hate: New Crowned Glory in Toronto). ArtFag can be counted on for a rip-rousing, searing critique, and I applaud their unequivocal demands for better curations.
To collect a group of work under the pretense that there is no common thread is not only an abdication of responsibility, it is, to be crass about it, an abdication of your job descriptions.I wholeheartedly agree. I also applaud ArtFag for moving beyond mere griping into some actual diagnoses and suggestions.
This is a small art scene, in a small city, after all; almost everyone knows each other, and certainly there is opportunity aplenty for all to be exposed to each other's practices. The challenge in erecting a Toronto show would be to track those threads of interconnection, to sort them so that one can have a clear picture of the living mechanism that is this city's art.But here I start to differ. Particularly at the phrase "almost everyone knows each other." Really? Or do we just stick too closely to our well-worn paths? And what, exactly is a Toronto artist? Is it someone who was born and bred in the GTA? Someone just in from Calgary looking to set up shop in the Golden Horseshoe? Someone who's been reviewed by Gary Michael Dault? Someone who runs a video program for youth in Regent Park? Someone who went to OCAD? Someone who shows on Queen St? Someone who everybody already knows? ArtFag paints a picture of a 'stagnant' art scene and blames the commercial gallerists for not promoting younger artists. But what about the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, Toronto Free Gallery, X-space, Le Gallery? And is it really youth who provide the kind of 'fresh blood' ArtFag calls for, or is it modes of practice and definitions of 'Toronto artist' that are currently off the art scene radar?
I think what we are really suffering from is a slightly sickening compulsion for self-definition. Why, in a city full of immigrants and travellers, of ambitious artists who's practices are in dialogue with others here and around the world, do we struggle to define our art according to our geography? Is is just because of rivalry with Vancouver? And, if you remove this cloying notion of Toronto's failure to love itself enough, isn't there plenty of thoughtful, rigorous curation happening in this town? What about Pat Macaulay's work at York Quay Galleries, or Diaz, or Cheryl Sourkes, or Ann MacDonald at Doris McCarthy Gallery? I can't help thinking that it's time to turn our attention away from the fairly trivial category of Toronto, and pay attention to the networks of art ideas for which such boundaries are meaningless. The important threads of connection for art are between works, not between friends. Toronto is a social town, and perhaps it is the persistence of this social perspective, this clinging to the clique as an organising principle, that gives us the sense that we are being held back.
ArtFag ends with a footnote:
....an increased interest in our city's young might provide the necessary sharp shock to the more slack and middling of our mid-career artists...But it is precisely our mid-career artists that make us think the hardest and offer us the most, artists who have been around the block enough times to eschew fashion and gimmickry in favour of challenging themselves, of building on an increasingly resonant and evolving body of work. Artists who continue to exhibit in Toronto as well as in all kinds of far-flung places, and whose work rewards our attention, not from the lazy social perspective of pigeonholing 'people we already know', but from the broad and enriching perspective of art discourse.
But these quibbles are small compared to the my immense gratitude to ArtFag for taking the trouble to write this magnificent Toronto Manifesto, for challenging the local gatekeepers to do better, and especially for putting themselves on the line to make a proclamations about what is wrong and how to fix it. These are steps we need to take. Along with, in my case anyway, trying to learn as much as I can about how to curate awesome art shows.