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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Peter Bowyer's Top Ten for 2009
1. In March I was invited to a conference at The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds on rethinking sculpture of the 60’s and 70’s in Britain. The institute had an excellent survey exhibition of the German artist Asta Groting. I liked her sculpture ‘Potatoes’ (2006), a line of 100 roughly peeled potatoes made of polished bronze, running along the floor in earth bound repetition.
2. In London I saw the tremendous Annette Messager show at the Hayward Gallery. I was familiar with her work from the early 90’s when she showed with us at Cold City in Toronto, but this exhibition covered her whole career. The piece I kept returning to was ‘The Boarders’ (1971-72), dead birds she had found and knitted sweaters for.
3. Mark Wallinger’s curatorial piece The Russian Linesman, also at the Hayward, featured a collection of works from all over the place. I got stuck on Jerome Bel’s video ‘Veronique Doisneau’. A ballerina recounts aspects of ballet life and the parts she hated dancing to in Swan Lake. In the men’s room I listened to James Joyce reciting from ‘Finnegans Wake’ over tiny speakers.
4. At The Saatchi Gallery I saw Unveiled: New Art From The Middle East. Shadi Ghadirian’s photographs from the Ghajar Series (1998-1999) attracted me with their serene beauty, especially the tall Persian woman with vacuum cleaner.
5. Wafa Hourani, a Palestinian artist living in Ramallah had one of the best sculptures in this show, imagining the future of the Middle East in cardboard, wire, colored thread and mirror. ‘Qalanda 2067’.
6. Rebecca Warren at the Serpentine felt like an important show to have seen. Galleries of similarly made objects, in dialogue with early modernist sculpture techniques. Serious and funny metal sculptures. I really liked this dried clay piece on a rotation pedestal. ‘The Mechanic’ (2000).
7. Keren Cytter, an Israeli artist had some interesting film projections of artificial drama in her show ‘Domestics’ at Pilar Corrias Gallery. Four Seasons (2009)
8. Spartacus Chetwynd’s sprawling installation ‘Hermito’s Children’ was a great place to start the Altermodern show at Tate Britain. An island of bean bag chairs, tangled up headphones, multiple monitors, hand held camera work and lots of people lounging around.
9. Further into the Altermodern show Rachel Harrison’s ‘Bike Week in Daytona’ (2008). A tall accumulation of drippy paint covered buckets and a monitor, kindled fond clownish memories of Abstract Expressionism.
10. Back in Toronto the visual impact of the freshly painted yellow Karen Carpenter room in Candice Breitz’s installation at the Power Plant has been hard to forget. ‘Double Karen’ (Close To You) 1970/2000. It was like looking at the sun.
Andrew Harwood - The Ten Best Tops in 2009
1) Guy Maddin's The Little White Cloud That Cried, a short film that is tranny-tastic in the vein of Jean Genet and Jack Smith with a bit Russ Myers thrown in, read great fake breasts. This film will premier at the Berlin Film Festival in January. Its such an amazing short piece that is just pornographic enough for German audiences to be pleased. Its saturated colours, fab sound track and enough cock and boobs to make even the most sated porn addict happy. Lexi Tronic is sure to become the new "Most Dangerous Woman in European Cinema." Ace Art Inc., Winnipeg.
2) R.M Vaughan's Sears Portrait Studio Shots in Taddle Creek magazine. The Christmas Number 2009. This is one of the funniest things I have ever seen published in a magazine. Vaughan poses as a little boy in an actual photo shoot by a Sears photographer. I love this work mostly due to the critique on the emphasis in gay men's culture on youth, but this work also speaks about the Daddy/Son play not often talked about in polite press (not gay porn.) Vaughan is thirty-ish so the play is truly on age here and he has already been accused of being a pedophile!! The popish backgrounds of the pics are totes funny and also talk about the construction of the identity of youth and young-ness, through photography.
3) Kim Kitchen's amazing installation Movement of Water in Barrie at the MacLaren Art Centre - reminded me of how lucky we are in Canada to have fresh water available to us. Photographs and projections from her travels in Africa are placed in buckets of water locally collected. This show was very both aethetically pleasing and political all at once, kudos to curator Sandra Fraser
4) Being invited to participate in this year's Power Ball as Mdme. Zsa Zsa was fabulous - somehow there were no social gaffe's at all - except for the ones I created - like spraying people I didn't like with tonnes of Trés Semme hair spray!! & drinking glitter mixed with their themed punch - oh and smoking inside. Oh and keeping the money I made because I was so poor - I got $190 and Amy Lam got $750 go figure??? Equality rocks, Godess, you just put a dress on and you get paid less! Thanks tho for reals tho to Helena Reckitt and Paul Zingrone for this fabby invite. This art party was actually fun!
5) Not being in or near nor participating in Nuit Blanche in any way shape or form - fuckin' phew. OMG dodged that art-astrophe by 1,000 miles!
6) David Garneau's heroic portrait of Luis Riel, is one of the best paintings by far I have seen this year. It is an historical painting akin to a portrait of Napoleon on his horse. His exhibition at Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art this November was chock full of other excellent work especially his small beaded painting called Metis? .
7) Jubal Brown's intense video's at MOCCA for the Videodrome program for the Images Fest this past spring were bloody and punk and amazing and alive and reminded me of why the fuck I became an artist in the first place.
8) Ken Gregory's wind coil sound flow at the University of Winnipeg in October. Gregory is not only a hot stud but, an amazing audio artist. His installation was like a gigantic sounding board. The whole gallery vibrated subtly and the accompanying sculpture was like a kite/gramaphone speaker/sitar sounding board. OK Video Pool was a sponsor so what - it was a great piece. Like there is no nepotism in Toronto? - f-youse!
9) Kevin Kelly's fantastical video installation 3 Minutes in Beijing at Golden City Fine Art, Winnipeg takes its inspiration in part, from the famed "bird's nest" stadium from the Beijing Olympics and turns it on it inside out and around and all over the place. Kelly takes architectural forms and animates them into spaceship like structures that plant themselves all over Beijing. The animated "buildings" are like sexual bullets, cocks, cunts that seem to reproduce spontaneously and independently. Cool!
10) Laura Kikauka's For the Love of Gaud (Damien's Worst) at MKG, Toronto, I am sorry I only was able to see this show through the window - but I loved it so much! The mirrored and sparkly skulls on the turntables were beautiful and hypnotic and yes, hit the nail on the head - literally - critical!! Ohh the horror vacui of it all!! I love you Laura and your work and I have never even met you!!
Sunday - Dusty Springfield
How Can I be Sure
Take Me to the Pilot
Spooky
Leah Sandals' 10 most memorable events/items/stuffs/experiences of 2009
1) Cedric Bomford @ Red Bull 381 Projects
Increasingly, it seems to me that art critical practice is just a machine for making cynics. But I have to say this Bomford work-a mashup of child's-play treehouses, surveillance-society paranoia and class critique-made me a believer again, if only for a day.
2) Candice Breitz's Factum @ the Power Plant
This year, I finally read some stuff by Michael Chabon, and wondered how his steadfast adherence to plot and genre in literary creation-ie. no creative-writing MFA-belaboured style-over-substance flimflammery, thank you very much-might find a collary in visual art making. I feel like I got some hints of an answer in Breitz's Factum. From the looks of her survey at the Power Plant, Breitz has always been clever when it comes to analyzing pop-culture mimicry. But in making Canadian twins her subject rather than film celebs, Breitz seemed to tap a vein of powerful emotional narrative that engages viewers just as much as her style does. The added dimensions around imitation and identity-particularly where women are concerned-was also really amazing. Call me a psychological-insight junkie, but to my mind this was totally terrific.
3) Up
If you do not cry at some point during this incredibly sweet movie, you are not human. Totally corny, totally distance- and irony-free and totally wonderful. Period. (As an aside, this is the year that I became very much fascinated with mainstream film criticism, perhaps due to its extreme differences in volume, tenor and breadth when compared to mainstream and non-mainstream art criticism. But that's another story.)
4) El Anatsui lecture @ the AGO
During this (sadly, poorly attended) lecture, internationally renowned artist El Anatsui did something I have never seen any internationally renowned artist do before-he talked about (and showed slides of) the work of his students before he talked about his own artistic development. The result is a departure point for many different considerations-the protection and promotion of individual ego among artists; the pressures for artists from Africa and other far-flung nations to represent not only themselves, but their communities, when travelling; the vast distance in practice, experience and context between Anatsui and his peers. (Full disclosure: the lecture was organized by one of my main freelance clients, Canadian Art.) Nonetheless, what resonates most of all is the sense of generosity that was evinced. I do hope it's catching.
5) Controversy-rama!
I suspect it may be unhealthy to relish a good controversy as much as I tend to-after all, a lot of good work gets done in the art world and elsewhere without controversy, and controversy tends to end up in someone getting dinged or bruised in the end-but I must say I was glad to see a few dustups in the local art realm this past year. Whether it was the Koffler's mega-gaffe with regards to Reena Katz, the AGO laying off employees on the day of one of their biggest fundraisers, or John Greyson crying oppression at TIFF, the fact is that controversy gets people talking openly about often-concealed politics and procedures in the arts-and-culture world. Because of conflict, art ends up being discussed on the radio and in regular news pages in ways that don't have to be justified (or justified quite as much) by gallery advertising sales as might typically be the case. Sure, the media simplifies these issues along the way (I'm guilty as charged on that front myself, over and over again) but it actually gets people talking about art and its connection to politics and community. It gets stuff hidden behind the scenes out in the open for a time. And to me those are good things, no matter what the outcome is.
6) Leona Drive Project
While it's kind of sad to think that this is the kind of effort it takes to get many downtowners to realize, "Hey, there just might be some value to life north of Bloor" I'm glad in the end that this project had that effect. Not all the works were great, but the mood onsite on the day I visited was buoyant and bustling, and Richard Fung's video of a former resident talking about her life in one of the houses was wonderfully illuminating.
7) Maura Doyle @ Paul Petro
As much as I try, I can't shake this as one of my favourite art experiences of the year. Beavers are sculptors, yes, I believe it now-especially when they use pink T-shirts, and scientists carefully document it all. So funny and smart, such a reversal of the whole human/animal superiority thang. Nice.
8) Libraries
The longer I cover the cultural realm in Toronto, the more and more radical libraries-all libraries-seem. You know-a place where cultural information can be accessed (and even brought home!) for free or next to nothing? The longstanding commitment of libraries to access and community (all in the name, remember, of information-sharing and literacy promotion) is an incredible example of cultural institutions done right. (And a tremendous counterpoint to the old argument "If people don't pay for culture, they won't value it or use it." Whatever.) To be clear, I'm no lunatic-I know museum artifacts and gallery artworks need to be protected, and need special environments and atmospheres, and shouldn't be brought home. I get that, and I totally support that. And yes, I know museums need money to do these things. But an increasing number of Toronto museums have ranged so very far to the other end of the access and community commitment spectrum, making our admission fees the highest in the nation and outsourcing museum access initiatives to-where else?-the library. Pure suckage, and bad for art and culture in the long run too. (Among ways to erode popular funding support for museums, raising fees high enough to prevent a visit would seem to run high on the list.)
9) Twitter
Putting Twitter on my year-end top 10 list means I'm officially among the uncool olds. (As if there was any doubt…) But I don't really care. For introverted dilettantes like myself, Twitter is a total gold mine-there's forever someone posting a link to this or that news item or blog post from their corner of the world, and a lot of what I've found this way is actually useful or inspiring. Pithy and snarky comments also, of course, also abound, which is great. Finally, Twitter has none of those awkward "friending" dynamics or frightening privacy-forsaking requirements that Facebook does. Pure information for an impure society-that's Twitter at its best.
10) ArtStars
ArtStars is a freaking hilarious godsend to the sleepy solemnity of art media in Canada. They also cover those parts of the art world most art media don't-the drunkenness, the leering, the snobbery, and the social awkwardness that permeate most openings and related events. I'll happily disclose that for some unknown reason host Nadja Sayej invited me to a panel this year. Nevertheless, I maintain that these guys are totally great and totally worth supporting (potential ad-money spenders, do take heed!). I look forward to new episodes all the time and recommend them heartily (even if they make me, and my drab, serious little practice, look as lame and somnambular as shite). Looking forward to the first 2010 episode for damn-snap sure.
R.M. Vaughan's Ten Most Disappointing Things About 2009
10. The Michael Jackson Funeral.
Brooke Shields? Brooke fucking Shields? That's the best they could do? She even admitted she hadn't spoken to MJ in over a decade.
Here's what I learned: Plan your own funeral, now, or you get that guy who shared your lab desk in grade 9 biology class, the one who smelled like a three day old peeled apple, delivering your eulogy.
9. Barack Obama
There, I said it. You are all thinking it, but I said it. Don't yell at me.
8. The Sobey Art Award
David Altmejd is a very nice man, but that's beside the point. David Altmejd makes wonderful art, but that too is beside the point. I sometimes think we don't really award culture in this country so much as confirm it - see a wagon, hop on board. Bring your band with you, kettle drums and brass section in front. I think this way because …..
7. The Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Award
I was on the jury, and I was flattered and happy to be asked, and I am ultimately very pleased with the books we selected and I got along just fine with my fellow jurors - but, well, sometimes it felt like the choices were somewhat pre-determined, by factors not entirely relating to literary merit. This feeling was confirmed when I did the announcement of the finalists for the press, and Every Single Media Outlet present asked me "What about the Atwood book?", as if I'd run over a pedestrian and kept going, oblivious, a pedestrian dressed in a brightly coloured clown suit and a three foot high top hat.
6. My Total Poetry Award Shut Out
I'm not bitter-ing, I'm just noticing. My book
(his book), Troubled got some of the best reviews of my life, and of any poetry book in the country. And yet, not a single nod. No Griffin, no Governor General's, no Toronto Book Award, no Lambda, no Trillium.
This guy, Jeramy Dodds, got it all instead, on his first book yet. Mr. Dodds is tall and handsome and straight. I am short and fat and gay. The top of my head is all scratched up by the lovely but very pointy lavender stucco that coats the ceiling of my career.
5. Swine Flu
I was promised an Omega Man-like flupocalypse, and I had plans, dammit, plans! There are several houses on my street I have already redecorated in my mind, once the corpses are cleared out. Cheated again.
4. Drag Queens
Not one Susan Boyle impersonator.
It's not like any of these hags would have to do all that much to get her look down. Yes, Keith Cole, I am looking right at you.
3. Elizabeth Taylor
As I write this, there are 9 days left for her to become the Best Dead Person of 2009.
2. My Complete Lack of Feeling A Lack
At the start of 2009, I decided that I was only going to go see art that was either made by my friends or that I was being paid to assess. As you can imagine, this gave me a hell of a lot more free time, because I don't care for that many people in the first place, and newspapers don't run art reviews anymore. What I thought would happen, however, was that by about June or July, I would start to miss going to see art. Nope, not one bit. When the fall season started, I felt the same. No phantom limb syndrome, no 5 stages of grief. Maybe I never really liked most art in the first place? Or, maybe a life without art is actually a perfectly acceptable type of life? Or, maybe I am just a tired, washed up hack (ask the poetry award juries)? My resolution for 2010 is to go to at least one art show a month by somebody I have never heard of and/or no newspaper will ever cover. Go bi-polar or go home.
1. Andrew Harwood
Herself moved to Winnipeg. He had many good reasons, and his life has improved - but what about the rest of us? The city is boring without him. I honestly didn't have great expectations of Barack Obama, but Mrs. Harwood, well, he always delivered.