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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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| Jon Davies' Top Ten in no order, just in Toronto, and not including any of his own great triumphs of 2010 (ha ha). 1. The Monkey and the Mermaid by Shary Boyle and Christine Fellows at the Images Festival, April 10, 2010.  Shary Boyle and Christine Fellows’ musical, mixed-media magic lantern show was one of the most delightful, moving, awe-inspiring nights of my life – hands down. Especially the rendition of Dolly's Me and Little Andy and the rebellious young bat in his bedroom. 2. Hovering Proxies by Oliver Husain at the Art Gallery of York University, January 21 – March 14, 2010 and Cushy Number at the Susan Hobbs Gallery, December 11, 2010 – January 22, 2011.  Hovering Proxies  Cushy Number Oliver Husain’s enchanting film, fabric and sculptural installations set the stage for surprising encounters: you inevitably end up as a performer caught in a magical loop between the space of the gallery and his elaborate, whimsical fictions. 3. Un-home-ly curated by Matthew Hyland at the Oakville Galleries, November 27, 2010 – February 20, 2011. Artists: Lucy Gunning, Mako Idemitsu, Suzy Lake, Liz Magor, Luanne Martineau, Shana Moulton, Valérie Mréjen, Paulette Phillips, Pipilotti Rist, Martha Rosler, Nicola Tyson, Jin-me Yoon  Valerie Mrejen Matthew Hyland’s first major group exhibition at the gallery where the young chap is now Director is the first of several planned exhibitions (and a publication) charting contemporary feminist art practices. The work here on the female uncanny was diverse (in materials and perspectives), potent and expertly contextualized and presented (particularly in the Centennial Square library space), with the stand-outs being Paulette Phillips’ work and French artist Valérie Mréjen’s haunting 2006 video of housewife ennui, Manufrance. 4. The Four Times (Le Quattro Volte) by Michelangelo Frammartino, seen at TIFF, September 2010.  The best film of the year is a wordless Italian metaphysical epic – part Pasolini, part Tati – about the transubstantiation of a soul as it travels from the bodies of a shepherd to a newborn goat (!) to a fir tree to charcoal to smoke. Profound and utterly captivating. 5. Inside The Solar Temple of the Cosmic Leather Daddy by Will Munro at Paul Petro Contemporary Art, February 26 – March 27, 2010.  It’s impossible to talk about 2010 without marking the great loss of artist and producer (of everything) Will Munro, particularly as his last installation – which closed less than 2 months before his death from brain cancer – was essentially his sanctuary, where Munro staged a space to safely and comfortably spend eternity: a cozy macraméd sex sling surrounded by the iconography of his queer forefathers (and, at the opening, by scores of his closest friends and fans). 6. Scream: Ed Pien and Samonie Toonoo, curated by Nancy Campbell at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, April 20 – May 29, 2010.  Samonie Toonoo (left) and Ed Pien (right) Ed Pien is one of our most under-recognized artists, and this in-depth exhibition of his exquisitely perverse drawings alongside equally strong work by artist Samonie Toonoo was a dark, thrilling experience (courtesy of curator Nancy Campbell). 7. A to B curated by Micah Lexier at MKG 127, July 3 – 31, 2010.  Micah Lexier is the hardest working man in the Toronto art scene, and this brilliantly assembled collection of objects (art and not) was the perfect hall-of-mirrors showcase for his obsessions, in this case with order and likeness. 8. Once and for All We're Gonna Tell You Who We Are so Shut Up and Listen at Harbourfront Centre’s World Stage, February 16–20, 2010.  The misbehaviour of a big group of loutish Belgian youths is sublimated into a Charlie Kaufmanesque structuralist performance as a single scene of perfectly choreographed teen anarchy is re-enacted over and over again with increasingly mind-blowing variations. 9. Unfinished Business: Eric Baudelaire at Gallery TPW, May 6 – June 5, 2010.  Eric Baudelaire’s exhibition – which included a body of work based on Antonioni, a feature-length video (Sugar Water) chronicling a Parisian Metro posterer, and a stack of books all titled Unfinished Business – was a dizzyingly smart and perfectly executed Toronto debut for one of the most exciting younger artists at work today. 10. The Flesh at Work: A Lizploitation Cinemagoria, curated by Derek Aubichon and David Balzer, May 2 – November 7, 2010.  The activity I most looked forward to week after week was this private Sunday evening screening series focused on Elizabeth Taylor’s late “decadent” phase, exploring her persona as a “a blowsy, vulgar battle axe” from 1965–2001. While a library could be filled with my thoughts on these 23 movies – my faves were Losey’s Secret Ceremony (and Boom, natch), Minnelli’s The Sandpiper, the Carol Burnett co-starring and Shot-in-Toronto HBO hit Between Friends, the Cukor-directed and Soviet co-produced musical pablum The Blue Bird, euro-horror trash Identikit, and the beyond-belief There Must Be a Pony – suffice to say that the Bell Lightbox has nothing on these boys as far as rooting out the real classics of world cinema. Honourable mentions: The Fighter (dir. David O. Russell) and The Ghost Writer (dir. Roman Polanski), Jennifer Murphy and Dorian Fitzgerald at Clint Roenisch, David Hoffos at MOCCA, Red Bull 381 Projects in general but specifically Enthusiasm: Abbas Akhavan, Kelly Jazvac and Ron Tran, The Storyteller at the AGO, Christine Swintak & Don Miller at the Blackwood Gallery, Tacita Dean at Gallery TPW, and my boyfriend Sholem Krishtalka’s Lurking Tumblr. |
More top tens coming, too drunk to format. Soon. SOON.
Look at the poor doggy.
Rob Cruickshank's Top 11 Internet Cat Videos of 2010.
I was supposed to do some art this year, but I got busy watching cat videos, and the time just ran away on me. For those who actually spent the year doing art, or going to grad school, or going to shows, and generally thinking and stuff, here's a quick catch-up on the significant events of 2010.
#11 Joel Vietch, The Internet is Made of Cats
Not strictly a cat video per se, but it set the tone for the year to come, and we were all humming the tune for days, even whole weeks.
# 10 Ultimate Kitten Snuggle
One of the most significant cat videos of 2010.
#9 Cat vs Printer, the Translation
We'd all seen that video a million times, maybe even in a comic-sans email from Dad, but the voice dubbing made it new again.
#8 Fainting Goat Kittens -original video
Not every cat video made us LOL. Charlie and Spike made us cry. Ok, we laughed a little bit before we heard that they died. Then we spent the rest of the day sorting out our feelings, and watching the odd fainting goat video.
#7 Cat attacks Vicious Gators -Unbelievable.
Would they have intervened if the gator had eaten the cat? Who knows?
#6 Cats Playing Patty Cake, what they were saying...
The quality of voice dubbed cat videos just keeps getting better. It's offensively dumb when people do it with dogs or babies, though.
#5 Epic cat fight (cat's horror) Crows vs Cat vs Cat Street Fight
Inter-species weirdness is always a winner. These kitties are playing for keeps, which makes it a bit disturbing, but that's part of the appeal.
#4 Red Lights, by Holy Fuck.
Toonces, the Cat who Could Drive a Car Meets Bullit. How could it be anything but awesome?
#3 Sneaky Cat is Watching You
An instant classic in traditional internet cat video style.
#2 Kitten Riding Turtle
It's a tortoise, not a turtle, and it's not the original video, but if you don't have Baby Elepahnt Walk as the soundtrack, you're doing it wrong.
#1 Many too small boxes and Maru
Once again, Maru is the most famous cat on the internet. Mark my words, we'll be watching these as part of a big retrospective at MOMA within a decade.
Special honourable mention to Devo, whose live stream of a cat party to launch their latest album Something For Everybody cost the global economy countless person-hours.
Andrew Harwood’s Winnipeg top 10, Honourable Mentions & Dishonourable Mentions
1) Diana Thorneycroft, “Canada, Myth, and History, Group of Seven Awkward Moments Series” Winnipeg Art Gallery, June 12, 2010 to August 22, 2010
Diana Thorneycroft never ceases to delight me with her often humourous and darkly themed artworks. This exhibition of photographs toys with the paintings of the Group of Seven, as they serve as backdrops to plastic dolls and homemade props engaged in various “Canadian” activities. I haven’t laughed out loud in a gallery in a very long time. Thank you for this treat of a show and hilarious re-visioning of Canadian history and art history.
2) Deirdre Logue, “Rough Count”, Platform Gallery, Winnipeg, “Cabin Fever” group exhibition curated by JJ Kegan McFadden, October 30 – December 15, 2010
Counting confetti never looked so good! In this series of videos by Logue, she undertakes the onerous task of hand counting a big bag of confetti. “Rough Count”, 2006 –present, seems like an impossible task and according to her own rules, she stops and starts the counting over again as she miscounts pieces, she also stops taping and starts over again. This work is about patience, a playful form of obsessive compulsion and trying to make order out of chaos. Several monitors portray Logue’s counting so that while watching these works, I was almost overwhelmed with the idea of having to count and recount confetti.
3) Mary Anne Barkhouse “Game”, Urban Shaman, Sept 10 – Oct 2
Barkhouse uses nature and the idea of play in her whimsical and engaging show “Game”. One of the best sculptures/maquettes I have seen this year is “Beaver Lodge”; a riff on modernist architecture, doll houses and yes beaver damns. In “Beaver Lodge”, a mock up of a beautifully constructed modernist house scattered with toy-like beavers going about their work of making damns and chewing wooden bits. This work is deceptively cute in that it also questions our understanding of what is “natural” and “manmade”. And perhaps Barkhouse is also questioning our current obsession with modernist architecture?
4) Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, New Gallery at the Buhler Centre, University of Winnipeg
Congratulations to Plug In, on their groovy new digs on Portage Avenue. The grand opening of this gorgeous new gallery was also a fabulous event attended by thousands over the course of 3 official evenings of welcome. (Winnipeg Art Gallery – take note – Plug In knows how to host thousands of people, see: Dishonourable Mentions below.) Neil Minuk and his architectural firm, DIN, are also to be congratulated on a spare, bright, modernist-inspired building located on the campus of the University of Winnipeg, housed in the Buhler Centre. The whole centre was also designed by DIN and the Buhler Foundation is to be given huge props for donating $4 million to this project. Three great new galleries now house the exhibitions of Plug In; my only complaint – dump the florescent lights in the gallery spaces – this trend comes into vogue for galleries and artists every ten years or so (like camouflage in fashion). Otherwise - REALLY WELL DONE!
5) Lori Blondeau & Adrian Stimson, “Putting the Wild Back Into the West”, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Nov 6 – Dec 19, 2010
OK I am so crushed out on these two artists, I am not sure I could ever be objective! Blondeau and Stimson exhibited restaged black and white photographs reminiscent of colonial portrayals of the west. They deconstructed the racist portrayals of “Cowboys and Indians” to revise and update the historical content. What was so fabulous about this work is, that these artists also had tonnes of costumes at the opening reception and the audience participated in dress up and a photo shoot! People learn way more through play than dusty inaccurate history books written by white dudes!
6) Eleanor Bond, “Mountain of Shame”, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Nov 6 – Dec 19, 2010
Prairie fave Eleanor Bond’s new works, “Mountain of Shame”, looks at the naïve and vibrant aspects of modernist art in painting and sculpture. Bond makes reference to colour field and abstract expressionism in her lush, yet simultaneously spare paintings using a heavily 1970’s inspired colour palate. The child-like qualities and intentional naiveté of her works are wonderfully disarming and cheerful. I know you are not supposed to say that about art, but touché Eleanor Bond!
7) Ming Hon’s performance at Plug In ICA. Summer Institute, August 2010
Ming Hon is a Winnipeg-based performance artist and dancer who participated in this past summer’s Summer Institute at Plug In. Hon wowed a large audience at the Summer Institute’s closing reception in August with her dance performance that incorporated the use of a meat cleaver that she used suggestively on her body, but also clanged on the floor so that it issued sparks from the blade to punctuate moments in her dance. Her choreography and movements were elegant and also violent. The piece also hinted at the idea of the body as food and the tension between the knife and her body was electric.
8) “I Know What My Weakness Are, Probably Better Than You Do” August 2010, group show, Freud’s Bathhouse and Diner
“Freud’s Bathhouse & Diner is a private, artist-run gallery in Winnipeg’s Exchange District attempting to showcase the work of captivating and challenging artistic individuals and endeavors from Canada & abroad.” The name says it all for me! This new space is 3rd wave Grunge, with an emphasis on the juncture of music and art. Their summer Zine show in August “I Know What My Weakness Are, Probably Better Than You Do” was refreshing; featuring works by emerging Winnipeg artists such as Reuben Illanos, Zine artist Ameena Scream, genius live video mixer mrghosty and up-and-comers from out-of-town such as Toronto-based Beth Frey, Rhode Island artist William Schaff, and Ramsey Beyer from Chicago. I loved the sculptural piece by Kara Passey called “Foxes are the Wolves that Bring Us Flowers” using what looked like “Dad’s” beer bottles and his foam insulation sprayed and stuck together. This wonderfully hideous piece was set on a depressing wooden coffee table – perfection! Freud’s Bathhouse and Diner is so hip and grungy - you can feel the bedbugs crawling off the used furniture and biting you with provocative art!! Amazing! Or was that a performance?
9) “Remix City”, Kevin Fawley, October November 2010, Raw Gallery
“RAW: Gallery is a site specific art gallery dedicated to establishing a dialogue between artists/architects and the general public on issues pertaining to the art of architecture and design. Our mission is to promote experimental and exploratory architecture and design.” Raw Gallery is great new gallery in Winnipeg run by smart and sexy Joe Kalturnyk, located in the basement of 290 McDermot Street. The space is, as the title implies, quite raw, but beautiful, like a gorgeous version of the basement in “The Amityville Horror”, but not at all creepy. Kevin Fawley’s “Remix City” was a perfect fit for this space. He re-imagined the city of Winnipeg through the use of collaged imagery – portraying an apocalyptic future. He used historical photos and the use of drawings to imagine grayed-out visions of speculative pasts and futures colliding.
10) Leslie and the Lys at Plug In’s “DIY Craftiva” May 2010.
I had the great honour of hosting an event at Plug In’s DIY Craftival this past May. Leslie and the Lys performed their amazing music and sold all things crafty and Leslie at the Craftival, a three-day craft fair with performances and dj’s organized by Plug In. Her wicked beats and hilarious Iowa white rap holds up well and her new tunes got the entire gallery dancing with delight! It was so great to see her again after introducing her to Toronto at TAAFI 2005 (the year it was really good – thanks Barr & Pamila!)
1) Honourable Mention - Golden City Gallery
One of the new crop of DIY and alternative galleries sprouting up in Winnipeg. It hosts some of the best in emerging artists and throws wicked parties, thank you! Adrian Williams show rocked!
2) Super Honourable Mention – The Orphanage
Local booze can, speakeasy, after hours club – the best one I have ever been to anywhere. Dj Beekeeni (she’s worked with the B-52’s) plays the most delicious retro 60’s, 70’s music mixed with current dance faves. Dreamily beautiful bartender April doles out great cocktails! Artists love this place, on occasion there are Hollywood types here too, when in town they show up after long days on film shoots. A fascinating mix of fame, artists, grunge, booze, fags, dykes, trannies, dancing, music and the friendliest straight people evah! Wish I could thank the owner here, but its Winnipeg’s best kept secret!! Refuge and respite for all Orphans. Thank you!
1) Dishonourable Mention - Winnipeg Cultural Capital 2010
Who, what, when, where, why and how much? Well no one seems to know much about any of this. The Winnipeg Arts Council maybe largely to blame for the mismanagement of this enourmous failure of a project. It was granted federal monies and then made it difficult for artist-run centres and public galleries to access the funds and on top of this, they also then tried to control any of the funds that they did give to non-profits. The transparency of whom the monies were doled out to has not been made particularly clear and the “process” smacked of favouritism. Ouch, and well with the exception of Nuit Blanche no one seemed to go to any of the events planned for Cultural Capital LOL – disaster! Like a tornado of federal cash cascading over the Prairies – except where did it go? It may have gone down either the Red or the Assiniboine. Shame! We’re not talking $100 dollars here.
2) Dishonourable Mention - Winnipeg Art Gallery and Nuit Blanche Winnipeg.
Huh? The WAG hosted Winnipeg’s first Nuit Blanche. It seems to be too dangerous to have performances and art on the streets of Winnipeg by artists and also for the general public to attend. Mind you, also a bit late in the season to have artists out in the cold at the end of September, anyways. The WAG was reportedly prepared for roughly 400 guests, but had thousands and turned away that many people at the door. The building can easily hold 1,000 + people comfortably. They did not have enough security, gallery staff or hospitality to actually host the event. Apparently, Wanda Koop’s art also fell off the wall during the event and she insisted that it be re-hung by whatever overwhelmed and scant gallery staff present during all of the chaos, divine!! Diva! I would have done the same thing girl, even if it had been my shoddy workmanship that caused the installation problems in the first place.
3) Dishonourable Mention - aceartinc.
Do not ask any questions of the staff here, they are way too busy and self-important to talk to artists or writers. Do not enjoy yourself whilst viewing their shows or have fun at their fundraisers. aceartinc. feels like one of the most unfriendly places in Canada to view art, folks it’s colder inside this gallery than Mercer Union in the early ‘90’s after the Eli Langer debacle. Would it kill you to be nice for three seconds – does visiting an artist-run centre have to feel that uncomfortable for your viewers? Young commercial gallery receptionists and administrators from New York, should be sent to an aceartinc. residency to learn how to work with the public. Oh yeah aceartinc. is publicly funded – oh I almost forgot. P.S. I have discovered that I am not the only artist in Winnipeg that feels this way, without even prompting the topic. Public relations. People.
However, aceartinc. did sneak out a great two-person show by Elisabeth Belliveau and Jessica MacCormack, “Natural disasters, pets and other stories” August to October 2010.
This exhibition featured beautifully rendered animations, drawings, and collages using the themes of psychic phenomenon, animals and disjointed narratives.
Von Bark's Top 5 swell Epic Movie Musical set-pieces of the 20th Century:
Oliver!: Who Will Buy?
Carousel: June is Bustin' Out All Over
Sweet Charity: Somebody Loves Me (I'm a Brass Band)
South Pacific: There is Nothing Like a Dame.
Gold Diggers of 1935: Lullaby of Broadway (2)
Note: Also considered were West Side Story, New York New York, My Fair Lady, An American in Paris, and Forbidden Zone. Not included probably because selecting the Set-Piece didn't exactly conform to the 'set' perfectly..
