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By Design: Historical and Contemporary Objects from Canadian Collections
Design Exchange, exhibition runs til December 31st
My dictionary defines artefact as "anything made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art." As an art writer I've absorbed certain a set criteria for looking at artefacts of visual art. I am a newbie, however at design. The current Design Exchange exhibition, By Design: Historical and Contemporary Objects from Canadian Collections seems a good place to start. Curators across the country contributed items from their museum's collections, each representing exemplary Canadian design. It's an eclectic range, and to my non-design-trained eye, it all just looks like a bunch of stuff: a massive marble-topped desk, a rickety old potato bug killer, two television sets, a coffeemaker that looks like a hood ornament, an Olympic torch, and a selection of dental "burs"—tiny sharp things that trained experts poke into parts of your mouth. A pair of North Star running shoes. And a piece of the Avro Arrow. Design Exchange curator Michael Prokopow insists, however, that there is "a coherence within this eclectic assemblage" and he's the expert, so I hang around to find out more.
Art objects draw threads between personal experience and shared bodies of knowledge, but the connections are often ephemeral and oblique. Design objects, on the other hand, make direct reference to current events, business, manufacture and historical trends. "I don't like the words beautiful and ugly," says Michael Prokopow,"What we think about objects is irrelevant. These are pieces of history, evidence. We have to contend with them as cultural artefacts."
And what we have here is a history of Canada in the 20th century. As with most artefacts, it's the back stories that fill in the blanks. I am drawn to the Kamiks, a pair of fur and leather boots designed by Akenese Novaling, an Ungara Inuit. The boots were made in 1980, but they adhere to a traditional style. Curator Elizabeth Semnelhack (Bata Shoe Museum) explains that artefacts created by non-western, historical, and indigenous people are often seen as craft rather than design. Yet all aspects of design come into play in their creation. These boots are functional (I'm impressed by the scrunched-up leather treads), and the design also carries cultural significance, the vertical grey stripe in the fur a "gendered stylistic convention" in Ungara men's clothing.
I'm also interested in the Usu and Kine, a pair of tools for pounding rice that looks like a giant mortar and pestle. The designer is a Japanese Canadian, Jiro Kamiya who was interred by the Canadian government during the Second World War. Michael Prokopow seems quite moved by this piece, calling it poignant and "quintessentially modern." Kamiya honoured his Japanese forefathers, explains Prokopow, in creating these traditional objects, but he also honours his life in Canada, choosing to work with the indigenous woods of Douglas Fir and Alder.
The show is organised chronologically, from an ornate neoclassical sofa designed by Thomas Nisbet in the 1820s to an ornate postmodern desk designed by Randy Kerr in the 1990s for the mayor of Ottawa. Turn of the century agricultural implements tell of a Canada's pleinitude, the treasured new world bread basket shipping resources to England and France. A rash of midcentury technology, radios, televisions, lamps and record players belie, in Prokopow's words, "Canadian prosperity, and the promise of the postwar marriage of science and design." But the glinting blades of a small propeller from the engine of the doomed Canadian airplane, the Avro Arrow, remind us that in our post-colonial, post-war hey-day of productivity we were bending to a new master, the USA. As modernity climaxed, so too did Canada's manufacturing boom. Prokopow suggests that the imposing stone and steel desk of Toronto-based architect John C. Parkin represents the epitome of modernity. From that peak of pure, unrelenting planarity there is nowhere to go but back to the past, and so we wind up with an assortment of items reflecting the postmodern penchant for borrowing previous styles: an elaborate art-deco perfume bottle, a contemporary retro-looking chair, the coffee pot that defies description.
But postmodern collage is not the end of the story. Nor is the end of Canada's post-war production. This exhibition is imbued with nationalism, and the urgent-seeming search for Canadian identity. Prokopow provides more background, explaining that in 1851 a German, Gottfried Semper, designed the Canadian Pavilion at the Crystal Palace. He had never been to Canada, but was full of romantic notions of the new world. He used Canadian timber to create the Hall of Colonies which displayed canoes, sleighs, lumber, minerals, and furs. Says Prokopow, "We may scoff at these Romantic ideas of Canada but they pan out in reality too. We do have lots of trees, lots of resources, lots of snow, few people, and a vastness that stands in backdrop to the ingenuity and creativity of our people."
Finally buoyed by context, I am gleaning the conceptual shape of the exhibition. But one big dumb question still looms in my mind: is there such a thing as a visually distinct Canadian design? John Martins-Mantiega, founder of the other design museum, Dominion Modern, nearly does a spit take when I ask him. "Of course!"
"Okay, what is it?"
Realizing my newbie status Martins-Mantiega takes pity. "There's a kind of naked freshness to everything," he explains, without a hint irony. "Look at this skidoo," he points, "doesn't that look Canadian to you?" I don't know. I stare at it. "There are no extras on it," he says. "It's very simple, and yet its more that just utilitarian." Maybe I sort of see what he means. As I stare at the thin-lined, somewhat boxy, bright yellow machine, I imagine my tongue freezing to the metal. Vague images from Never Cry Wolf, and Hinterland Who's Who start to flicker through my mind. Could this be a sense of identity I'm experiencing, or just a wave of nostalgia?
"And look at this TV," he nudges me toward the empty face of a Clairetone set made in 1969, "this is quintessentially Canadian." The TV is has a friendly, open stare. It's inauspicious; it's really quite wide. It has a demure, graceful presence, little ornament, but a hint of elegance, like the whiff of delicate flavour in an otherwise ordinary sauce. I am now convinced that I can see Canadian-ness everywhere! Those North Star shoes, submitted by Martins-Mantiega himself, gleam at me with clarity and promise, like white and blue beacons from my very own uncomplicated, pre-pubescent past.
An American friend once, inexplicably, suggested to me that Manx cats, with their wide-eyed, open faces, "look Canadian." I scoffed at the time, but now intoxicated by the power of suggestion, I start to wonder, is there something to it? I tell Martins-Mantiega and he nods at me solemnly from a friendly, open face, and remarks, "Sometimes you have to be from outside to really see it clearly."
This room full of artefacts, made and given shape by Canadians, offers an opportunity to take a step back from this big country and consider its form.
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I should just make mention here that Canadian Club, the Persona Volare exhibition at Rodman Hall in St. Catharine',s is f***ing great. If you are looking for a field trip, go there and see it. I wrote a little bit about their last exhibition here. I enjoyed all three of their shows, but in the past have felt that the artists were really disaparate and I couldn't see much reason, other than convenience and social fun -- which are fine reasons -- for all these works to be shown together. This time, however, the show is really coherent! Maybe some cross-talk has been developing over the years. Not only that, but everyone's work is cranked up a notch, really, really good stuff. Of course I am always thrilled to see the lovely and brilliaint art of the lovely and brilliant Lorna Mills. Other highlights for me were Rebecca Diederichs' big digital banners that hit a fine juicey balance between abstraction, typography and narrative; John Dickson's foggy sci-fi cardboard city that was spooky cool in affect (apparently where there's smoke there's not always fire); Chantal Rousseau's totally freaking awesome little black and white animations about strange birds; and Michael Davey's wonky snow cones on the shoe tips video. I liked all the other works too by Lyla Rye, Lisa Neighbour, Brian Hobbs, Carlo Cesta, Kate Wilson, Johannes Zits, and Reid Diamond.
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Kristin Lucas, Magic Eyes Cream Headache Sandwich , 2005. three channel video installation, running time 4 minutes (image taken from Postmasters)
Yesterday was a good art day. First off Kristin Lucas sent me links to her current show at Postmasters in New York. This woman's art never ceases to surprise me. Yes she is my friend, she is also ff'ing brilliant. In the 4 minute video installation, "Magic Eyes Cream Headache Sandwich" two arms with lives of their own, try to feed the head some cake. And play music. It's like a post-cyborgian birthday part: love your own detachment, embrace the mind/body split, desire the explanatory gap, and you might just have some fun.
Next I dropped in at Angell Gallery to see Geoffrey Pugen's show. I made a note earlier about a video of his that I liked - the video in this show was even better. Abstracted morphing mandella's made from the smooth tanned bodies of futuristic aerobics-type folk encircle the slowly morphing heads of animals. I was not totally excited about Pugen's prints, most of which you can see here. They provide a distopic chuckle, but the videos are on another level; technically lush, conceptually insidious, and visually mesermizing.
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Alison Norlen,Untitled, mixed media on paper, 2004. Collection of the artist, photo: Kim Clarke. Courtesy of MOCCA.
Gary M. Dault's review (scroll down) of the big drawing show—Just My Imagination at MOCCA—is testament to the fact that one person's point of view is not enough when it comes to art, however qualified that person may be. What he describes as spotty, convenient, and massively glum, I would describe as ambitious, surprising, and open-ended. Drawing as a tool is essential to most art practices. In recent years there's been a wealth of smallish self-effacing drawing, a la Royal Art Lodge. This show is full of great big wall-sized drawings that stretch beyond themselves. Established, canonical draw-ers like John Scott sit in visual dialogue with youngsters like Raphaëlle de Groot. Artists who draw, like Michelle Gay, Ed Pien, and Alison Norlen are allowed to shine.
Alison Norlen's panoramic dark blue landscape is the first thing you see upon entering, a spooky, bleak northern setting with sad fantasy roller coaster shimmering in the dim light. Dault complained that the trees in Norlen's background were "poorly rendered," willfully missing the point by reducing this invented, evocative environment to some kind of technical exercise. Ed Pien's light blue wall caught my eye next. An anthropomorphised water spout spins demonically in the centre of the work, while watery figures float and swim in angsty suspension around the vortex. (Ed Pien also has a totally stunning piece on display at York Quay Centre right now, a massive cut-out black paper silhouette of life-sized male figures perched in the laboriously intricate branches of a spreading tree.)
Anna Torma, Draw me a car (detail), hand embroidery on linen with silk threads, 2004. Collection of the artist, photo: Kim Clarke.
Courtesy of MOCCA.
I won't describe everything. Two more highlights for me were Sheila Butler and Anna Torma. Butler is a smart feminist with Nancy Spero-type chutzpa and iconic linear narrative. Spanning the two walls of a corner, penciled lettering tells of a dream in which a sinister man is chasing her. She can't tell if he is trying to pull her down or boost her up, and in the end she realises she is afraid of levitation, scared to go too high, and equally scared of not going high enough. Household items dot the scene, gloves with faces, a kitchen sponge with painted teeth, hands reaching out from every direction. If I had to pick a 'best-in-show,' I must confess that Anna Torma's embroidered wall hangings blew me and Von Bark away, especially the piece titled (I think) "Draw me a Monster." Kids images of fire breathing dinosaurs are rendered in vibrant coloured thread, combined in a jam-packed composition with other items like technical console dials, math sums, landscapes and bits of text describing ancient life on the planet earth from a child's perspective. Like most quilts and weavings, the image reads as an overall density, yet the pattern is based on art composition, a zine-like crammed in chaos that nestles into order and colour when you take a step or two back. Torma is obviously extremely sophisticated, both in her conception and her execution, and Dault's inane dismissal the work—he says the use of kids drawing is "minor-league procedural affectation" says more about him that it does about her. But, as I mentioned, Dault is just one guy, and in this case I think his point of view is off the mark.
An ambitious drawing is a compositional balancing act, all areas of the surface must hold their own, the space must breath and yet retain tension, the marks but be varied and yet cohere. The same criteria apply to an ambitiously curated drawing show. In my opinion Kim Moodie and David Merritt have succeeded in creating an engaged art space full of connections and potential.
NOTE: Entering this show feels great. One reason is MOCCA itself. The gallery is big, with high ceilings and white walls and concrete floors, but unlike, say, Chelsea or Ydessa Hendeles, it is open to the street and the staff are welcoming. Unlike say, the AGO or the Power Plant, MOCCA is both easy to get to and free (suggested donation). North York's loss is Queen Street's gain, and each time I go there I feel like some weird weight has been lifted and I breath a happy sigh. This feeling will pass soon enough, and I'll be full of complaints and expectations, but til then I plan to enjoy the new MOCCA as much as I can.
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Sticker by Swintak
I am a Sol LeWitt fan. Last night at the opening for AGO's Swing Space, I got stickered by Swintak. Swing Space is the AGO's smart strategy for programming during massive renovations. The focus is on contemporary art, and the shows on right now are pretty good. Swintak had Lawrence Weiner fan stickers too. All three were showing together as part of the ongoing project Wallworks (*see note below), in which artists work directly on the walls. Like a lot of artists my age, LeWitt and Weiner (and Ed Ruscha, who at least had a bloody sense of humour) opened the door for me to contemporary art. But that's not to say they should be revered in perpetuity. Swintak, a smart young Canadian performance and installation artist, outshines both these "forefathers of conceptual art" (as curator David Moos described them). LeWitt's piece—a big swooshy rainbow stripe painting, more reminiscent of Frank Stella than of LeWitt's signature ethereal grids—spanned all four walls of the gift shop. Weiner's text filled a wall in the room adjacent to the gift shop. Classic Weiner, instructions for installation had been gifted by the previous owners, and rendered by AGO staff with, surprisingly, a fair amount of input from Weiner himself about paint colours and so forth. The text said something about chains holding together and/or breaking apart ... I didn't transcribe it. Swintak's piece was on the opposite wall, framing the doorway to the gift shop. Yes the gift shop was rather prominent but, in it's nomadic reno-incarnation, just a shadow of its former venerable self.
C. A. Swintak, The thing that won't let you walk away, 2005. Taken from AGO website.
At first glance, Swintak's piece looked like old-style (Rauschenberg) assemblage, ie: just a bunch of random junk stuck to the wall. But this messed up recreation of daily life clutter is doubled, one side a mirror of the other. Blue jeans and socks cascade from under a bed with rumbled sheets. Newspapers, dirty dishes, crumpled panties and dust balls are reflected in perfect symmetry. It's like a digital image, except it's all real stuff, glued to the wall. Swintak's level of detail is good. Every inch, from the empty beer can frieze to the lacy, ladies' slip-covered columns is considered and duplicated. Beyond the elegant non-illusion of reflection, the work reads as a personal portrait (or self portrait), with possible (subtle) feminist reading. The woman to whom this clutter belongs is undeniably a blue jeans girl, but she also owns a pair of red high-heeled shoes with matching underwear. She isn't fussy, she drinks beer, she reads the paper. She doesn't sweep her clutter under the rug, in fact, she'll even put it on display. Juxtaposed against Weiner and LeWitt, this piece is full of life and female agency. I really like the AGO's decision to mix it up. Weiner and LeWitt have been dragged out of history into an engagement with Swintak's contemporary take on conceptual art. Swintak is given a dose of high-profile respect, and her bright, grounded practice can handle it.
*NB: Wallworks started with Weiner, LeWitt and Swintak, whose works are all shown in proximity, but the project is ongoing and according to AGO PR will result in 20 pieces over the next 2 years. Raymond Pettibon also had a piece installed last night which I completely misread. It's about surfing dudes. I'm sooo not a California girl... I thought the big blue wave was supposed to be sky, that the reference to "curls" meant nice hair, and that the floating heads were angels of people who'd died from AIDS. Some days I should not be allowed out of the house. UPDATE: Sarah Milroy on Rayond Pettibon here
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Toronto has no shortage of small, desirable, unassuming paintings. Perhaps little-and-quirky (giftable!) is the extent of what our commercial art market can bear? Not being a collector, nor a gallerist, I don't usually pay much attention to this genre, but I happened on two such shows last week that I liked quite a bit: Melissa Doherty at Red Head Gallery, and Roberta McNaughton at Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects.
Melissa Doherty, Forest and Intersection, 2004, oil on board, 16" x 23"
from Melissa Doherty's website
Melissa Doherty's show at Red Head was pretty much sold out. The series, titled The View, depicts little pockets of nature, tucked like gemstones in the interstices between highway off-ramps and roundabouts. Doherty has painted only the roads, cars and trees, letting the rest of human culture dissolve into a misty emptiness.
Under Interstate 45, north of downtown, Houston, Texas. Photograph by Geoff Winningham
from Albert Pope's website: Ladders
Albert Pope's book (and website), Ladders is a brilliant analysis of suburban space. Abandoning the grid, which allows for multiple routes, suburbs are built on ladders, or spirals, in which a big highway leads to a main road with the malls; which leads to the gate of your community; which leads to the cul-de-sac where you live. As Pope says, "In the Centripetal City we are right where we have always wanted to be, at the very origin of the spiral, each of our delicate egos safely seated at the base of a headlong downward implosion." The spaces between the ladders—traffic islands, ravines and hydro corridors— are inhabited only by rodents and vagrants (for more on this theme, of course, read J.G. Ballard's Concrete Island). I am accustomed to such sad, heavy thinking on this topic. In contrast Doherty's little pictures are light and pretty. The trees are painted with super-fine brushes, miniature decorative blobs of green. In Doherty's world, these empty urban zones have been objectified, treated like precious curios for our mantelpiece rather than symbols of abject alienation.
Roberta McNaughton, The Twins
from Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects
I have been looking at Roberta McNaughton's paintings for years. Her previous series depicted tiny, detailed soldiers, standing about in an abstracted painterly haze (what I jokingly referred to as the "fog of war") reminiscent of the opening scenes from Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (aka. Macbeth) when our heros are lost and wandering in a thick mist, ambitious yet disoriented. The current show at Katharine Mulherine Contemporary Art Projects, I Look Older Here, seems at first like a radical departure. These are portraits—where is the iconic abstraction? But on second glance, it is apparent that these figures also reveal quixotic tropes. The painting "Twins" depicts two working women in non-descript uniforms, tired and slope-shouldered, facing each other in a vague, noncommittal stance. Are they on a smoke break? Are they posing? Or are they an invention of the artist, positioned here as they appear in her mind? The twin theme is continued in two paintings "Delia" and "Delia's Twin Sister." The type this time is a demure, schoolmarmish sort, posed in front of chalkboards wearing respectable dresses and pearl earrings. The two faces bear the same features. As a matter of fact, all the people in these portraits look somewhat alike. Not only that, but they all bear a slight resemblance to McNaughton herself.
Roberta McNaughton, At Home
from Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects
Roberta McNaughton is a pro when it comes to handling paint. The surfaces are lush, and the brushwork is light-handed, relaxed and confident. There is a delicate balance here between the specificity of observation and an almost cartoonish stylistic morphing. These figures are grounded in the same pictorial universe. The only exception is the painting "At Home." The work does not differ from the others in style, but the expression on the woman's face is painfully specific. She stares numbly, blank, resigned and exhausted, the state of mind communicated with such precision that this figure seems like the "real" portrait, while the others are fictional spin-offs: avatars, memories, or possible future selves.
Steve Reinke has coined a narrative tone. I can't find a word to describe it: "laconic" is too arch, "dead pan" is too comedic, "detached" and "sincere" are equally both right and wrong. The best I can come up with is "psychopathic", but that's too sensational. In the current show at TPW, Reinke's unique point of view folds in nicely with young collaborators Jean-Paul Kelly and Anne Walk. Touted in the invite as a rehabilitation of the "tired indexicality of photograph", Regarding the Pain of Susan Sontag (Notes on Camp), shows images that evoke a contemporary emotional ground zero.
Jean-Paul Kelly's Mom and Dad photos are fantastic. Two middle aged people in green hospital gowns adopt saucy poses; with small, secret smiles eachs shows a little leg, hands clasping ass-cheeks. They nod, coy, over the shoulder as their gowns reveal glimpses of pale flesh. Neither flamboyant nor exaggerated, these matching poses are quietly sexual. On the oppposite wall is a yellow photocopied hospital brochure, matted and framed, with pencil scrawlsindicating directions. A room number is written next to an arrow that points to a spot on the map, "Dad is here."
Plastered about the walls are pictures of Anne Walk's webcam persona, Miss Mew, leering and grabbing her titties. The images themselves look like commonplace amateur soft-core porn. The accompanying dialogue is chilling. Walk shares an online correspondence with one "Tony" who sent her donations via Paypal in exchange for photographs. The dialogue is predictable — "you are such an incredibly sexy-lady" — but interspersed with automated messages from Paypal: "This email confirms that you have received a Payment for $25.00 USD from Anthony P". The exchange is stark and raw, the fact of the transaction itself disturbingly arousing in its utter lack of either content or human contact.
I'm tempted to say that Steve Reinke's excellent video, "Ask the Insects" stole the show, but it's not true. Despite the fact that his work is more hone and mature, the group dynamic works very well, and Reinke's contributions are equals rather than anchors. Nonetheless, his oblique style cuts through hubris like a laser beam from another planet. The 8-minute video, refreshingly not projected, was displayed on a little personal dvd player with headphones. True to form, Reinke presented several short visually distinct episodes with pithy voice-over narration that borrows from science, philosophy, fiction, autobiography. A phallic, abstract shape throbs and shudders to the tones of Reinke's voice as he delineates the merits of book-burning. Small jewel-like globs jiggle like captivated life-forms. Reinke ponders the fact that while the basic functions required for life are limited, the array of forms that living creatures adopt is vast. "There are too many species. But that doesn't mean we can't learn something from their strange irrelevance."
Too many species? Who else would ever articulate such a barren concept? Reinke is shocking on some levels, yet he describes a state of mind that is utterly appropriate to contemporary world conditions. Like Walter Tevis' Man who Fell to Earth, this is a dehumanised worldview, but the stark clarity is at the same time full of feeling. Reinke begs the question: why do the rest of us persist in wallowing around in our gooey, sticky traditions and murky social tropes?
There are other notable works in the show, but in the interest of brevity I will skip to the theme: what of Susan Sontag? The title riffs on two of Sontag's writings, "Regarding the Pain of Others," and "Notes on Camp." In Jean-Paul Kelly's exhibition essay, he talks about Sontag in the context of Roland Barthes' "Camera Lucida". The big question, what is "photography's ability to elicit empathy within the viewer?" It may seem superfluous to tack art theory onto such a successfully expressive show. But the theory and the art are well-married. This exhibition expresses pain. Both Kelly's essay and Reinke's accompanying manifesto ask the viewer to acknowledge their empathy, while at the same time note with detachment that these images are not empty gestures nor self-reflexive art commodities, but are functioning signs of pain in the human condition.
art reviews from blog, Nov. 2003 - June 2005:
Joanne Tod and Damien Hirst
Christopher Flower
Power Plant group show, Dedicated to you, but you weren't listening
Peggy Gale curates Donigan Cumming
Bruce Mau's Massive Change
OCA 1967-1972: Five Turbulent Years by Morris Wolfe
Christo
Richard Hill's landscape show at AGO and Henry Moore
Paul Cézanne
Ed Ruscha and Eric Linklater
Rebecca Belmore
Peter MacCallum
Blake Fitzpatrick and Vid Ingelvics
Lorna Mills
Scott Carruthers
Sarah Peebles and Rob Cruickshank
Brock Silversides
Ryan Foerster
Mark Connery
Dr. Doo
Ivor Cutler and David Shrigley
Laura Kikauka
Michelle Allard
Janet Cardiff
WADE 2004
Eddo Stern at AGO
Tanya Mars
Infrasense and Eddo Stern
Matt Bahen
Tasman Richardson
Girls Who Bite Back by Emily Pohl Weary
Daniel Richter and Wim Delvoye
Mr. Nobody
Rainer Ganahl
Whitney Biennial 2004
Rodney Graham
Edouard Manet
Michael Balser, Kristin Lucas, Anne McGuire, Andrew J. Paterson
Rat King Opera by Maggie MacDonald
Ross Knight
Sergio Prego
Judy Radul
Bill Burns
Royal Road Tests I and II
Yellow Bikes and CBE
Mouchette
Persona Cantare
Andrew J. Paterson
artists on samplesize (Micah Lexier, Kelly Mark, Daniel Olson, Eric Cameron)