Art In Newfoundland

Trust: India In Sight

2007-06-18T09:08:00.000-02:30

Having known Ryan Davis and Jason Sellars since they returned from their travels in India (amongst other places) roughly two years ago, I eagerly anticipated the opening of Trust at the old Timemasters location adjacent to the War Memorial in downtown St. John's.

I have noted previously on this blog the ease with which individuals can apply for funding from the NLAC, and have suggested more stringent guidelines (or guidelines of any kind, for that matter) be put in place to limit the number of applicants to those with a demonstrable, long-term commitment to an art practice, or showing in peer-reviewed galleries. I've heard too many stories about first time grant recipients failing to complete their proposed projects, realizing too late that this art thing we're all talking about actually requires a lot of hard work, dedication, intelligence and consideration, and isn't just something you can slap together in a weekend.

As both Davis and Sellars lack formal art training, and have limited exhibition experience, not to mention they're both friends of mine, the June 15th opening for Trust brought a great deal of anxiety for both professional and personal reasons. Happily, my worries were almost completely misplaced.

Davis' colour photographs juxtapose the many ironies of contemporary India: a giant Real Estate billboard proclaiming a new house as the way to impress your future wife dominates the street corner under which dozens of filthy beggars congregate. In another, an old woman huddles beneath the word "TRUST" painted on the wall over her head. A third shows an ice cream man sleeping atop his ice cream cart on a deserted, wind-swept beach.

Davis obviously has those two vital skills necessary to being a good photographer: compositional sense and wonderful timing. The photos wouldn't look out of place in some slick, high-end travel magazine, or on someone's living room wall.

Sellars' suitcase installations are more poetic in their manifestation of the artist's experience of India. Using drawings and text from the actual journals he kept while traveling, in addition to sound recordings of trains, snatched conversations and a multitude of other ambient noises, Sellars presents a kind of mythic journey through a haunting, magical and frightening jungle whose ancient secrets can never be known.

But as I walked around the jam-packed opening (the two collaborators know how to throw a party), I found myself wondering about the people in those photographs, and whose voices I heard on the tape recordings, and couldn't shake thinking about the capital (cultural and otherwise) Davis and Sellars had accumulated as a result of this project. Could it be considered exploitative for two Western artists to use the poverty-stricken masses of India in the creation of a cultural product to be consumed by a mostly white, educated, middle-class audience? I thought of Martha Rosler's Bowery photos.

True, the artists did have a box at the door where you could donate some money for one of the schools where Davis and Sellars taught while overseas, but as I watched the crowds of people heading off to the bars, or to their clean quiet homes after the festivities were drawing to a close, I wondered if the subjects of the show would have considered it enough.

Gordon Laurin at the RCA Gallery

2007-05-12T11:05:00.000-02:30

One of the best things to have ever happened to the St. John's visual art community was having Gordon Laurin get hired as the Director of the Art Gallery at the Rooms back in the day. One of the things that must have made that corporate body nervous was Laurin's open door policy when it came to proposals from the community. I remember there being a real sense of excitement about Laurin's willingness to try anything anywhere in that behemoth of a building, with any little cubbyhole or unused storage space being open to projects from whatever artist, musician, dancer or whatever that had the gumption to pitch something.

As we all know, it didn't last, but ironically, the arts community here in town has almost been better served by Laurin since his abrupt dismissal a couple years ago. Not only in terms of his work with Eastern Edge, RCAV, Neighbourhood Dance Works and a host of other groups, but with his stubborn decision to dedicate himself to his art practice here in the province. A lot of other people would have fled this place as soon as the ax had dropped on them.

Laurin's Recent Work at RCA Gallery is the continuation of the artist's exploration of abstracted landscape through decidedly toxic material components: crushed mica, pigments, and resin (amongst numerous other things) are used in a kind of mad scientist's experiment played out on 1' x 1' panels. That Laurin has removed his own hand and intention from these works is vital to how they operate as explorations of landscape: the remnants of the chemical reaction we see on the picture plane is a metaphor for the chaotic indifference of the universe to humankind's own wishes or desires.

Furthermore, Laurin's openness of approach is reflected in the viewer's relationship with the work, as it's ambiguous what feature of the landscape one is actually viewing. There is a tension between the macro and microscopic that suggests what we are observing could be the blistering aftermath of a supernova, or the tiniest workings of an atom, and everything in between.

That the materials themselves are toxic shouldn't be lost on the viewer, since it suggests a quintessentially Canadian take on how we interact with the natural world. That is (and Margaret Atwood and Northrope Frye would tend to agree), that the landscape, perhaps even the universe, is by its nature seen to be harmful to us, rather than as something to be conquered and defeated a la an American Magisterial Gaze. This idea is further complicated by the fact that when one stands in front of a panel, the viewer's own murky silhouette is reflected back at them in the resin, implicating them in the toxicity and potential destruction being presented in the images themselves.
My only complaint is the presentation of the works, which, in a line around the gallery space, and given their small size, are considerably less dramatic than how they'd look in a grid format, or for that matter, in any kind of larger scale.

Otherwise, the RCAV has chosen to shut its doors for the Hall's much anticipated renovations on something of a high note with this show. Go see it.

Also: Good on the RCAVisual crew for getting their website updated and with images. Nice job.

Portraiture Talk Podcast

2007-04-29T18:04:00.000-02:30

Click on this link to have a listen to Michael Crummey, Mary Pratt, myself and Peter Wilkins talk about portraiture. Shauna McCabe moderates.

http://www.wilkins.ws/panel.html

The EVA Awards deadline for nominations: April 30

2007-04-15T11:52:00.000-02:30

It's that time of year again, kids. Nominate early, nominate often, nominate yourself. Let's help make the EVAs even bigger and better than last year.

Nominations: EVA Awards

Nomination Regulations

Awards

1. The Long Haul Award recognizes a substantial contribution to the visual culture of Newfoundland and Labrador by a senior artist.

Award: $1,000.00

2. The Large Year Award* celebrates a visual artist who has enjoyed an exceptional year with much artistic growth, at least one exhibition and critical recognition.

Award: $1,000.00

3. The Kippy Goins Award -- so named for the small pieces of wood one throws on a fire to "keep it going" -- thanks an individual or organization whose efforts have helped to sustain and build the visual arts sector.

Award: original artwork

Nominating Rules

1. The deadline for nominations is: April30, 2007 at 5 p.m.

Anyone can nominate for any or all of the awards listed.
An individual can only nominate one name per award.
A single nomination is enough for an artist to be considered.
Artists may submit their own names for The Large Year Award*.
All nominations must be accompanied by relevant support materials:

· a 1 page letter stating the reasons for the nomination

· the artist’s CV

· 10-20 images in JPEG format only (no slides or photographs will be accepted), OR 10-20 minutes of video on VHS tape or DVD for video art and real-time art documentation (1 minute of video equals 1 still image/JPEG). Original artwork will not be accepted.

Note: you may choose to include no more than three additional pieces of support material (press clippings, reviews, critical writing, catalogues, etc.).

Winners will be selected by an awards jury comprised of three visual arts professions representing the provincial and the national perspectives. A shortlist of finalists will be announced in advance, and the winners will be announced at an awards gala in May 30, 2007 at The Rooms.

Send nominations to:

EVA Awards

Visual Artists Newfoundland and Labrador (VANL-CARFAC)

Devon House

59 Duckworth Street, 3rd Floor

St. John's, NL, Canada A1C 1E6

Eligibility

Nominations will be open to all permanent residents of Newfoundland and Labrador who have resided in the province for at least 12 months previous. Visual artists must be professionals as defined by the International Association of Art and adopted by the Canadian Artists’ Representation (CARFAC). Note: VANL Board members are not eligible for nominations.

*For The Large Year Award, the jury will be considering a Newfoundland & Labrador artist’s activities for the preceding calendar year, from January 1 to December 31.

Please Join Michael Crummey, Jane Urquhart, Peter Wilkins and myself for a panel discussion at the Rooms.

2007-04-12T19:33:00.000-02:30

Saturday April 21st 2007.

2pm.

The topic: Portraiture.

Admission: FREE, with regular admission ($5) to the Rooms, or VANL membership.

Michelle Stamp's Portraits at RCA

2007-03-16T12:44:00.001-02:30

Newfoundland celebrities are like herpes. Always there. No cure. I’ve always thought the incredible number of them was due to a kind of nationalism that exists here; that we feel the need to produce stars in this province to rival what goes on in Canada and America. Call it a cultural inferiority complex.

Once upon a time, I’d never heard of Joel Hynes. I’d never heard of the Novaks. Who the hell was Ed Kavanaugh? The name Paddy Daly had absolutely no meaning for me. I had a fuzzy recollection of Gerald Squires, who, for some reason, lived in a lighthouse for a while.

Even the CODCO crowd were a dimly lit pantheon who I vaguely remembered my parents finding outrageously entertaining.

Halifax has its own constellation of locals who, for various reasons, garner a kind of celebrity of their own: Joel Plaskett, Buck 65, the Trailer Park Boys, and others. In the six years I spent there in art school and bartending, I cannot think of a single time when any of the numerous local luminaries were featured in any way in a visual art exhibition.

Six years, people.

Six years and not once in all that time did any of the local galleries have a show entitled anything close to Portraits of a Bunch of People I Know Whom You Also Know Because, Hey, They’re Celebs, At Least Around Here, That Is.

But it’s a curious thing that in the last year in St. John’s there have been no fewer than four exhibitions based solely on the allure of the local celebrity. Kent Barrett, Cathia Finkel, Eastern Edge gallery’s Click! fundraiser, and now Michele Stamp’s graphite drawings at the Resource Centre for the Arts gallery.

I sometimes wonder if—like in a conceptual piece—local artists and audiences wouldn’t be better served by simply having celebrities’ names printed out and framed instead of having the artist go through the trouble of composing the image. That way, you could just read Paddy Daly’s name and then picture him with your mind’s eye, hosting his television show or whatever, chatting away in that most charming, downhome, Newfoundland accent of his.

Anyway.

Stamp’s show features 32 portraits of different people, some well-known, others less so. They are all delicately rendered, verging on preciousness sometimes. They are of similar size and all in staid black rectangular frames. The line quality is the type that my drawing instructors would have had serious problems with. That is, they would have had her work on a much larger scale, with charcoal or pen and ink, and ordered her to really attack the page. This generally imbues a given work with a lot more life and vibrancy.

As it is, some of the works feel cramped, others lifeless. You get the impression that Stamp was holding back, or that she was afraid to make a mistake. Dynamic drawings are those that have a full range of tonal values, with areas of intense darkness and light playing off the medium tones to produce an engaging interpretation of how light reflects off a given surface. A lot of this work is too preoccupied with the medium tones for my liking.

That being said, Stamp definitely has a gift for rendering, as the subjects do indeed look like themselves. My favourite was of Glen Tilley, noted CBC Radio producer, who gets more handsome with each passing day and possesses the most charmingly cowboy moustache I’ve ever seen. Meow! You’re a lucky woman, Mrs. Tilley.

This show ranks near the top of exhibitions in the relatively tiny canon of art about Newfoundland celebrities, if you go in for such things. However, when you’re there, you may begin to ask yourself, as I did, why the dominant areas of focus for Newfoundland visual artists tend to be limited to landscape painting and local celebrity portraiture.

As a visiting friend from Winnipeg recently demonstrated with her question, Who the hell are these people?—shows such as these have an extremely limited appeal. You’ve gotta be from here to get it. And considering that the province’s acclaimed writers and theatre artists rarely make their work explicitly about real live local celebrities, you’ve got to wonder what is wrong with visual artists for them to be so caught up with the local celebs they know.

I mean, who cares already?

Lectures at RCAV

2007-02-21T15:22:00.000-03:30

I encourage everyone to get down to the Hall tonight to catch Gerard Curtis, Jennifer Dyer and Bruce Johnson give talks at 7pm.

Kathy Browning and Susan Jamieson at RCA

2007-02-21T14:25:00.000-03:30

I was at the opening of this show back in January and have been conflicted about what, if anything, I should write about the experience since.

I was tempted, and had even decided, that I'd just ignore the whole thing and hope it would go away (which almost worked, as this show comes down on February 25th), but something kept gnawing at me. It was this: if I were willing to just let it go, to ignore the show, how was I, as self-appointed critic and visual arts supporter, any different than the numerous artists in Newfoundland whose perceived slights and grievances cause them to trash-talk one another at the drop of a hat?

So, fuck it, here goes:

The work in Shift is simply not of professional calibre.

Jamieson's paintings are pseudo-Impressionist/pseudo-Expressionist renderings of stormy seas, big waves, and so on, that we've all seen a million times already, with the difference being they aren't very well done. They date from 1979 all the way up to 2007, and there doesn't really appear to be much progression or change in terms of her practice, such as it is. For what it's worth, I liked the oldest one the most of any of them.

Browning, it seems, has taken a crack at the digital image game, presenting a series of photos of icebergs emblazoned with other images of trees, rock faces and other facets of the landscape not usually found on the surface of icebergs. If the best art is read in terms of a poetic fusion of form and content, then this work might be seen as a commentary on how the digital age has resulted in a confusion between what's an iceberg and what's a line of trees. Or something.

The images also don't do well in terms of their size, as they look as though they were printed on a home computer, and don't stray much beyond the 81/2" by 11" paper size.

Anyway, I guess we can always hope that Shift lives up to its name, and marks the beginning of a sea-change in what RCAV has decided to show. Time will tell.

Peter Wilkins at the Rooms

2007-01-22T13:27:00.000-03:30

My introduction to the complex and varied history of portraiture occurred in my first year at NSCAD, when my Marxist art history prof contrasted the neo-Classical portraits of Napoleon by J.L. David to the emerging Impressionism of Gustave Courbet's The Stonebreakers.

The foundation laid by Courbet's depiction of anonymous labourers, as opposed to an Emperor, later made possible, amongst many other things, Manet's Olympia, and Charles Baudelaire's The Painter of Modern Life. The above examples are the starting points for my eventual engagement with the work of Peter Wilkins.

For some time I've been struggling with what to say about Wilkins' Kinetic Portraits. When I first heard about the original showing of this work at Eastern Edge in 2004 (before I'd moved back to St. John's), in which Newfoundland celebrities were featured, my gut told me it was perhaps the most cynical art practice I'd ever encountered. There's no better way to garner attention for your work than if you pile a bunch of celebrities into it, I thought. Everyone loves their celebs, and Newfoundlanders have enough home-grown pride to make a Texan blush.

So I disregarded the whole thing as rubbish even without seeing it. I'd seen photos. I'd seen the numerous press write ups. I'd heard what the "concept" was. I didn't care for it. I thought, How much excitement or attention would there be for this work if Wilkins, like Courbet, presented regular people instead of well-known and celebrated personalities?

For those of you who don't know, the kinetic portraits work as follows: Wilkins asks the celebrity questions about pivotal moments in their lives, their hopes, dreams, ideals, fears etcetera. He writes down their answers. Then, with the camera on, he reads the answers back to the interviewee. In theory, the celebrity's reactions to their own words creates a truer or more accurate portrait of who they are.

So I went to the Rooms on Friday, and then again (braving a snow-storm) on Sunday to have a look at the newest incarnation of the work featuring 12 celebrated Canadian writers. Atwood, Anne-Marie MacDonald, Yann Martel amongst others.

The installation looks great with the twelve flat-screen monitors on the walls with frames around them to reference painting. The writers all variously look amused, intent on listening, fidgety, or stone-faced. A few of them look like they might be passing gas. Martel's was the most interesting because he chose to be video-taped with his pet parakeet moving around on his shoulders and behind his head, suggesting to me, at least, that he was using the bird as a distraction to the viewer, and was uncomfortable with showing too much of himself. But then, I thought, all of the writers were probably doing the same thing in their own way. Anyone who's seen Survivor knows that the presence of a camera doesn't really capture anything "real" or "true" but, in fact, reveals only a person's willingness to perform in front of it.

What emerged for me after this initial revelation was that the sub-text had quickly become the text, as it were. The work isn't actually about knowing these people in a way more profound than watching a television interview, or for that matter, reading their books. It is about the process Wilkins had to go through to meet and interview each of the writers. It is work about the invisible strata of agents, personal assistants, schmoozing, and penetrating the world of Canada's cultural elite. It is work that makes you think: Man, I wish I got to hang out with Margaret Atwood.

So, in this way, due to who's interviewed, the Kinetic Portraits operate as a kind of critique of the art-world and the culture industry. The idea that one's finished product could only ever be secondary to whom one knows is expressed with an irony and eloquence lacking in much contemporary work which claims to critique celebrity culture and the moral bankruptcy of the art-world. I found myself lamenting the naive notion that art could really change the world, that art was anything more than an industry with products and personalities only slightly less disposable than in other industries. I thought about the foolishness of Manet and Baudelaire with their calls for "Modern Heroism", and the irony of their eventual acceptance by the Academy.

As I trudged home in the snow-storm on Sunday after seeing the show, I can safely say that my heart was broken.

The show is up until April 29th.

Les Newman's Death Of The Party/ Immony Men & Mira Lyn Lu's Taking Care Of Business

2007-01-19T12:22:00.000-03:30

Eastern Edge gallery has kicked off 2007 on something of a high note with its first show of the new year featuring Winnipeg's perennial trouble-maker Les Newman and Concordia undergrad students Immony Men and Mira Lyn Lu.

Newman presents four 2D wall works from his series, The Death Of The Party, a collection of text snippets from a plethora of sources set against intense fields of various colour and shape.

Newman's influences run from the Cult of Bacchus with its orgies, drunken frenzies, and obliteration of the senses to the life and writing of Charles Bukowski, a degenerate drunk and problem gambler, whose wry, ironic humour is evidenced in Newman's one-liners. "Irony" as it has been used in the contemporary art-world is nothing more than a code word for being a smart ass, in that artists are generally saying the opposite of what they really mean. The text in Newman's work, however, is truly ironic in that the statements he employs give expression to contradictory emotions that are both felt sincerely.

It's black humour, and in Newman's work, there seems to be a suspicion that life is a meaningless and futile struggle. That we're all fucked, basically, and that one of the meager pleasures of being alive is finding humour and rage in the bowels of our own helplessness and alienation and disillusionment with the (art) world. It also helps to get fucked up. Or once did, anyway. Which, in a way, is the sad part about The Death Of The Party: the realization that, at best, a strategy for dealing with the meaningless of our existence can only be a short term fix. The hangover, and the too bright reality of the day, are always just around the corner.

Men and Lu's installation, Taking Care Of Business, provides an interesting counter-point to Newman's work. A to-scale reproduction of an anonymous office space is printed, post-it note by tiny post-it note on your run-of-the-mill computer printer, and stuck to the gallery wall in a grid format.

The process takes several days to complete, with the artists putting in the regular 9-5 day of an ordinary office employee. The piece puts Men and Yu into the roles of unskilled manual laborers, completing the same small, repetitive, mind-numbingly boring task in a project that once the show ends, will not exist outside of documentation. Equating artistic labour with the mundane paper work of a day job undermines the artist's position as genius or cultural visionary, and emphasizes the notion of artist as worker, subject to the same alienation and exploitation as anyone else who struggles to pay the bills.

As of this writing, the project is still ongoing, and anyone reading this is encouraged to go down to Eastern Edge to check on the progress.

The show runs until February 24th.

One Year

2006-12-11T19:30:00.000-03:30

Thanks to everyone who's stayed interested and kept reading and commenting in the first year of Art In Newfoundland's existence. Here's hoping you (and I) stick around.

Thanks.

City of St. John's Art Procurement

2006-12-11T18:56:00.000-03:30

Last Thursday I went to City Hall to check out which artists our city had decided to support. I had heard there was also going to be free food AND booze, so there was no way I could possibly miss it.

I've mentioned on this blog before how beautiful the galleries at our Provincial Gallery are, and how, should there ever be a show which included a lump of dog shit on its spectacular floors, the tird would still manage to inspire a great deal of awe. Such, unfortunately, is not the case at City Hall. A hulking, cold, grey, concrete bunker, I wonder if anything within its walls (including his Worship) could ever possibly approach anything resembling attractiveness.

That's not to say, of course, that the works presented were sub par (a handful of them were not), but that the paintings and prints on display didn't much benefit from the atmosphere.

I'd give the finger foods a B-, and the beer an A.

What really struck me about the event, which blissfully didn't drag on for too long, was Councilor Shannie Duff's mention of this year's jury for the art procurement.

Get this: they were, in descending order of artistic knowledge: Grant Boland (artist), Shannie Duff (city councilor), and Shawn(?) Skinner (provincial stooge).

I suppose it could be argued that since the art work would be hanging in the chambers of City Hall, a jury comprised mostly of bureaucrats should be able to pick what works they liked. This argument of course would be bullshit, given that the City's art procurement program is supposed to be in service and support of local artists, and not simply to make more pleasant the decidedly unpleasant setting where our city officials work. But then I suppose I should just shut up and be happy that the city buys any art at all, especially given Ron Ellsworth's recent suggestion that we should just do away with the city's art procurement altogether.

Yep, that's some Cultural Capital we live in.

Brian O'Dea and private donations to artists

2006-11-24T12:53:00.000-03:30

I was lucky enough last month to attend the Fresh Fish Award ceremony as part of WANL's annual AGM. It was great fun with numerous workshops over the weekend, a nice supper, and drinks.

Something Brian O'Dea, the Fresh Fish benefactor said before giving out the award has been sticking in my craw ever since. He mentioned how the award is the biggest of its kind in Canada, and given that he "doesn't have any dough" (a matter for some debate), how was it conceivable that he was the one putting up the money for this sort of thing?

Given how the public is constantly bombarded by how proud we should all feel for Newfoundland and Labradorian culture, how can it be that the wealthy members of our community are dropping the ball? I know, I know: the wealthy patrons are out there buying art, making donations to cultural orginazations (Saint Rick Mercer's $10000 donation to the Hall springs to mind), but given the comparably pitiful amount the NLAC has to dole out each year, where is the splashy, headline grabbing generosity for which Newfoundlanders are so renowned?

Paul Bowdring, NLAC, and Arms Length Funding

2006-11-22T12:38:00.000-03:30

Paul Bowdring

Now that the grants have come out (or not, as the case may be), I thought it may be timely to bring up several things that have been bothering me about the functioning of our dear provincial funding body.

For those of you who don't know, Bowdring, poet, novelist, editor and teacher, stepped down in disgust from NLAC, citing "government interference" as the chief cause of his resignation. Why this event hasn't caused a shit-storm of controversy amongst the local community is beyond me, illuminating perhaps artists' ignorance to the growing political machinations behind the Department of TOURISM.

It also illuminates the need for serious action to be taken by VANL (and the various other artist representatives in this province) for Arms Length Funding for the arts. What this means, of course, is that government bureaucrats will have no say on which projects get funded and which do not. As it stands, a representative from the department oversees which projects have been selected for funding, and essentially has veto power over projects he or she believes isn't in the best interest of the government. Many artists I've talked to don't even know what Arms-Length Funding is, leading me to believe that VANL has failed to educate artists about the issues they face in regards to their livelihood.

As for Mr. Bowdring, he deserves credit for being a stand-up guy. Thanks.

NLAC

Recent talks with associates of mine who didn't receive funding for their project grants has confirmed a suspicion I've been carrying for a long time. Appointment to the granting committee at the Arts Council doesn't necessarily indicate an understanding of what visual art actually is. You may have been a hobbyist photographer for the last thirty years, but that doesn't mean shit if you know nothing about art history and contemporary art practice. Contemporary art is not simply defined as art being made today, but rather questions (conceptually, formally, etcetera) the assumptions and conventions under which art production has operated for the last 3000 or so years. That members of a jury in Newfoundland and Labrador have the arrogance to reject projects because they "couldn't decide if the proposed project was art or not", or because they thought the project was flawed "ethically", would be laughable if it weren't so fucking depressing.

What needs to happen in the selection of jury members for NLAC is a bias toward adjudicators who stress fairness and open-mindedness when considering proposals, and not those who adhere to an extremely narrow view of art making that excludes all other modes of expression aside from their own.

And also, I didn't apply for a visual art grant this time around, so it isn't just sour grapes on my part.

Off Hiatus

2006-10-16T15:37:00.000-02:30

Hi. I'm back. I hope there's at least some of you still reading. If so, check out the brief review of Greg Bennett's show below.

Oh. And for more stuff I've written about what's happening in St. John's, check out akimbo.biz

Greg Bennett at the Leyton Gallery

2006-10-16T14:55:00.000-02:30

What does Ferris Ball Blues: A Secular Idol Runs Amok, mean?

I went to see Greg Bennett's latest offering recently at the Leyton Gallery, and while I for the most part enjoyed many of the paintings in the show, I found myself wondering how in the world the above title related to the canvases I saw. Colour me baffled.

Bennett, who recently returned to St. John's after a two year stint in Toronto, is well known for his luscious and labourious oil paintings, one of which, presented in this show, that he's worked on for several years.

What struck me most about these works was Bennett's pre-occupation with double images, mirror effects and numerous, fragmented planes within each canvas. The dual skeletons of Davy Jones' Locker leer at each other from opposite sides of one canvas, while two identical Paliminos stare out at the viewer from another painting. In one image, set in some urban art supply store, the scene is split into many confusing planes that compete for the viewer's attention, recalling, for me, at least, some of Manet's early paintings set in the the decidedly moderne bustle of 19th Century Paris. But it is less the alienation or obliteration of the self by the cityscape that these paintings address, and more an exploration of the shcism between the exterior and interior worlds that Bennett seems concerned with here. Much of the imagery for this work came from Bennett's travels, and I kept wondering if these paintings, as documents of an actual, external journey, mirrored an internal journey Bennet had undertaken while away from Newfoundland.

Either way, the show is worth checking out for the several well crafted paintings being shown, even if the title of the exhibition still throws you for a loop.

Craig Francis Power's Salty Dog at the Rogue Gallery, Eastern Edge

2006-08-07T13:23:00.000-02:30

Please go see my piece, Salty Dog, at Eastern Edge. It's up until August 12th.

100 Paper Moths by Kym Greeley

2006-08-07T12:44:00.000-02:30

Many residents of downtown St. John's may have been unaware of a beautiful installation right under their noses last week amongst the trees of the grounds of the Anglican Cathedral right across from the Casbah restaurant. I found my way there after receiving an invite from the artist herself, and after hearing a very brief interview on CBC radio about the work.

A heavy rain from the night before had me worried about whether the installation had survived, and for about ten minutes I wandered around the grounds outside the Anglican Catherdral looking for the elusive paper moths I'd heard so much about. The real moths were there in strong supply, of course, and many times I'd come up to a tree whereupon a moth was pitching and have it unexpectedly fly away.

I eventually found the paper moths on the trunks of the trees that line the fence overlooking Duckworth Street, and noticed that many of them were also strewn in the tall grass near the ground. They are very simply and elegantly constructed, consisting of the paper cut-out shape, a dab of glue, and a straight pin through the centre of the cut-out for affixing to the trees and grass.

Maybe it's just me (I've been a little fixated on moths lately as well), but I found myself wondering what Greeley was getting at with this piece. I like the idea of art hiding in plain sight: from a distance the paper moths can pretty easily be mistaken for real ones, and you would have had to hear the radio interview or spoken with the artist to know about the work in the first place. But what I kept coming back to was the idea of the moth as a symbol for transformation. Maybe it's trite, but I kept wondering if Greeley was perhaps suggesting there is some larger change coming to the way art is seen and made in our fair city. Time will tell.

There may still be time to see this work if the wind and rain hasn't yet stripped the trees.

Janet Cardiff at the Rooms

2006-07-07T22:06:00.000-02:30

My friend (and sometime enemy), the video artist Emily Vey Duke, once asked me to describe my experience of beauty.

After some thought, I told her that no matter what it was, an art piece, a lilac tree, a sunset, a person, kittens, whatever, that my initial response to the beautiful was a kind of mixture of sadness and happiness, at once.

You mean tenderness, she said.

Yes, I said.

The first time I experienced Janet Cardiff’s Forty Piece Motet was the day after my girlfriend had left me. The last word she had ever spoken to me was loser. This was in Halifax years ago and Cardiff’s piece had just hit the big time, as it were, it seemed like everyone everywhere was really going ape-shit for it. I sat in Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery and bawled like a fucking baby, complete strangers standing around trying not to look at me, the voices from Cardiff’s speakers raised in worship.

So when I went back to Cardiff’s piece this time around, at the Rooms just a little while ago, I was curious as to what effect the piece would have on me.

It has become very un-hip to talk about the beautiful in the art world these days, but there is simply no other way to describe Cardiff’s stunning sound installation. The piece, for those not familiar, is a recording of Thomas Tallis' polyphonic choral work from 1575, Spem in alium. Tallis' Latin text translates this way:

I have never put my hope in any other but in you God of Israel who will be angry and yet become again gracious and who forgives all the sins of suffering man. Lord God Creator of Heaven and Earth look upon our lowliness.

The work consists of forty speakers on stands at about six feet from the floor, arranged in a semi-circle in the gallery with metre upon metre of fine copper audio wire connecting them. There’s one speaker for each singer, each voice mastered individually so that you can stroll along hearing each member of the Salisbury Cathedral Choir or sit in the middle of the semi-circular arrangement to get the full effect. It’s an extremely elegant installation, and as I’ve said several times, you could put a lump of dogshit in the Rooms art galleries and it would still look spectacular.

And what happened, you ask? Why, I felt all the old feelings begin to stir again. I thought I could recall every detail of my ex-girlfriend’s face as she left the apartment for the last time so long ago. I felt less alone in the world, and yet, at the same time, the feeling of loneliness I suppose we all carry around with us every day was made greater and more poignant by the beautiful voices coming out of the speakers that surrounded me. I thought about how wonderful it would be if there really was a God of Israel who forgave everything, and about how beautiful it would be if there really was a love that went on and on, forever and ever, amen.

The only question that remains about this work, as it does with all good pieces of art, is whether repeated visits to the gallery will produce the same feelings of tenderness and awe that my initial visits provoked. Or whether, tragically, and against one’s best efforts, those feelings begin to fade.

Janet Cardiff’s Forty Piece Motet is a heartbreakingly beautiful marriage of cutting-edge technology and classical hymn. It’s at the Rooms Provincial Art Gallery until September 17^th 2006. Don’t miss it.

My Piece About Cyril Butler, from Current

2006-06-13T17:18:00.000-02:30

No one has ever come on my face.

From what I’ve heard, once the sperm gets in your eyes, those little guys just swim their hearts out. It hurts.

Nor have I ever appeared in public with a giant vibrating dildo up my ass. Not that I recall anyway.

I’m always willing to take an artist much more seriously if they’re willing to put themselves at risk. What sucks worst about bad art is when you get the feeling the artist’s heart is so removed from their work that it’s just a kind of mindless exercise for them. Like filling out a form. That’s why Jerry Bruckheimer (BAD ARTIST) will never be confused with Rainer Werner Fassbinder (GOOD ARTIST).

In Newfoundland (and Labrador), there seem to be two very separate and decidedly unequal camps of artists. Those of the Jerry Bruckheimer variety: you know, the ones whose work will always have some reference to cod, or icebergs, or mummurs, or the innate friendliness and goodness of Newfoundlanders or blah blah blah (insert your own cliché here). There are then the Fassbinders: the ones who consistently challenge themselves and their audience through the form, content, conceptualization or whatever of the work. These latter artists, unfortunately, are in the vast minority.

Which brings me to performance artist Cyril Butler (GOOD ARTIST). Concerned primarily with representations of sex and sexuality in the mainstream media, Butler is perhaps best known for his performance at Eastern Edge Gallery’s Art Marathon last year. If It Fits consisted of Butler on stage in a pair of bright pink underwear with a heart-shaped hole cut out of the rear. He proceeded to lube up and insert a vibrating dildo up his ass while the crowd looked on. With both his mouth and the vibrator heard via separate microphones, Butler began reciting clichéd lines he’d memorized from the very dregs of so-called “queer” mainstream culture: Will & Grace, Queer As Folk, Queer Eye For The Straight Guy and so on, while the volume on the buzzing dildo slowly increased. What you eventually heard was only the drone of the dildo, as Butler’s voice was slowly drowned out.

Also causing a stir was Butler’s Free Money Shots at the Ship Inn, wherein the artist was splattered with fake semen by a friend while a third snapped photos. Audience members were encouraged to leave their e-mail addresses to receive the digital photos of Butler free of charge, and some even asked to have their own “money shot” taken on stage. Here Butler was interested in dissecting porn iconography and creating a dialogue about the reality or lack thereof in these shots, the literal climax of just about every porn scene ever recorded since, like, 1990.

But possibly most important to Butler as a performance artist in St. John’s is the fostering of a performance art scene in the city, something that’s been noticeably absent from the capital’s vibrant community of artists with very few exceptions. This summer, Butler is planning a performance series through Eastern Edge to take place in various locations around St. John’s and is requesting input and assistance from other artists and anyone else interested in performance art that challenges the conventions and norms of the art-world, and in creating a space of vulnerability and communication in non-traditional art venues. It’s a good step in the right direction in the struggle to make people understand that there’s more to Newfoundland culture than Screech, hard-drinkin’, rubber boots, dories, and the innumerable other sickening clichés currently plaguing the populace.

Douglas Coupland at the Rooms (Again)

2006-06-06T13:43:00.000-02:30

There seems to have been much more written about Douglas Coupland, mainlander superstar, than about his actual exhibit at the Rooms, and so I'll briefly address his installation, the likes of which probably hasn't been seen too much around these parts in quite some time.

As an artist whose main influences come from Baudelaire and Manet, Pop, conceptual art practice, and performance, I tend to enter into a relationship with art based more upon its political under-pinnings or social critique than upon the purely aesthetic. (That's not to say that I don't like beauty, however).

Coupland's installation, consisting almost entirely of wall text, draws aesthetically from a conceptual and minimalist history, but seems to concern itself more with the tension between text as communicative tool, and text as image, rather than the breakdown of the art market through a de-materialized art object.

The solid block of text upon the opposite wall as you enter the gallery dominates your experience of the show. It's almost like a monolith. It's formal simplicity suggesting complexity. I found that I went back and forth between just seeing this giant square of text, and actually reading what was written: a kind of stream-of-consciousness mish-mash of confession, gossip, keen observation, business slogans and advertising jargon that had the effect of creating a kind of irritating (and yet somehow pleasureable) buzz in my head, like when the radio is tuned to two stations at once.

The opposite wall pieces, consisting of Cheetos ingredients and Chinese lettering for pornography, amongst other things, couldn't draw me away from the main text piece. Even the paper sculpture "wedges" seemed secondary, as did the adjacent room filled floor to ceiling with tiny numbers on black Mac Tac, which felt like something lifted from The Matrix. The entire show felt like it could have been just the main wall piece, and that the other elements were added on and un-neccasary.

It's obvious to me that Coupland has more than a passing interest in the tension between low and high culture, and of technology's rapidly escalating effect on our psyche, but it almost feels as though he's trying to be Canada's answer to William Gibson. By which I mean, a kind of pseudo-intellectual pop-cultural guru trying to sort out where this techonological revolution is leading, and what long term effects life as a video game is having on us. I say: Fair enough. Give'r. And I haven't read the book (which may well cause me to re-visit this work once I have (and I must note: I'm very interested in the crossover between a work of written fiction and it's visual art counterpart, it's a great idea)), but I found the installation interesting, but not something that neccasarily wrenched my heart.

Serious props should go out to Shauna McCabe, who, judging from this, will continue to curate prominent, challenging artists from across Canada and internationally. Thanks.

Who Puts An Art School In Corner Brook?

2006-06-06T12:49:00.000-02:30

Can someone please explain how this came about? I guess it was before my time or whatever, but I've always wondered how the idea of having Memorial's art school in Corner Brook was taken seriously in the first place, and how, in the name of all that's holy, it actually happened.

At the EVA Awards, it was mentioned that Mary Pratt had a hand in the school being there, but who else is to blame? Surely it wasn't just her.

I just can't imagine, say, Garry Neil Kennedy taking over NSCAD in 1969 and moving the school to, like, Pictou, a small town in rural Nova Scotia. It's baffling.

In my experience, very few graduates from SWGC have a grasp of contemporary work, art history, or theory of any kind. It's like they've been told that none of that is very important, and upon graduating carry around a resentment of challenging contemporary work... as if it's all bullshit or something.

I just don't get it.

I mean, I think part of the problem for visual artists in this province is how divided we are. In St. John's, there's the Rooms, two Artist Run Centres, numerous commerical galleries, film and video production houses and a shit-load of other cultural instituions that are constantly producing work. And the art school, the place where our younger artists are being trained, where there's (theoretically) a well-spring of energy and excitement , is clear on the other side of the island. How does this make sense?

Please discuss.

The EVA Awards Ceremony

2006-06-06T12:11:00.000-02:30

The EVA Awards Ceremony happened last Thursday and it was a really swell event at the Rooms. Will Gill won for the Large Year Award, Bonnie Leyton for the Kippy Goins, and Mary Pratt for the Long Haul.

The saucy and be-skirted Angela Antle was the host, and it ran pretty smoothly, aside from the odd technological glitch. It was lovely to see such a diverse group of artists together in one room, from all parts of the province, and from all stages of development. I felt more part of a community as an artist in Newfoundland than at any other time I've been here. So thanks to VANL, at the very least, for that.

What was refreshing for me was the sincerity from each of the winners. It was all very sweet, and also was in such stark contrast to the NLAC Awards, wherein (as just one example of the difference) Paul Pope's self-congratulatory twenty minute acceptance speech for his Lifetime Award or whatever it was he won had me in fits of boredom and resentment. There was none of that shit here, thank God. And while I'm all for more publicity and attention for visual artists in this province, and am somewhat skeptical about this supposed inherent shyness visual artists have, we should draw the line at becoming the self obsessed, obnoxious, ego-maniacs that dominate other fields of artistic expression around here.

I was also quite shocked to learn that there are far more people reading this blog than I thought. I mean, there's a Site Meter I have that tells me how many hits the site gets or whatever, but this was ridiculous. There were people I'd never met there who knew who I was and who liked or dis-liked me accordingly.

To everyone reading this, please comment on the various things I've written. The entire point of this is to foster dialogue. Thanks.

Douglas Coupland at the Rooms

2006-05-23T11:33:00.000-02:30

I wasn't there, and I've yet to see the show myself, but already I've heard wildly varying opinions. Please leave comments about the show, and once I see it, I'll join in.

Have at it.

The Festering, ReAnimated Corpse of Official Newfoundland Culture

2006-05-13T14:18:00.000-02:30

I recently went to see High Steel at the Hall. Given that I know almost nothing about theatre, I just have one question to ask: Is there anyone else out there sick to death of being told how proud we should all feel for being Newfoundlanders? I know I am.