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"Wondering: Whither the Toronto Biennial Report?"

5 Comments -

1 – 5 of 5
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Honestly, how can Toronto expect to host a biennial under the bloated asinine buffoonery that has metastasized at City Hall?? The entire idea of biennial hinges on one thing -- funding. With no support from the city, you can count on zero federal support as well, who knows provincially and even with all three it wouldn't be enough anyway. Any biennial would simply be mirroring TIAF (or whatever it's called now) and be a shitty dealer- driven rental event. We should focus on improving what we have such as the presence at Venice (also terribly under supported, NGC I think has recently taken it back, but still).

December 7, 2010 at 11:31 PM

Blogger Leah Sandals said...

Hey anonymous,

Thanks for your comment.

Personally, I don't really care whether a Toronto biennial happens either.

As I believe I alluded to in my April notes, there were a number of criticisms or cautionary points that others raised about the idea as well.

Also, I believe I indicated that, in my opinion, existing resources could perhaps be better used simply by doing more shows of Ontario and/or Toronto artists on a regular basis.

(Sorry for all the typos and "I believes" but I'm on the go right now.)

In any case, I'm with you on questioning how worthy a use of resources any hypothetical Toronto biennial would be.

So it's not lack of action on the biennial front in general that I feel disappointed about.

What I feel diappointed about is two major institutions promising to do something that is really quite simple and that they said repeatedly asserted they were going to do--making a report on the biennial panels and related video footage available to the public in May (a full month later).

That they have not followed through on this entirely doable promise to the public is really sad to see.

December 8, 2010 at 8:20 AM

Blogger Leah Sandals said...

Sorry that should be "that they have not followed through on this entirely doable promise some six to seven months later"

December 8, 2010 at 8:22 AM

Anonymous Gareth Bate said...

Leah, thanks for following up on this, I've been wondering what happened to this idea!

It really doesn't bode well that nothing seems to have come out of that panel discussion.

The sense I got at the event was that no one really wanted to be in charge or take the initiative to lead it.--And no one wanted someone else to take charge!

Personally I think we shouldn't bother and should instead come up with some really great NEW IDEA!

Instead of having a single person or organization lead, it should be like our other city events where people join on with their own projects.

But yes, as Anonymous said above our current Toronto political climate is a real issue.

----Or is it? Perhaps having to deal with the situation and the lack of funding could be interesting? It doesn't always have to cost a lot of money to make art.

January 2, 2011 at 12:01 PM

Blogger Leah Sandals said...

Hi Gareth,

Thanks for your comment. Those are all interesting angles on the situation.

I have heard more recently as a ****TOTALLY UNVERIFIED RUMOUR*** (I put that in caps and asterisks because I want to be clear that this is exactly that--unverified, a rumour, and therefore likely to be taken with ***a bazillion rocks of salt*** as ***quite possible to never happen***) that the AGO might be doing something on a biennial-type front with Luminato.

But we'll see! My opinion remains that part of the reason there's so much pressure from some quarters to have a biennial type event is that Toronto institutions generally do a poor job of exhibiting contemporary Ontario art.

January 3, 2011 at 8:31 AM

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