Column

Writer

Location

issue-122-p8-11.pdf

Feminism

Philosophy

This column includes a fictional discussion between Maryse Larivière and Polly, who is described as “the world’s smartest African grey parrot.” The discussion touches on feminism, women writers, artist books, political philosophy, and a wide range of other themes and subjects.

On Writing: The Parrot

issue-122-p11-12.pdf

Collage

The Primer includes a reproduction of Maryse Larivire’s work The Window May be Open (2014), which is a digital collage.

Primer: The Window May be Open

Jon Lockyer is the Director of Artspace in Peterborough, Ontario.

issue-122-p71-72.pdf

Landscape

Language

This issue’s Inventory consists of a series of descriptions of works and projects that relate to place, language and landscape. The series includes a brief description of Rebecca Belmore’s recent billboard work that was produced in conjunction with the Contact Photography Festival, which explored the invisibility and dispossession of native people’s in Canada, as well as a description of Stan Douglas’ recent project Circa 1948 that explores post-war Vancouver.

Inventory: Location

Artist

issue-122-p72-73.pdf

Conceptual

Built environment

Text

Cities

Artefact contains image and text pertaining to Josh Thorpe and David Court’s work On Printed Matter (2011), which consisted of vinyl text on the window of Printed Matter in New York. There is an image of the window on the inside of the issue’s back-cover, along with a body of text that relates to the themes and structure of the project on page 72\. The text relating to the project is not the product of a single author, but rather is compiled from interviews with Myles Bennet, Dan Graham, Mark Jan Krayenhoff van de Leur, and others.

Artefact: On Printed Matter

thumbnail_Gallery44_Mar27-Apr30,2024_Size B.jpeg

Gallery44_Mar27-Apr30,2024_Size B.jpeg

md_Gallery44_Mar27-Apr30,2024_Size A.jpeg

sm_Gallery44_Mar27-Apr30,2024_Size A.jpeg

thumbnail_Gallery44_Mar27-Apr30,2024_Size A.jpeg

Gallery44_Mar27-Apr30,2024_Size A.jpeg

Gallery 44

md_Capture_Web 1_April 2024_300x250.png

sm_Capture_Web 1_April 2024_300x250.png

thumbnail_Capture_Web 1_April 2024_300x250.png

Capture_Web 1_April 2024_300x250.png

lg_Capture_Web 1_April 2024_970x180.png

md_Capture_Web 1_April 2024_970x180.png

sm_Capture_Web 1_April 2024_970x180.png

thumbnail_Capture_Web 1_April 2024_970x180.png

Capture_Web 1_April 2024_970x180.png

Capture

sm_Optica_Web 1_mobile_April 15-May 15, 2024.jpeg

thumbnail_Optica_Web 1_mobile_April 15-May 15, 2024.jpeg

Optica_Web 1_mobile_April 15-May 15, 2024.jpeg

lg_Optica_Web 1_banner_April 15-May 15, 2024.jpeg

md_Optica_Web 1_banner_April 15-May 15, 2024.jpeg

sm_Optica_Web 1_banner_April 15-May 15, 2024.jpeg

thumbnail_Optica_Web 1_banner_April 15-May 15, 2024.jpeg

Optica_Web 1_banner_April 15-May 15, 2024.jpeg

Optica

thumbnail_CanadianArtHop_April_SizeB.jpg

CanadianArtHop_April_SizeB.jpg

md_CanadianArtHop_April_SizeA.jpg

sm_CanadianArtHop_April_SizeA.jpg

thumbnail_CanadianArtHop_April_SizeA.jpg

CanadianArtHop_April_SizeA.jpg

ADAC

thumbnail_CraftCouncilNL_Web1_Apr1-May1_SizeB.jpeg

CraftCouncilNL_Web1_Apr1-May1_SizeB.jpeg

md_CraftCouncilNL_Web1_Apr1-May1_SizeA.jpeg

sm_CraftCouncilNL_Web1_Apr1-May1_SizeA.jpeg

thumbnail_CraftCouncilNL_Web1_Apr1-May1_SizeA.jpeg

CraftCouncilNL_Web1_Apr1-May1_SizeA.jpeg

Craft NL

lg_C_Magazine-PKB-simple.jpg

md_C_Magazine-PKB-simple.jpg

sm_C_Magazine-PKB-simple.jpg

thumbnail_C_Magazine-PKB-simple.jpg

C_Magazine-PKB-simple.jpg

Editorial

In this issue, which is about “location” in all its complex geographic and social meanings, contributors discuss the work of a number of artists whose work explores the relationship between place, language and images. Among the essays in this issue, Corrine Fitzpatrick writes about the work of Etel Adnan, a Lebanese-American poet, essayist and painter, whose practice moves back and forth between visual and written modes of working, evocatively describing the political and physical landscapes the artist has inhabited throughout her 90 years of life. Kimberly Phillips describes two recent exhibitions by Canadian artist Marian Penner Bancroft and Israeli artist Noa Giniger, presenting a meditation on the melancholic character of the image, and how these two artists offer images as ways of enacting relationships to places and times that can no longer be accessed. Nicholas Brown examines Dutch artist Renzo Martens’ Institute for Human Activities (IHA), a project where Martens established an institution for research, therapy and creative production on a former plantation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Simultaneously critiquing and enacting many of the problems associated with international foreign aid, the IHA reveals deeply entrenched global disparities in the production and consumption of images. Also in this issue, Alexandra Phillips looks at why Berlin has become the destination of choice for Canadian artists, and what this says about the influence of transnational travel on artistic production. And, more pragmatically, in Stopover, an artist project by Stephanie Loveless and Alexis Bhagat, fellow artists are asked what they think about the Greyhound terminal in Albany, NY, an inevitable stopping point for those travelling between their respective home cities of Montreal and New York.

While we typically use the features section of the magazine to explore a theme to which we’ve asked writers to respond, such as Walking (the theme of our previous issue), or Wet (the theme of our next issue), our theme for this issue emerged from proposals that we received from writers. Reviews, on the other hand, are not explicitly connected to any given issue theme. They do, however, innately express and produce location, positioning artists’ work within national and international matrices of contemporary art practice. And while reviews serve a similar function as features, in providing critical discussion of an artist’s work, the review format aims for a higher degree of stylistic consistency and geographical breadth, making connections between work happening all across the globe.

The review also offers both writers and readers a consistent and predictable format. Over the past few years we’ve found that the 1,000-word review is the optimal length for a sustained discussion of an exhibition. Writers have engaged the review format with eloquent and illuminating interpretations of the projects they cover, enriching the experiences of both viewers and readers. We’re especially proud of the quality of the writing in this section of the magazine, and of the work being reviewed. As this issue goes to press, Canada’s national daily, The Globe and Mail, announced that Graeme Patterson and Chris Curreri, both of whom are featured in the reviews section, have been shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award, one of Canada’s most prestigious prizes for artists. We’re proud of all the artists in this issue for the quality and importance of their work, as well as for the recognition they have received.

C Magazine is in itself an expression of “location”. Perhaps this issue is an opportunity to think of it as a map of global contemporary art practice with Canada at its centre. 

Amish Morrell is Assistant Professor at OCAD University, where he teaches Criticism & Curatorial Practice, and Visual and Critical Studies.

Editor

issue-122-p6-7.pdf

Representation

In this editorial Amish Morrell provides a brief description of the feature articles in Issue 122, centering these articles on a consideration of place, language and images.

Editorial: Location

Feature

issue-122-p12-17.pdf

Painting

Politics

In this article the author discusses the work of Etal Adnan as it relates to place, politics and landscape painting. Adnan has exhibited a sustained interest in painting Mount Tamalpais, which she has drawn from for over 30 years. The development of her practice, and her related writing, is addressed, with a consideration of the political context within which she works.

Being in a State of Pure Belief: On the Work of Etel Adnan

Kimberly Phillips is a Vancouver-based writer and curator. She holds a PhD in art history from the University of British Columbia and regularly teaches courses on contemporary visual art and curatorial practices at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She is Director/Curator of _Access Gallery_, an artist-run centre committed to supporting the work of emergent artists and experimental practices.

In the winter of 2013, two solo exhibitions in Vancouver offered the image of a weeping willow (one moving, one still): Marian Penner Bancroft’s _HYDROLOGIC (drawing up the clouds)_ at Republic Gallery, and Noa Giniger’s _Absolute Countdown_ at the Western Front. The appearance of this distinctive tree unmistakable for its majestic, pendulous boughs within the terrain of Vancouver’s art world, is somewhat akin to its station in the natural landscape. The weeping willow is not indigenous to either. Its existence is always the result of conscientious planting and cultivation, and in this way it is conspicuous, as much for its appearance as for its “mournful disposition.”[^1] There are, of course, numerous ways in which Penner Bancroft and Giniger differ in their concerns and modes of work. However, the choice of this tree and the heavy affect with which it is so consistently bestowed[^2] seems an occasion to consider the presence of melancholy in each artist’s broader practice, and their respective relationships to ephemerality, permanence, to the gravity of sentiment and, ultimately, to the complexity (and limits) of the image itself.

Melancholy is undoubtedly the most lyrical of afflictions, variously described as an atmosphere of sorrow, the exquisite pleasure of longing, a sense of impending loss, or an endless, inexplicable waiting. A leaf through the index of the most “medical” of studies dedicated to the condition Robert Burton’s meandering, encyclopedic _The Anatomy of Melancholy_, first published in 1621 suggests that a descent into melancholy could be brought upon by almost anything, from a bad love affair to a meal of beef.[^3] In the _sui generis_ that is this tome, melancholy assumes the role of an open aperture through which all of human life and thought may be examined. By the time Sigmund Freud pathologized the condition in 1917, melancholy had long since detached itself from Burton’s scholastic method. Its precise parameters, however, remained profoundly ambiguous.[^4] While healthy mourning is undertaken in order to come to terms with the loss of a knowable object, the psychoanalyst argues that “in melancholia the relation to the object is no simple one,”[^5] and in fact, the exact nature of loss for the melancholic may not be clear at all. “The patient is aware of the loss which has given rise to his melancholia,” he explains, “but only in the sense that he knows whom he has lost but not _what_ he has lost in him.”[^6] A defining feature of melancholy,then, appears to be the despondency that arises from an inability to define or _consciously access_ that loss, or perhaps even from the anticipation and dread of loss, rather than from the experience of loss itself. (Indeed, it is not so difficult to imagine Freud thus afflicted, drafting “Mourning and Melancholia” as Europe descended into the war he feared would claim both his sons.)

The photograph’s relationship to memory, loss, lived experience and place — as well as to the institutional apparatuses that structure our experience — has been a consistent motif throughout Marian Penner Bancroft’s practice. Present in Vancouver’s art community since she began to exhibit in the early 1970s, her work developed very much in relation to the critical debates around photography at that time. She approaches this medium as a descriptive system, one that is (like any language) partial and incomplete, and her images are often accompanied by textual and sonic elements, each obliquely informing the other. While she trains her camera on the natural landscape, her images picture the complexity of the social world and particularly that which cannot be seen, but is palpably present nonetheless. A photograph, for example, may capture an expanse of lanky, sunbaked grass in Birtle, Manitoba, but what it records is a potent absence, that of the residential school which (we are informed through the title) once stood on this site. The image is made yet heavier still when we learn that the artist’s maternal grandfather, a United Church minister, was once the school’s principal. Drawn from a larger series, the silent horror of this work stems as much from photography’s ineptitude at capturing anything other than a residue of our violent, colonialist past as it does from the ugliness of that past itself. What Penner Bancroft’s undulating grasses suggest, then, is the melancholy of dwelling in proximity to this past, and the complexity of negotiating one’s identity by way of a strata of histories that can never be changed nor directly confronted.

The particular sorrow triggered by a recognition of dwelling amidst the echo of past human destruction is perhaps nowhere more compellingly described than in the works of the late German writer W.G. Sebald. Part recollection, part fiction, his curious, enigmatic books are largely concerned with themes of memory, loss and decline, and are punctuated by indistinct blackm and white photographs, set in circuitous counterpoint to his narratives. One might argue that there is something distinctly Sebaldian about Penner Bancroft’s entire body of work because of the way her images, too, insistently point to things outside their frame, and sullenly announce their own limits. That which is distant time, place has a tendency to fold back onto the present, hovering there unresolved and, to a great extent, inaccessible. Penner Bancroft’s most recent work, _Boulevard_ (2014), a commission by Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery for a downtown train station, illustrates this folding over of time and place. A sequence of high–contrast translucent prints installed around two of the station’s glass walls, _Boulevard_ depicts a kaleidoscopic pattern of elm branches photographed along an historic Vancouver boulevard. Framed only by the winter sky, Penner Bancroft detaches the branches from the specificity of their locale, so that for the urban travellers who hurry past them, these images might conjure In a similar way, Sebald ruminates as follows, writing in rural England but picturing Berlin of several decades past:

\_I may be standing at a window on the upper floor of our house, but what I see is not the familiar marshes and the willows thrashing as they always do, but rather, from several hundred yards up, acres and acres of allotment gardens bisected by a road, straight as an arrow, down which black taxi cabs speed out of the city in the direction of Wannsee.\_[^7]

It is these spatial and temporal slippages that, in the work of both Sebald and Penner Bancroft, produce an exquisite, ungraspable sorrow, as well as the uncanny sense that we, as “survivors,” to quote Sebald again, “see everything from above, see everything at once, and still we do not know how it was.”[^8]

With the exception of one, all the large scale still photographs in _HYDROLOGIC (drawing up the clouds)_ were captured in the Suffolk region of East Anglia, the same landscape Sebald traverses in his 1995 book _Die Ringe Des Saturn, Eines englische Wallfahrt_ (“The Rings of Saturn: An English Pilgrimmage”). This marshy, low–lying coastal landscape of reedbeds and peat fens is also the setting of Benjamin Britten’s mournful opera _Peter Grimes_ (1945), a line from whose libretto (written by Montagu Slater) lends Penner Bancroft’s exhibition its subtitle. Indeed, a particular “hydro–logic” defines this place. Water underlies and connects everything (in the exhibition too: the still photographs, silent video projection Nine Pictures and accompanying letterpress text, as well as, more obliquely, the recordings of local sound, all describe the repeated and random motion of water, grass and trees from two sides of the planet.) The focus of each photograph is a single tree, so monumentalized by the image’s scale, composition, and impeccable clarity as to appear allegorized. Each betrays a particular pathology: an oak crippled — possibly decades ago — following a violent storm, another dead and bleached white, rooted in a saline marsh. And then there is the willow, magnificent and full, bent over a pond covered in algae and starved of oxygen. For those in knowledge of its origins native to eastern Asia, the willow found its way to Britain in the 18th century the gravity of its imperialist past, concentrated so heavily in this place but nowhere visible, appears to pull the boughs of this tree lower still.[^9]

Both Penner Bancroft and Giniger’s practices begin, in some way, from a careful and close looking at the observable world. But if Penner Bancroft’s work points to the aspect of melancholy that is about the exquisite pleasure/pain of living amidst a palpable, yet unreachable past, Giniger meditates on the passage of time in a different way. The Amsterdam based Israeli artist works across a variety of media –installation, film, sculpture, text, web, and paper– based and has developed a practice of quiet observances and interventions in the physical world, often so small as to be undetectable. An early video work, _Leaving Living_ (2005), exemplifies her approach. In a nighttime _mise–en–scene_ created by the artist, a structure in her hometown is decorated with a welcome mat, picket fence, and a motion–activated light garland strung about the façade. The building had long intrigued Giniger because of its minimalist, bunker–like appearance, and because it had never been inhabited.[^10] The camera, immobile throughout the video′s duration, is set on automatic focus and strains as though human to sharpen the minimal elements visible in the darkened field of view. Periodically, a vehicle passes, triggering the lights to illuminate for a limited time. The car, of course, does not choose its role, nor is it informed of the consequences of its act.[^11] From the vehicle′s point of view, the structure is always illuminated. Only we as viewers are witness to the building′s “disappointment” when the car fails to stop. As the video continues, our expectations build and then drop, and we anthropomorphize the building more and more, rooting for its “hopes” for fulfillment, allthe while aware of the triviality and futility of our investment. Chance factors largely in Giniger′s works; _noon_ (2009), for example, is what she calls a “found scene”: twin clock towers on a Berlin church, the left reading one minute after the hour and the right one minute before. Discovered fortuitously while walking through the city, Giniger returned with a film camera at midday.[^12] For the artist, the ephemeral is rooted in the unbending structures of the universe: gravity and time. Rather than a perpetual looping of time and space (as in Penner Bancroft′s work), there is a pull towards things with a limited lifespan, which occur amidst the relentless entropic procession a condition within which we all exist, and which Giniger terms “absolute countdowns.”

_Absolute Countdown_, Giniger′s first solo exhibition in Canada, included a web work by the same name,[^13] a five minute film[^14] (transferred to video) titled _The Sorrow the Joy Brings_, as well as a single, diminutive collage. Each work was envisioned as equal to the other[^15] but the presentation′s commanding focus was the film, which recorded the end point of a multi–year project realizing Giniger′s desire to quite literally “lift the spirits” of a weeping willow. The artist′s journey towards this eventual filming (shot on location in Vancouver) is archived on her blog _And Gravity Will Always Bring Us Down_,[^16] which chronicles the entirety of the project, from its beginnings as a simple sketch exploring the possibility of lifting a willow tree′s boughs with the force of air. The blog follows Giniger’s research, including conversations with experts in the fields of neurology, vision and psychology, and is punctuated by collage works inverting the willow’s “natural” disposition by a simple act of cutting and flipping so that the trees′ foliage points upwards with a manic energy.

The most elaborate of Giniger′s interventions to date, The Sorrow the Joy Brings saw a 17–person production crew traipse pilgrimage–like to a suburban farm where the chosen willow was located, armed with nine very powerful wind machines, sourced through Vancouver′s film industry.[^17] The gesture was a profoundly romantic one, perhaps most poignantly because the film records an act that is, in the end, underwhelming. After five minutes of roaring sound, with the crew visible scuttling beneath the wind–blown boughs, the willow appears hardly to shrug. One by one the fans are shut down, leaving the tree to settle in resolute silence. The film rolls on and, after a time, a plane crosses overhead, cruelly oblivious to our disappointment. The weeping willow will not be cheered.

Of course, as Giniger has stated, the point was never to triumph.[^18] This might well have been achieved with digital manipulation. The colossal discrepancy between the energy brought to this act (along with the expectations produced) and its less than spectacular results serves to question the nature of what we consider “success,” and points to the instability of both anticipation and sentimentality, as well as the absurd logic through which we organize and anthropomorphize a whole system of affective states. Unlike Penner Bancroft′s photographs, which place us elegiacally within an oscillating present⁄past, Giniger′s acts leave us longing for a future that might never come, and anticipating an end that is ultimately, and beautifully, disappointing.

In their clarity and splendour (and in a nod to the fabled promises of the medium), Marian Penner Bancroft′s photographs seduce with the promise of some communicative fulfillment but ultimately (if lyrically) stop short. They are melancholic in their desire for a connection to a past, in their tracing of distance, both temporal and geographic, and in their acknowledgement of humanity′s capacity for both connectivity and destruction, which seems to course beneath everything, like water. For Noa Giniger, the gesture itself, whether brought about by happenstance or an intricate choreography, betrays the futility of these desires. In the work of both, the things pictured living or otherwise — are there in full understanding of the affect we′ll bestow upon them. But ultimately an object can really only ever reveal our investments in it, never itself. In the words of Merleau–Ponty, “the thing holds itself aloof from us and remains self–sufficient…a resolutely silent Other.”[^19] The object (or image) will not speak, or even point the way. To this, these artists respond from two sides, perhaps, of the same sadness: with the longing for a past that can never be recuperated, and the yearning for a future that will never come.

[^1]: Mandy Kirkby, A Victorian Flower Dictionary: The Language of Flowers Companion (London: Ballantine Books, 2011), 159.
[^2]: The salix babylonica is a species of willow tree whose popular name is describes as “weeping” in many languages: הייכוב הברע in Hebrew, saule pleureur in French, Trauerweide in German, sauce llorón in Spanish, плакуч in Russian 
[^3]: Burton, Robert, The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes,Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically, Opened and Cut Up\], 16th edition (London: B Blake, 1836).
[^4]: Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914–1916): On the History of the Psycho–Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works (London: Hogarth Press,1953–74), 237–258.
[^5]: Ibid., 256.
[^6]: Ibid., 245.
[^7]: W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn,trans. Michael Hulse (New York: New Directions Books, 1998),179–80.
[^8]: Ibid., 125.
[^9]: Conversation with the artist, March 31, 2014, Vancouver, British Columbia.
[^10]: Email correspondence with the artist, April 10, 2014.
[^11]: See [noa-giniger.tumblr.com](http://noa-giniger.tumblr.com)
[^12]: Email correspondence with the artist, April 10, 2014.
[^13]: [www.absolutecountdown.com/](http://www.absolutecountdown.com/)
[^14]: Giniger´s choice of medium was itself melancholic, as the number of facilities capable of developing the 35mm film dwindled even as the project unfolded. See Giniger´s blog, [the–sorrow–thejoy–brings.tumblr.com/](http://the–sorrow–thejoy–brings.tumblr.com/)
[^15]: A note about the installation itself: within the gallery at the Western Front, the spatial location of the collage (which might be understood as the “ideal,” with the willow’s inverted boughs) and the film (the reality) was highly calculated. Positioned on opposite walls, facing one another, the two works could not be experienced simultaneously. Email correspondence with the artist, April 10, 2014.
[^16]: [the-sorrow-the-joy-brings.tumblr.com/](http://the-sorrow-the-joy-brings.tumblr.com/)
[^17]: The artist noted that these fans were designed to blow air horizontally across film sets to simulate windy conditions. They had never before been tested to point vertically upwards into trees.
[^18]: Email correspondence with the artist, April 7, 2014.
[^19]: Maurice Merleau–Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge, 1989), 322.

lg_122

md_122

sm_122

thumbnail_122

issue-122-p17-24.pdf

Photography

Nature

Video

Kimberly Phillips explores themes of ephemerality, permanence and sentiment as they exist in the work of artists Noa Giniger and Marian Penner Bancroft. The weeping willow is a motif running through the work of both of these artists, with melancholy and sorrow represented by various representations of the willow. These representations, developed through the use of video and photography in these artists’ practices, are further discussed in relation to the passage of time and construction of memory.

Willow, Weep for Me: Noa Giniger, Marian Penner Bancroft, and the Intricacies of Melancholy

issue-122-p24-30.pdf

Human Rights

Government

Nicholas Brown discusses the social and political dimensions of recent work by Renzo Martens, the Artistic Director of the Institute for Human Activities. Addressing issues such as international relations and neoliberal policy, Martens’ films question the efficacy of emancipatory projects and humanitarian aid, particularly those which are based in Western society’s ethnocentrism.

Renzo Martens and the Institute for Human Activities

Alexandra Phillips is a sculptor and writer whose practice focuses on social critique through the lens of the carnivalesque. She teaches visual art and socio-cultural anthropology at Emily Carr University. 

issue-122-p30-35.pdf

Migration

Alexandra Phillips writes about Canadian artists who have relocated to Berlin. She considers Berlin’s evolution into an international art centre, various parallels between Canada and Berlin, and the process of relocating to Berlin from Canada to work in the arts.

Both Here and There: Canadian Artists and the Berlin Experience

Designer

Publisher

Artist Project

issue-122-p36-46.pdf

Participation

The artist project Stopover was initiated by writer Alexis Bhagat and artist Stephanie Loveless to explore the Albany Bust Station, which is a necessary stopping point for those traveling between Montreal and New York City. The project explores the area’s history and some of the stories of individuals who have passed through the station, and includes a call for reflections and feedback from Canadians who have spent time at the Albany Bus Station.

Stopover

Albany Bus Station Stopover a Testimonial

Review

issue-122-p48-50.pdf

Performance

This article reviews Rabih Mroué‘s performance and lecture titled The Pixelated Revolution, which was appeared at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in Vancouver on January 18, 2014.

Rabih Mroué: The Pixelated Revolution

Maeve Hanna is Assistant Curator at Two Rivers Gallery in Prince George, BC. She has studied at York University (Toronto), the University of Leeds (UK), Université du Québec à Montréal (Montreal) and the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg) on site in Iceland.

issue-122-p49-51.pdf

Installation

This article reviews Sarah Cale’s exhibition Petrified, which was held at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge, AB from February 15 to April 20, 2014.

Sarah Cale: Petrified

issue-122-p51-53.pdf

Body

Sculpture

Environment

This article reviews Chris Curreri’s exhibition Medusa, which appeared at the Daniel Faria Gallery in Toronto from November 28, 2013 to February 1, 2014.

Chris Curreri: Medusa

issue-122-p52-54.pdf

This article reviews the exhibition Glam North: Doris McCarthy and her New Contemporaries, which was held at the Doris McCarthy Gallery in Toronto from February 26 to April 26, 2014.

Glam North: Doris McCarthy and her New Contemporaries

issue-122-p54-56.pdf

This article reviews Akram Zaatari’s exhibition All is Well, which was held at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, ON, from November 23, 2013 to March 30, 2014.

Akram Zaatari: All is Well

Jaclyn Meloche is the Interim Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Windsor, in Windsor, ON.

issue-122-p55-57.pdf

History

Sound

Activism

This articles reviews Sharon Hayes’ exhibition Loudspeakers and Other Forms of Listening, which appeared at the Carleton University Art Gallery in Ottawa from February 3 to April 27, 2014.

Sharon Hayes: Loudspeakers and Other Forms of Listening

Kari Cwynar is a curator, writer and editor based in Toronto, where she is Director of Kunstverein Toronto and Editorial Director of _C Magazine_. She writes on contemporary art for publications and catalogues, contributes regularly to _Frieze_ and _Metropolis M_.

issue-122-p57-59.pdf

Identity

Social

This article reviews the exhibition A Problem So Big It Needs Other People, which was curated by cheyanne turions and held at the SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art in Montreal from March 15 to May 3, 2014.

A Problem So Big It Needs Other People

Daniella Sanader is a writer and reader who lives in Toronto. 

issue-122-p58-61.pdf

Site-specific

Memory

This article reviews Chiharu Shiota’s exhibition Trace of Memory, which included an extensive installation at the Mattress Factory’s new satellite space at 516 Sampsonia Way in Pittsburgh. The site-specific installation is on display from September 12, 2013 to 2015.

Chiharu Shiota: Trace of Memory

issue-122-p60-62.pdf

Violence

This article reviews the exhibition Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950, which was held at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC from October 24, 2013 to May 26, 2014.

Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950

Jane Affleck is a PhD candidate in the Cultural Studies program at Trent University, a part-time instructor at NSCAD University and a freelance writer.

issue-122-p62-64.pdf

Children

This article reviews Graeme Patterson’s exhibition Secret Citadel, which appeared at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax from February 1 to May 30, 2014.

Graeme Patterson: Secret Citadel

issue-122-p63-66.pdf

Spirituality

Work

Money

This article reviews the exhibition Fulfillment Centre, which appeared at The Sunday Painter in London, England from March 1 to 30, 2014\. The reviewer explores the exhibitions focus on the commodification of both spiritualism and contemporary art, as well as a parallel process of social and cultural displacement that tends to occur.

Neil Beloufa, Julie Born Schwartz, Christopher Kulendran Thimas, Timur Si-Qin, Lewis Teague Wright, and Tyra Tingleff: Fulfilment Centre

issue-122-p67-69.pdf

Institutional critique

Collaboration

This article reviews the book Self-Organized which was edited by Stine hebert and Anne Szefer Karlsen and published by Open Editions (2013). The review explores various theme’s and issues addressed within Self-Organized, such as the tension between the autonomy afforded by operating outisde of art institutions and the difficulty of producing projects independently.

Self-Organised, edited by Stine hebert and Anne Szefer Karlsen

issue-122-p68-70.pdf

This article reviews the book The Lake, which is a compilation of texts that explore the social and cultural significance of lakes. The book was edited by Maggie Groat and published by Art Metropole (2014).

The Lake, edited by Maggie Groat

Header

C Mag

Issue 122