Column

Writer

Art Infrastructure

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Artists Books

Reviews of several books, including “A Brief History of Curating,” edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist, “Seven Days in the Art World,” by Sarah Thornton, and “The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art,” by Don Thompson.

Noteworthy: Art Infrastructure 

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Editorial

This issue is organized around the idea of “art infrastructure,” or the systems and structures that facilitate the production and presentation of contemporary art. They include galleries, artist-run centres and temporary exhibition spaces, public art initiatives such as Toronto’s Nuit Blanche, art schools, funding mechanisms and systems of patronage; in short, the economics and machinations of the art world. Art infrastructure is created through the convergence of market forces, government policy and the efforts of those who shape its direction. Understanding this system involves a careful consideration of the role artists and cultural workers play in the much lauded and much criticized cultural economy.

We launched our previous issue at the Venice Biennale, in conjunction with the Canadian Pavilion’s exhibition of Mark Lewis, an artist we featured in _C102_. Our presence in Venice enabled us to showcase the work of Canadian artists and writers to an audience that included the international press, as well as artists and curators from around the world. With content that focused specifically on the theme of the biennale, we attempted to generate a critical dialogue around the artists and projects that were part of this event. While the press preview lasts only three days, the biennale itself resonates for years afterwards, requiring careful use of one’s time there. However, any effort to cover this event in a comprehensive or conclusive manner is thwarted by the extraordinary difficulty of actually seeing many of the works on display. Those who have attended the biennale know that most of one’s time is spent simply getting from one point to another, coordinating plans with others, and then trying to actually find them, in the labyrinth that is Venice.

If I can make any useful observations about the biennale, it is to note the absence of Canadian artists in the official programming, aside from Mark Lewis. While it might seem discouraging, I could think of numerous other Canadian artists whose work speaks to the biennale’s theme with strength and relevance at least equal to the work that was chosen. Furthermore, the curatorial premise of this year’s biennale, “Making Worlds,” based on Nelson Goodman’s 1967 book, _Ways of Worldmaking_, presents an overly literal reading of this text. “Worldmaking,” as conceived by Goodman, proposes that art functions as a process for the realization of possible alternative worlds. In numerous instances, the works on display simply describe or reflect forms already in existence, negating the untidy experimentation that the theme suggests. Such a curatorial premise, however ambitious it might be, is unfortunately overshadowed by larger imperatives. Despite the intentions of its curator, the Venice Biennale is not exactly the most radical of curatorial platforms.

Reflecting on the curation in Venice provides a good starting place for _C103_. In this issue, writers discuss a number of exhibition strategies and platforms that provide alternative models for how art is exhibited and experienced by its viewers. Jen Hutton writes about four recent exhibitions in Canada (from galleries in Edmonton, Montreal, Moncton and Halifax) that presented different versions of a democratic curatorial process. These functioned at the curatorial level, as a mode of institutional critique; in one instance, “ democracy” is showing everything that is brought into the gallery by its members; in another, it is installing works one at a time from a gallery’s permanent collection without discernment for what is being shown, until the gallery reached full capacity, and then returning them in reverse order to the vault.

Also in this issue, Joseph Banh provides an extensive analysis of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche and its role in shaping an urban public culture, asking the important question of whether the “creative city” can also be an “ethical city.” Contrasting Banh’s focus on a municipally and commercially supported event, Jesse Birch surveys a number of recent projects in Vancouver that enact what he calls “contingent spaces,” those existing outside the system of galleries, artist-run centres, and officially sanctioned public art. Birch describes exhibition practices that by definition negate institutionalization, often responding to, and resisting, ongoing processes of gentrification.

Extending the theme of art infrastructure and institutionalism is _C_’s new book reviews section that includes recent publications on these topics, as well as listings of new and noteworthy publications. This issue also features two artist projects: Kathleen Ritter and James B. Maxwell’s _Call to Order_, and Kara Uzelman’s _Firewatcher_. In Ritter and Maxwell’s project, they read the minutes from a meeting at an artist-run centre, referencing Henry Martyn Robert’s 1876 book Roberts _Rules of Order_ and Robert Piston’s 1941 book, _Rules of Harmony_, to translate its bureaucratic operations into a musical score. Kara Uzelman’s _Firewatcher_ offers an altogether different response to not only institutionalization, but also to the gentrification that accompanies cultural development in contemporary cities. After several suspicious fires in her Vancouver neighbourhood of Strathcona, Uzelman excavated objects from the fire sites, and invented a fictional character called the “Firewatcher,” who inhabits a fire tower made of paper and concrete “papercrete” bricks. The Firewatcher is a marginal figure and an interlocutor who witnesses the effects of urban redevelopment on the largely working-class communities that are often absent from contemporary cultural-planning rhetoric. Each of these projects offers a different way of engaging the contexts that give rise to and organize contemporary cultural life. 

But there are many different ways of engaging institutional forms as part of a critical practice. In this issue, they range from a complete rejection and disavowal of these structures, to translating them into aesthetic forms. One example is the project described by Jen Hutton, where in honour of its 35th birthday, Halifax’s Eyelevel Gallery reverted to the office technologies used when the gallery first opened in 1974\. Institutions and their administrative and technological trappings can both activate and inhibit cultural activity. I write this editorial immediately after an exhibition opening on the western coast of Cape Breton Island, where the gallery has a full view of the Atlantic Ocean. Similar to Venice, the surroundings often overshadow the work that is on display. Here, on a sunny summer day like this one, even the best attended opening quickly gives way to an afternoon at the beach. Which means that we understand if you want to take _C_ with you to the ocean or to the lake. In fact, given its content, we would encourage you to create a contingent space in which to enjoy this issue.

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

Editor

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Institutional critique

Infrastructure

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses an article “Making Worlds,” by Mark Lewis, the four exhibitions in Canada regarding democratic curatorial process by Jen Hutton, and analysis for the role of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche in shaping urban culture by Joseph Banh.

Editorial: Off Grid

Feature

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Public art

Critique

The article focuses on the role of Nuit Blanche phenomenon in festivals as a strategy for cultural-led urban regeneration towards the creation of a creative city. It mentions that metropolitans centralize on the enhancement of cities through cultural activities and mobilization to address their aims to improve the local economy and strengthen the sense of place of its inhabitants as well as its civic identity. It also notes that the centralization on mobilizing culture through urban cultural policy has also significant entailment to the public realm and urban citizenship. With this, it discusses the Nuit Blanche phenomenon in providing a place where locale narrative can be presented as well as where ideologies can be unframed by socially minded artists and curators.

Beyond the Hype: Nuit Blanche in the "Creative City"

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Cities

Location

The article presents the author's view regarding the art spaces in Vancouver, British Columbia. He states that the Bodgers' and Kludger's Co-Operative Art Parlour (BKCAP) is a place of leisure and of raising the communities participation. He mentions the artist-run centers that apparently become and give unchanging employment in training curatorial staff. He comments on the contemporary gallery The Apartment’s openness and support for the artworks and artists.

Sea of Contingencies: Vancouver's Domestic Interventions

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Artist-run centres

Found

Museums

Collections

The article presents the author's insights on various art exhibitions which has comparable curatorial strategies with that of “Free For All.” She notes that the exhibition at the Art Gallery of Alberta in March 2007 showcased 2,870 works by Edmonton artists but also received criticisms. The strategies employed is comparable with exhibitions presented in Eastern Canada such as “As much as possible given the time and space allotted,” by Rebecca Duclos and David K. Ross, “Instructions for a Members' Show,” by Scott Rogers, and “35 Days of Non-Organized Art,” by Eryn Foster. He stresses that the exhibitions had relevance in their comment on the particularities of Canadian institutions.

Everything All at Once

Deborah Root writes on cultural politics and the arts.

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Canadian

Representation

Text

Conceptual

The article focuses on the artworks of artist Jamelie Hassan. It describes several of her artworks and offers certain interpretations, relating it to the aspects of life. It describes the work “Bint el Sudan” (Daughter of Sudan), and reflects on the possible experience of African women in slavery. A film loop called “The Oblivion Seekers” shows the artist's mixing of everyday life with anxiety towards Islam. It also shows an interpretation of a female calligrapher rocking her child's cradle in “The Copyist,” which is said to portray the transmission of language from mother to child.

The Mystical Language of the Everyday: Jamelie Hassan's At the Far Edge of Words

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Chris Lee is a graphic designer and educator based in Buffalo, New York and Toronto. His research explores graphic design’s entanglement with power, standards and legitimacy. Chris is an Assistant Professor at the University at Buffalo SUNY.

Designer

Publisher

Artist Project

Artist

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Music

Ritter and Maxwell&#39s “Call to Order” project, which inquires into the question: What does the administration of an organization sound like?

Call to Order

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Fire Watcher project features art installations inspired from the arson attacks at Strathcona in Vancouver. It presents an electronic mail (e-mail) from a Blockwatch member noting an incident wherein an unknown person has set a fire in a residential house. It also features various photographs of the arson event.

Fire Watcher

Review

Jesse McKee is a curator and writer in Vancouver, where he works as Head of Strategy at 221A. Previously he was the Curator of Banff Centre’s Walter Phillips Gallery and a curatorial resident with tranzit, Romania and Things that can happen, Hong Kong. 

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International

The article reviews the exhibition “Younger Than Jesus” at the New Museum, in New York City

Younger than Jesus

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Food

Pop culture

The article reviews the exhibition “Zin Taylor: The Bakery of Blok” at the Jessica Bradley Art + Projects in Toronto, Ontario.

Zin Taylor: The Bakery of Blok

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Drawing

Indigenous

The article reviews an exhibition of Annie Pootoogook's drawings of contemporary Inuit life at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City.

Annie Pootoogook's Drawings of Contemporary Inuit Life

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Video

The article reviews the exhibition “Chasing the Waterfalls: The Rise and Fall of the Amazing Seven Sutherland Sisters, Part I” at Maison Rouge in Paris, France.

Mika Rottenberg

Jon Davies is a Montreal-based curator and writer. He recently received his PhD in Art History from Stanford University.

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Installation

The article reviews the exhibition “Something Better,” which features the video installations of Aleesa Cohene at the YYZ Artists' Outlet in Toronto, Ontario in 2009.

Aleesa Cohene: Something Better

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Memory

Photography

Family

The article reviews the exhibition “Regular 8,” which features the photographs by Sara Angelucci at the Wynick/Tuck Gallery in Toronto, Ontario in 2009.

Sara Angelucci: Regular 8

The article reviews the exhibition “Throw Genre,” which features the works of Michael A. Robinson at the Quartier Éphémère: Fonderie Darling in Montreal, Quebec.

Michael A. Robinson: Throw Genre

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Economy

Work

The article reviews the book “Decentre: Concerning Artist-Run Culture/À Propos De Centres D’Artistes,” edited by Elaine Chang, Andrea Lalonde, Chris Lloyd, Steve Loft, Jonathan Middleton, Daniel Roy and Haema Sivanesan.

Decentre: Concerning Artist-Run Culture /a propos de centres d'artistes, Edited by Elaine Chang, Andrea Lalonde, Chris Lloyd, Steve Loft, Jonathan Middleton, Daniel Roy, Haema Sivanesan

The article reviews the book “Vancouver Art & Economies,” edited by Melanie O’Brian.

Vancouver Art & Economies by Melanie O'Brian

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Education

The article reviews the book “Artists With PhDs: On the New Doctoral Degree in Studio Arts,” edited by James Elkins.

Artists with PhDs: On the New Doctoral Degree in Studio Arts, Edited by James Elkins

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Issue 103