Artist Feature: J.E. Simpson
J.E. Simpson and I met at a “pop up” exhibition of his work in NAC, and found we shared some of the same interests in text and art and the spaces between. I visited his studio and continued the conversation.
Bart Gazzola
Bart Gazzola has published with Canadian Art, Galleries West, FUSE, Hamilton Arts & Letters, BlackFlash, ArtSeen, ti<, Long Exposure, New Art Examiner and Magenta. Past curatorial projects include REGION (Contemporary Saskatchewan Painting) and Personal Geographies (an overview of The Photographers Gallery collection). In 2020 he curated an exhibition of photographs at AIH Studios titled Welland Times Present Times Past.
Gazzola was Editorial Chair of BlackFlash Magazine (3 years), and was the visual arts critic for Planet S Magazine. He held the latter role for more than a decade, publishing reviews about Saskatoon visual arts and the larger community twice monthly.
Since 2015, he's been a frequent contributor to The SoundSTC and is the facilitator of the 5 x 2 Image Makers Conversations, through Rodman Hall Art Centre. He's been a contributor / editor at Curated by the Covert Collective since late 2020.
Writing Landscape in Always Vessels
A dense exhibition, and Vanessa Dion Fletcher’s multi media work greeted you as you entered the gallery at Rodman, and it often held my attention on my repeated visits. Some thoughts on this work that intersects with performance, video and two dimensional media.
Loss and Memory / Brendan Fernandes’ Philia pulses within the walls of Rodman Hall Art Centre
Brendan Fernandes’ Philia may be the most moving, the most evocative and disturbing art work I’ve seen, in recent memory, and it made me rememeber how there is “no point when “then” stops and “now” begins.” An amazing initial artwork, from the Rodman Hall Collection, to start off Assistant Curator Emma German’s year long series Up Close and In Motion.
The distance between us: thoughts on The Florida Project and The Square
Your intrepid #artcriticfromhell delves into film criticism (not a new space for me, but one I revisit now and again) for two films that offer different attractions. One lampoons – or realizes – the contemporary art world, and another indicates that realism is not so much a genre, as an attitude.