The A Word

Here’s this week’s radio show, where I mention two specific things, in terms of Wanuskewin’s exhibition of Buffy Sainte-Marie (the image below is from that show) and the exhibition and adjunct programming at the SCC and the exhibition in the Affinity Gallery there, which is all about the anniversary of their Dimensions exhibition. Enjoy.

Spring is when this, ahem, young man’s fancy turns to ladies – and their paintings, of course. Perhaps it’s due to the Dreaming Painting panel, that featured several artists I’ve mentioned before whose paintings I hope you saw (Janet Werner, Mélanie Rocan) and another still currently on display in the city (Tammy Salzl, Into the Woods, at AKA). Maybe the words of Kim Gordon, late of Sonic Youth, are rattling around in my head too, as to how women make natural rebels as they’re still treated as second-class citizens. Narrative is a major touchstone for all three of the artists I mentioned already, and they’ll tell their own stories, thanks very much.

Salzl’s works at AKA are – like Rocan’s – about her place in the world (both are mothers) and how we position ourselves within it. Some of her points from Dreaming Painting (brought to you by AKA, College / Kenderdine galleries and the Mendel) speak to how she “mediates alienation through beauty and narration” in an “operatic tableaux”, that are almost like Grimm Bros. fairy tale illustrations.” “The uncanny, the grotesque, the monstrous skewed forms [are] set in a darker space”, though still a kind of “familiar storybook setting”, that “slows the viewer down”, or “disconcerts the viewer”. Yet she makes them as “aesthetically beautiful as possible”.  Salzl framed her work in Into the Woods as a response to “our current psychosis as owners, not gatekeepers, or stewards, of our planet”.

I also enjoyed Tammy’s talk for the simplicity of her statement that she “says things that are important to me through paint.”

AKA is dominated by several large works, with female figures either fearsome (The Chorus, with her multiple breasts, birthing of animals, and a retinue that would make any Maenad proud), or superficially quiet (Familial Ties, with a girl reclining on a couch – until you see the anatomically correct heart she holds like a lover’s token, as though it bores her, now. Or Etiäinen, where the flowing, voluminous dress seems to shift from pretty, girly pink to raw and juicy entrails…). Salzl’s people are fleshy: their joints, knees, knuckles all seem inflamed, reminding me of the late, and much lamented, Lucien Freud.

My insistence upon narrative and contempt for (most) abstraction is well known (though I’ve been accused of mellowing, since my “departure” from that leprous house known as the U of S Art dept, and the Day-Glo fish paintings of the “head of painting”). But I’d also assert that I spend a lot of time with work that fails, to me, as it’s often just as important to gauge why and how it fails, as it’s all part of the narrative of contemporary art in this city. You can’t understand the importance of the work of Salzl, unless you understand the prophylactic that is SK karaoke modernism – and my mind is more open than it’s acolytes, as I found with Penny Leach’s exhibition Edgy.

This is at the new space occupied by Darrell Bell Gallery, in downtown Saskatoon. It’s a schizophrenic show. There’s works that breach my certainty about the failure of abstraction and other works that should be ignored. There are small works of horses that illustrate how, in Dreaming Painting, the question of the freedom to (quoting the American painter Susan Rothenberg) paint a horse if needed, free of accusations of abandoning the “genuine” painting of abstraction, is vital.

The large abstracts are bold: the titles are mostly from rock songs, and god, don’t read the statement (Creed, Nickelback, my lord), but the strong slashes and globs and dabs that manifest the hand of the painter here are lovely. The rough whites and deep blues of Edgy, the strong and audaciously yellowy composition of she lives her life like a bird in flight and who will be her, the grey / green industrial dirty wasteland air of you’re dirty, sweet and you’re my girl (I SAID don’t read the titles, but hey, you’ll know the ones to look at…), the delicate, almost pin prick like white dabs on strong at the broken places – these are works that are better than anything you saw in the Optimism of Colour, that manufactured myth of Perehudoff at the Mendel.

Pay no mind to the still lifes: there are some scabby, painterly marks there, but they pale next to the aforementioned abstracts. Yes, I said that.

Both Edgy and Into the Woods are up for awhile: they are at opposite ends of the spectrum, and act and speak in different ways. Go see both.

Here’s this week’s radio show, with information on opportunities for studio visits / interactions with two visiting curators / writers, and some info on upcoming events and current events at SCYAP. Enjoy.

While installing my curatorial project Personal Geographies (from The Photographers Gallery Collection) years ago, my favourite moment was an unexpected one. There was an image of what was clearly the downtown (the recognizable backdrop of the Bessborough), yet the Senator Hotel was domed. Then the electrician working on the wiring told me that the Senator used to sport one.  We went through many photos, with this gentlemen offering insights and histories…his input led to the inclusion of several images, including the aforementioned one.

I relate this for two reasons: work from the TPG collection are prominent in The HOME show at the Mendel (excellent), and an informed opinion need NOT be an academic, “accredited” one. There is a freshness we find in the eyes of others.

Mind you, what Sandra Fraser has done with this show requires a bravery I don’t necessarily share, but as an experiment it has been successful: perhaps the framework she put in place has helped (more on that later).  And I’m always interested in an external critique of the notion of curating, or a critique of an institution and it’s mandate – or lack thereof – in collecting (funny story: a curator I knew was here to specifically purchase work by crap artist b, as they had work by crap artist a + c, and thus had to “validate” their “historical archive”. I suggested more crap is just, well, more crap…).

The TPG gift is a good place to start too, as it was bequeathed to the Mendel not just due to space issues, but as collections should be living things. These are images that were made by someone, and meant to be seen – such as untitled, by Bill Oehler, selected by Kristina Rauw, as it’s an image of her father in his barber shop (a pleasant coincidence, and she speaks about the ghastly pants he’s wearing in her write up). Gaston Vermosen’s untitled (chosen by registrar Donald Roach) is a lovely odd photo, suggesting travel, with a fitting quote from theorist Lucy Lippard: “All places exist somewhere between the inside and the outside views of them.”

I’ve got to say, this show is surprisingly successful considering the potential for ruin with a populist approach. The choices are, for the most part, considered and even surprising. In conversation, Fraser said that individual observations and insights were novel and unexpected: not the usual curatorial paradigm, or typical art world observations and tropes. Some are uniquely personal, as with Dean Summach choosing Jim Graham’s Visit Woolworth’s, as “this painting is like a glimpse of Saskatoon from my childhood, and seeing it gives me a feeling of warmth and comfort – the same feeling I get when I go home.” Marlee Slaney’s choice of David O’Hara’s Will They Kick? is paired with her writing “A place out in the country / That I call home away from home.”

The blurb about the show is as follows: “The Home Show is part of a series of investigations into the Mendel’s permanent collection that advance the collection as a site of shared encounters and as a way of making meaning. [It] takes a collaborative approach, where different points of view and diverse sensibilities inform the selection of works on display. Staff members…have been invited to step beyond their usual tasks and delve into activities that are typically the purview of the curator”.

This idea of “home” is loose, though SK landscapes have a prominence (Robert Hurley, Leslie Saunders, Hans Dommasch – the latter is an amazing image). There’s a clear pattern in terms of younger individuals with works more experimental than traditional (David Davinney’s The Hunter, or Mary Anne Barkhouse’s Vespers II). Fraser did ask that no works be selected that have been shown in the past three years (her tenure here) and for works that didn’t dominate the space, snuffing the voices of others. This follows how, in Where It’s At, she leaned towards recent acquisitions, and not just the usual suspects.

It’s worth noting too that Home is anything but homogeneous: some works are the kind that aren’t seen often as they don’t really fit in traditional curatorial narratives. Gisele Amantea’s Heaven (Antidote for Madness) with it’s shiny golden cherubs that straddle humour, kitsch and bad taste is rarely seen, as it’s so odd, so it’s nice that Troy Mamer chose it.

Home is Fraser’s latest foray into how we literally value art, and collections: in specific and real ways, in terms of objects and images that speak to us directly, without the often constricting “academic” or “official” frameworks. It’s a bit awkward, but I think that makes it real, and makes it relevant not just to the people who chose this work, but those of us who engage with it.

This week’s radio show, people, can be heard here. There’s a number of events and exhibitions I mention, some of which you only have a few more days to see, and some that are one night only events, like the performance at the Mendel Art Gallery.

Here’s this week’s radio show: listen to it here. I play some Billy Bragg, for those of you who will catch it on air at CFCR, and those that download it will miss out on Waiting For the Great Leap Forward and A New England. The images I’ve included are shots of Kim Adams’ work that is at the WDM, and the basic invite for the Senior Level Photography Students exhibition.

This week’s radio show: a conversation with Associate Curator Sandra Fraser, from the Mendel, talking about the Home Show currently at the Mendel. You can listen to the show here. And besides that, you want to check out this panel discussion at the Mendel this Saturday, that I’ve included a lovely poster with all the information you need about that event. Go see Janet Werner’s show at the College Gallery, Mélanie Rocan’s work at the Kenderdine, and Tammy Salzl’s exhibition opens this Friday at AKA.

This week’s radio show is here, and there’s a few other notable things to pass on, some that I mention during the show, some that I don’t.

Firstly, the polling the city is doing re: public sculpture can be read about here, at the Star Phoenix. Make your voice heard, as you can see there is already the obligatory idiot comment that wants to know why we don’t spend this on potholes. I mean, the money for this was all clearly marked “SPEND THIS ON POTHOLES OR ART?”, right? Just like we all know that everything would be sweetness and light and pretty and with kittens if the new art gallery wasn’t happening….sorry, didn’t mean to channel Eyre, or Bell, or Corbett, the three or so people who take turns writing letters to the SP with that sentiment, with some puling and whining thrown in.

So, make your voice heard on what should stay, and what should go, and maybe suggest that we model ourselves after Calgary in a GOOD way by insisting all construction over a specific price tag MUST allocate money to public art. Or we could just pretend that people will live in the downtown with flooding and obscene rents, and pretend that suburban sprawl has been really successfull…..sorry, it’s a ranty day.

Let’s speak of good things: I have a post at Musing About Mud, about the Incite Insight show at the Affinity Gallery at the Saskatchewan Craft Council. Check out Carole Epp’s blog while you’re there, as it’s engaging even if you’re not a craft artist, and a useful and vibrant resource in this community.

Now, I have mixed feelings about Emma Lake: it’s suffused with nostalgia and hasn’t been relevant in years, but the manner in which the University of Saskatchewan chose to shutter it is unacceptable, heavy handed and systematic of the larger issues at that institution. They could have at least looked at consulting the larger community, looking at what people are willing to do, and perhaps farming out the karaoke modernists and hippies, and making the Art Department do something relevant there: but nevermind, in light of a common enemy – the board of the U of S, the administrative leeches, the “Dean” of Fine Arts and Humanities who has become a co opted apologist with a secure paycheque - go and check this group out, and support them. Do it, and ask why we can have tenured faculty on sabbatical / leave / paid vacation every second year, but not support this place?

And let’s end on a note of appropriate rage, shall we? Murray Mandryk calls out the hypocrisy of the Sask Party, as he does so well with politicos of all stripes. Keep this in mind whenever the ruling class (no austerity for them) tell us how much they support culture….and remember that the U of S might not be cutting so much if they were being supported appropriately by a provincial government that tittered for ages about “boom boom boom” and the “Saskatchewan Advantage”.

This week’s A Word is a bit different than the usual fare: Troy Gronsdahl has taken control of the show this week to interview me about my work in The Performative Lens, at PAVED, and we talk about a number of ideas and issues within the work, and beyond. A large thank you to Troy for suggesting this format, and I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did.

You can listen to this week’s episode of the A Word here.

Mélanie Rocan’s Souvenir Involontaire (Kenderdine Gallery, U of S campus) is the newest notable painting show in Saskatoon, with several here, several yet to open. It’s a season of good painting, and not in terms of local wallpaper that bastardizes Barnett Newman but happened “here”, so it must be “important”. Regionalism, that pervasive (and perverting) Canadian trope can’t help but impact our art making. But if you make work in a site of intense self-criticality and rigorous debate, instead of self-congratulatory irrelevance, it can be a fostering, bracing environment. Rocan is out of Montréal, like Janet Werner (currently at CAG on campus), and a painter soon to be at AKA (Tammy Salzl, whose work I’m anticipating) also has connections to that city. Looking ahead, and giving more depth: this summer an historical exhibition of the Automatistes out of Québec (the only real painting school Canada has ever produced) will visit Saskatoon, too.

Let’s not forget gender, either: most female artists never bought into that modernist “old timey religion”, stripes / squares /“purity” bullshit, as many women know that you can’t really claim the death of “narrative” when they have been – and are still – prohibited to speak.

But enough theoretical framing / tangential insults: Rocan’s works are large and small, delicate and rough, a feast of colour and form. Mouth Full is a figure “vomiting” vibrant hues, or perhaps “speaking” their artwork. “She” seems quite comfortable with “her” predicament (she has a voice, you might say). Fountain of Paint might be my favourite piece here. It’s a larger than life, yet delicate, female face, making wistful eye contact, with a “head” of colour, like her thoughts are manifesting. Paint is a good example of Rocan’s “style” – delicate lines, fine and graceful, with glops and globs and blobs of pure colour, a barely restrained frenzy of marks. Secrets is also like this, somehow both garish and subtle, with hidden figures, suggestions of buildings, and things that you might miss if you don’t look closely.

Rocan uses paint likes it’s a sculptural tool, like it’s icing or caulking: this is form following function, in works like Caked, where the woman is barely visible behind this massive, tiered cake, her hands and eyes above the “tower” of food, eagerly waiting to consume. There’s a performative aspect here (a good point to say how that also occurs in Werner’s work) that is literal, such as in Staging, where the female figures is on a stage, as though in an old theatre. Our view suggests we’re in the wings, and behind her massive dress train (a layered, brilliant blue) that is balanced by the burgundy curtains that frame not only the figure on the stage but the entire top half of the painting.

Several female figures have dress trains worthy of any bridezilla, but that encompass objects and other detritus, like they carry these things with them: Meeting in the Middle employs this, as does The Tallest Woman on Earth.

This show is curated by Ann MacDonald, from the McCarthy Gallery in partnership with the Kenderdine and Plug In ICA. Her words: “The visual world Mélanie Rocan creates with her paintings is a blended swirl of emotions and objects. Her art historical genealogy traverses many eras, from Surrealism to Expressionism, but perhaps she owes her greatest impulse to the Symbolist outgrowth of Romanticism…. Rocan’s imagery floats in realm of the subconscious, with her dreamlike, dream dwelling subjects melding with environments both natural and cultural…. The images are more about fleeting recollections than about the objects that define one’s social status.”

The smaller works – there’s several clusters, intermixed with larger works like Caked– are playful, even a bit rough, with an energy and looseness associated with studies and gestures.  Floating, Reflection, Warm Wind and Rain are among the best of these: the last has a face that emerges from a “waterfall” of coloured lines, gazing out at us. Wind depicts a woman / girl in a car, leaning her head out the window, away from us. Veil is a bust portrait of a woman wearing a head covering made of pure colour.

There are many paintings here, and it’s a shame this isn’t a larger space, but it doesn’t diminish their impact. They act as a kind of singular voice that fills the air you’re walking through, a narrative where the images don’t so much overwhelm as feed into each other, with reinforced symbols and motifs (such as several allusions to Ophelia, a somewhat misogynist trope of romanticism, that Rocan re configures here). Go to Souvenir Involontaire, and then go see Janet Werner’s Another Perfect Day at the College Gallery, and consider that some of the best painting we’re seeing is done by woman…Joyce Wieland would be pleased.