The A Word

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.

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.

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.

This week’s radio show can be heard here. There’s a number of events happening this week, from the new exhibitions opening at the Mendel to an exhibition at SCYAP ( I give you some images of works from a previous incarnation of Reartcycle’s current exhibition, below, along with an image from Incite Insight by M. Craig Campbell of his “Creatures of the Night Herd” – some of my favourite work in that show).

If I were to make a list of the best exhibitions in Saskatoon of the past decade, Alison Norlen’s Glimmer, at the College Art Gallery on campus would be on it. Not only was it an exhibition that demonstrated unique skill and outrageous scale in drawing, but she also constructed a metal framework of a dirigible (like the Hindenburg) in the space. I still want that: don’t know where I’d put it, but I want it. I could put my bed within it, and sleep there.

LUNA, her exhibition at the Mendel right now, picks up where Glimmer left off. The rear gallery space is filled with her delicate and carnivalesque structures, allowing you to move among and around them, like the architecture they reference. Although most of the works are scaled down models that mimic familiar forms from east and west, one massive work dominates the space. This is due partly to the shear size of Beacon, but also it’s flashing, rotating light that runs around the space. It’s also a bit intimidating to consider that this is only the top of the original structure that Norlen constructed for the most recent Nuit Blanche evening of art in Toronto.

Image shot by Grant Kernan

It’s also the only work that is specifically named. All the rest (including a tinier relative of the aforementioned airship) are laid out in the space, on the ground, with a video projection that shoots up from the floor, casting an abstracted, moving image and variable delicate shadows on one of the walls.  Some look like the rides you see at any amusement park, intricate models of Ferris wheels or roller coasters. Others mimic more “functional” architecture, with delicate exotic flourishes, and the universal tendency for humanity to match our constructions to the ego of our species.

When I say that this show furthers the ideas from Glimmer, I should also say that it expands and refines them. One of the ways this is true is that the curator of this exhibition is Shauna McCabe (she also facilitated Norlen’s contribution to Nuit). McCabe is a fine curator whose previous endeavours – Rural Readymade, or Formerly Exit Five: Portable Monuments to Recent History – have explored the sites we live in, and how they sometimes exist more fully in our minds and emotions than in concrete and stone.  Both of those shows had humour and sadness in examining our relationships to the structures we create. There is a joyous kind of carnival atmosphere to LUNA, and every time I’ve visited this show, there have been families with children moving among the works.

These works are fragile and precise, more like sewing than sculpture, and the complexity of the wire definitely speaks to Norlen’s past works in drawing. The minimalism of the installation keeps the focus on the works themselves, and how they shine and shimmer in the lighting, sometimes moving with the currents of air generated by people passing by. It’s not surprising that the gallery has a small piece that tour guides will bring out to allow people to feel: again, I saw a number of children – and adults – all but line up to experience the tactile nature of the works in LUNA.

The title references Luna Park, and Norlen has been researching sites of monumental structure and “outrageous” experience for some time. McCabe’s words: “Sensational and fantastic spaces have inspired Norlen, from her early theme park sculptures and pinball landscapes, to her series of drawn “Floats”, with their tangled collisions of rural fairgrounds, roadside attractions, and construction sites….The intricate welded architecture in this installation elaborates upon the expansive drawings and elaborate macquettes that have characterized her artistic practice during the last decade. Here, she reconstitutes monumental, 20^th-century sites of leisure, fantasy and cultural artifice, such as the Crystal Palace, Luna Park, Brighton Pier and Las Vegas.”

This show is up only a little while longer, somewhat less than the usual Mendel span (blame that on LUGO), so it should be at the top of your list of exhibitions to see while you still can. As the U of S Art Department slouches towards euthanasia, Norlen is truly the only studio faculty whom people in the community cite as a reason NOT to “shutter” that site. LUNA demonstrates this very clearly.

Take a breath: I want to tell you not one, but two, surprising things.

Firstly, I worship good painting; encountering the E Werk (farewell to Berlin) series by Attila Lukacs when I was young shaped my demanding taste.

Secondly, I first saw Janet Werner’s paintings, whose exhibition Another Perfect Day just opened at the College Gallery, in a show with Patrick Traer 15 years ago. Both taught at the U of S Art dept. back then, where I’d just commenced my MFA. I’d just seen the head of photo, Brenda Pelkey’s work, stories of life and death in Ontario – and I thought, goddamn, this is a great department.

That was then: this is now, and none of us are there anymore.

There are two warring narratives about the inevitable closure of the Art Dept on campus. One blames greedy neo con admins, cancers on the academic body: the other blames entitled faculty that are so unengaged with the community that a local artist asked me the other day if it had already been “shuttered”. Neither of these narratives is purely true: neither is purely false.

But hush, let us speak of good things: Werner left for Montreal, and is at Concordia still. The quality and breadth of her work that impressed me 15 years ago is still present, in Another Perfect Day. She was in the MassMOCA Oh Canada show, and was also a juror for the most recent RBC painting competition.  She gave a talk the day before her show, and a number of the ideas that informed her work are continuing ones from years ago, while others are new.

Her work seems more playful, and the ideas of the uncanny and the surreal are mixed with some silliness and oddness (in good ways). Some are massive, presenting figures larger than life, while others are more delicate. Back is one of the latter, a roughly painterly “shot” of the back of a woman’s head, where I can almost feel the texture of her hair.

The upstairs is the stronger space for me: Girl in a Brown Suit, with her oversized head and wistful gaze avoids eye contact with us (I’m sure she’s waiting on a job interview, with too many worries in that giant head…). Earthling seems pensive, with her bluish hair and complexion, her deep red outfit. Both these ladies, like many of Werner’s people (I like to think of them as such, with me visiting them) are “nowhere”, standing in empty backgrounds that are sometimes bland, or as with The Glove (downstairs) are vibrant pink backgrounds, almost radioactive. Zero Eyes has downcast oval “eyes”, in the lower third of a large gray limbo: while After Goya meets your eyes, with her odd tiara headpiece and huge hairdo, like it’s namesakes’ royal portraits.

In her talk, Werner cited a number of influences both art historical (the aforementioned Goya, but also Alex Katz, whom she enjoys for his “awkwardness and badness”) and contemporary (another painting  “cites” an Alexander McQueen headpiece, all aflutter with butterflies).

There’s an element of that fashion show carnivalesque to these figures: the image you may know from the invite, Smearcase, sports a top hat and a partly concealed face, like a burlesque performer. Further down is easily the most awkward and unpleasant in the show, titled Happy. “She” looks like a creepy clown (Werner, like myself, hates clowns – does anyone like them? Really?) in the style of John Wayne Gacy – she looks down, askew, vacant. She’s planning something. I’m sure of it. And it’s not good.

I may be projecting, but the idea of constructing narrative without introducing narrative elements, and also disrupting a direct, banal reading of the figure were two streams Werner mentioned in her talk. Portraits are, like landscape, empty propositions that we can project into: Werner likes to speak of her recent sourcing of images of fashion models as using them as ciphers, mixing and matching components, often with a  “trigger” in the image that “resonates”. This can be the aforementioned butterflies from McQueen, or the image downstairs where she seems to take the elaborate hairpiece of a fashion model to a ludicrous conclusion that could (still) be seen on any Couture runway.

But in an image like Kinder, in the side space downstairs, where a massive face looks away, seemingly diseased and sensitive about it’s appearance, you get a sense of the empathy she has for her “people”.

This is a large show (and not all works are stunning…kittens? No. Camp gives way to cheese). Another Perfect Day is up for some time, and I’ll be visiting these “women” again, and seeing what else they have to say to me…. and what other aspects of their surreal personalities and stories will speak to me.

There’s no “new” radio show this week, as the conversation I had with Steve Loft about Steeling the Gaze and many things around and informing it turned into two shows: you can listen to the second half of that  here if you haven’t already. I’ll have a new show for you all next week, but there’s a few things I want to pass on, that are happening in the community.

Firstly, Janet Werner has an exhibition of work opening at the College Gallery, and she’ll be doing a talk at the U of S tomorrow (Thursday) at noon in the Gordon Snelgrove Gallery. Janet used to teach at the U of S when the art department wasn’t a joke: she has most recently been in MassMOCA, and was a judge for the RBC painting competition. Meanwhile, at the U of S, it’s hard to get the tenured studio faculty to show up for work…several are due to go on leave / sabbatical / whatever again, I imagine.

There’s also a show at Positive Passions: they’re turning into an interesting space that sometimes has work that’s really engaging, as with Keeley Haftner’s Porn Portraits, and they’ve got an exhibition of work by Kathryn Trembach that is up right now. Kathryn had some really engaging work at SCYAP this past year, some very beautiful and visceral work.

There’s Art that resonates in perfect moments, fracturing the often-distancing irrelevance of both ‘art’ and ‘galleries’ felt by many. That Steeling the Gaze: Portraits by Aboriginal Artists is here, in Saskatoon, a genesis point of the Idle No More movement, is one such moment. One of the gallery walls proclaims David Neel’s statement  “We live in a time of the created image – if you do not create your own, someone will create if for you.”

There’s a long history of photography employed as a weapon against Aboriginal peoples, in racist depictions of “savages”, “exotic” objects of lust, or even in Edward Curtis’ depictions of a “dying race”. Concordantly, Aboriginal artists often employ an “aesthetic of resistance”. It can be seen as a continuation of the story telling tradition, the importance of oral narratives passed from person to person. Neel’s comments evoke how Gaze involves “taking control of the camera and placing oneself or others within the photographic frame [which] is a courageous and political act.”

I was lucky enough to connect with Steve Loft (co curator of this touring National Gallery show, along with Andrea Kunard) and we talked about the politics and history infusing Gaze. Several ideas of great significance came out of that conversation: specifically the aforementioned political weapon that photography was, is now, and continues to be…and the need for Aboriginal artists to wield it themselves.

After all, we live in a city where the Dept. of Art and Art History has been less than rigorous investigating accusations of systematic racism, and that until a few years ago had no tenured Aboriginal faculty. And if we head to City hall we find a hushed plan to cancel the Urban Aboriginal Grant, something that PAVED (with artist / curator Aleyna Mae) used to facilitate Aboriginal youth creating amazing work about this site, in image and music. No, nothing to see here, move along, please.

Conversely, the Mendel deserves props for hosting Gaze, as Harper warrants contempt for trying to make “history” only the War of 1812 and hockey.  But “the memory of oppressed people…cannot be taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below the surface” (Howard Zinn).

The artists in this show may be familiar to you– many have strong ties to this place. Jeff Thomas has been making work with and about his son Bear for most of the latter’s life. His reactions to depictions of Aboriginals, often in the public sphere, are also grounded in his sense of fatherhood and community. But in beginning the talk /tour of this show with Thomas’ work, Kunard also spoke of knowing Thomas from his rigorous research into the photos in the CMCP (Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography – another casualty of PMO “austerity”. Hey, Gazebos aren’t cheap…). That’s clear in how he looks backwards and forwards, looking at how his people (urban based Iroquois, Onondaga) have had depictions forced upon them, and then to take images of his son (who’s also in this show, with a work that plays upon masculinity both real and constructed) in conjunction with these. Thomas’ words on the wall: “My study of Indian – ness seeks to create an image bank of my urban Iroquois experience, as well as to re contextualize historical images of First Nations people for a contemporary audience. Ultimately, I want to dismantle long entrenched stereotypes and inappropriate caricatures of First Nations People”.

Words from all the artists are on the gallery walls: there’s no academic statements, no traditional hierarchy of curator here. Thirza Cuthand’s words are near Thomas’ work, and others “mix and match” to suggest a commonality of intent, if a diversity of position. Homogeneity isn’t sought: after all, that’s part of the problem, despite continued calls for “assimilation” from the Tom Flanagans, who clearly recognize INM as an impediment to their contemporary version of petro state colonialism. All the artists speak in overlapping voices to the “common history of surviving the unparelled disaster of European contact and the creation of something new and dynamic from the ashes” (Paul Chaat Smith, as cited by the curators).

Dana Claxton has several large images in the front gallery. She’s Lakota Sioux, and all the artists in this show are designated by their nation, followed by “Canadian”. Kunard and Loft talked about National Gallery protocols of listing artists by “country”…. but controlling what you’re called is as important as controlling how you’re depicted. These subtleties of racism manifest in ways that can enrage – like a screaming child in a talk by a major Aboriginal artist, that we’re expected to tolerate because the screamer’s parent is the tenured department “head”.

Lakota Sioux are “horsemen”: and despite attempts to wipe them out, they’re here and have updated their “mustangs”, as Claxton shows. The young Lakota (with dramatic face paint) in the Daddy’s got a new ride has upgraded to a modern red and chromed “steed”, all sexy and priapic, and the young women in Baby Girlz Got A Mustang are beautiful, defiant and powerful. They’ll stare you right down.

Gaze is dense, and I can’t cover all works as they deserve: such as KC Adams’ series of portraits that challenge any exclusive, authoritarian reading of “Indian” that seems more about control and assimilation, than identity and truth. Cyborg Hybrids are soft and quiet, and when you read the beaded words on the sitters’ shirts, you realize this is a series that lures you in to make an aggressive point. Hybridity is embraced: self-naming is power.

Neither Loft nor Kunard could have predicted the synchronicity of INM and Gaze: but all revolutions seem impossibly absurd, until they happen – then they’re historically inevitable, to paraphrase Cloud Atlas. Gaze is a visual manifestation of the ideas that comprise Idle No More, an aesthetics of resistance stating – to quote a work by the aforementioned Bear  - that resistance is not futile. Or, like that t-shirt you might see on the Rez, “my heroes have always killed cowboys”.

I was told that my 2012 synopsis was an appropriate mix of snarkiness (a fine word) and cheerleading.  So, let us begin 2013 with the Frances Morrison Gallery space in the downtown, which is deserving  of some cheerleading. There’s been a number of quality shows there recently, with several coming up (Karla Griffin is one to watch for), which are transforming that gallery into a site for excellent contemporary Art in Saskatoon, with less hobby painters polluting the space.

Barbara Reimer’s Finding a Green Photo is a dramatic show, in a formal sense, with strong dark lines and deep blacks. Lens-based works fill the gallery. I use that term, instead of photography, as some are digital, though having an origin in photography. Reimer is the photography technician in the Art + AH department at the U of S, and – like Patrick Bulas in printmaking – is the backbone of that area, an indispensible part of any photo student’s education.

Reimer has a better exhibition record and more respect than half the tenured faculty in Art +AH but her position may be eliminated next year. Explain again, please, how this “restructuring” will benefit students, oh administrative leeches o’ the university (besides forcing some indolent faculty to show up for work, if they know how still)? Okay, obligatory declaration of the “nudity” of the “Emperor” at the U of S done. Let us move on.

She’s becoming known for her unorthodox process of developing film in coffee, manifest superficially in the sepia tones of many images. It manifests more relevantly in some of the ideas that motivate the work: but to call this a show that is “eco art” is a shallow reading. There’s more at play here than that. One of the ways in which photography can be successful is that the commonality of taking pictures, consuming pictures, the prevalence of imagery in a manner that our society has never seen before (pun intended) fosters greater consideration of its meaning, and allows contradictory meanings to be considered, to flourish and argue.

The back wall is a massive grid, pinned in a pattern that defines the space. It’s not so overwhelming that you don’t “see” the smaller images of the 11 x 17 “contact sheets”, and there are several that are colour – not part of the coffee process – that anchor your eye. There are also dark “blanks” and whitish vacancies, negative space for visual “rest”.

The dimness of the gallery, with the starkness, benefits this work: the space seems to demand silence, so that the six images to the left side take on a strength of presentation that befits them. Like the “grids” – there is a smaller one, to the right – these mix images from Saskatchewan and Nicaragua. Reimer received an SAB grant to travel there some time ago, expanding the work she’s been doing exploring waste sites, open air dumps, and attempts and initiatives to recycle various matter in livable environments and spaces. Her words are useful here, as you consider her process and choices: “Finding a Green Photo is a photo-based project dealing with sustainability and waste. Using film and coffee as conceptual elements, the project “conveys not just the natural world but also the way that the world is perceived and valued.”(James Aubrey is whom she cites, here).

So, to say this is just “coffee art” is a lazy reading. The green of the title also incorporates her research into the “green man”, an iconic image that has appeared in numerous cultures, with ideas of history and mythology. And there are numerous other, diverse points of access in Photo: the economics of coffee, or Nicaragua’s history in the Cold War with puppet gov’ts both right (Somoza) and left (Ortega). One of Reimer’s images references Ortega’s Sandinistas, through a massive statue in the background), for example.  Our own of issues of responsible / sustainable economies vs. the Embridge Pipeline “screw the environment and let the great – great – great grandkids deal with it” plan by our current CEO – whoops, PMO – must also inform how we interpret Finding. And it’s not just oil that has a colonial flavour, in taking from “there” to privilege “here”. Fair trade coffee, anyone?

I’ve said before that painters create moments, and photographers capture them: let’s amend that and say moments of history that resonate in different, sometimes conflicting ways. Critical looking and reading is always the appropriate response to critical image making (literally, here). Go see Finding a Green Photo, as there is nuance in these captured moments, and that nuance continues in how they’re captured: coffee isn’t just coffee, and sometimes the small image in the corner of the larger grid can reveal the meaning of the whole, or offer an alternate one so you see things in a different manner.

AKA Gallery and Make Work Projects have partnered to present a new Studio Visit and Lecture Series. International curators Dieter Roelstraete and Monika Szewczyk will be conducting studio visits with local artists and AKA Gallery will host A Conversation with Dieter Roelstraete and Monika Szewczyk on Sunday, January 27 at 7pm. Visual artists interested in meeting one-on-one with the visiting curators are encouraged to submit their portfolio to the Saskatoon Studio Visit Registry by January 16 to be considered. Visit https:// saskatoonstudiovisit.submittabl e.com/submit for submission details.

Dieter Roelstraete is the Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where his first exhibition, a survey of the work of Polish-born, London-based artist Goshka Macuga, just opened (December 2012). From 2003 until 2011, he was a curator at the Antwerp museum of contemporary art MuHKA, where he organized exhibitions of Chantal Akerman (2012), Liam Gillick & Lawrence Weiner (2011), and thematic group shows focusing on contemporary art from Vancouver (2005) and Rio de Janeiro (2011), as well as projects such as Emotion Pictures (2005) and The Order of Things (2008). In 2005 he co-curated the Honore d’O: The Quest in the Belgian pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale; he has also curated exhibitions at galleries and institutions in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Mexico City and Vancouver. A philosopher by training, former editor of Afterall journal and co-founder of FR David, Roelstraete has published extensively on contemporary art and culture in numerous catalogues and journals such as Artforum, A Prior Magazine, e-flux journal, Frieze, Mousse Magazine and Texte zur Kunst.

Monika Szewczyk is Visual Arts Program Curator at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago. Prior to joining the staff of the Logan Center, Szewczyk was head of publications at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, where she (co)edited more than twenty publications ranging from monographs, through artists’ books to critical readers (notably Meaning Liam Gillick; Rotterdam Dialogues: The Critics, The Curators, The Artists; and Cornerstones). Previously, while living in Vancouver, Szewczyk was on the curatorial team of the Vancouver Art Gallery (2004-2007) and coordinated the program of the Belkin Satellite, a downtown space of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia (2002-2004). Throughout, she also taught at art academies including Emily Carr University in Vancouver, the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, and most recently at the Bergen National Academy of the Arts. An interdisciplinary thinker, she holds degrees in International Relations (B.A.) and Art History (M.A.) from the University of British Columbia.

Szewczyk’s writing has appeared in numerous catalogues and journals, including Afterall (London), A-Prior (Ghent), Mousse (Milan), and e-flux journal online, which published her two part essay Art of Conversation, that serves as a backdrop for her presentation at AKA Gallery with Dieter Roelstraete. Thus far, her curatorial projects at the Logan Center include TELEVISIONISM, Ricardo Basbaum: Would you like to participate in an artistic experience?; Wall Text (co-curated with Zachary Cahill) and Brian Jungen and Duane Linklater: Modest Livelihood. Recent freelance exhibitions include The Joy of Pleasure (co-curated with Dieter Roelstraete at VeneKlasen Werner in Berlin, 2011), Nether Land (co-curated with Nicolaus Schafhausen at the Dutch Culture Center in Shanghai, 2010 as Act VIII of Witte de With’s multifaceted Morality project) and Allan Sekula: This Ain’t China (at e-flux, New York, 2010). In the Spring of 2012, she collaborated with the dancer and choreographer Alexandra Bachzetsis, as a dramaturg of the recently premiered piece Etude (2012), which was also presented at dOCUMENTA(13).

AKA Gallery and Make Work Projects gratefully acknowledge the RBC Emerging Artists Project as our key funder for the Studio Visit and Lecture Series, along with artsVest™ Saskatchewan’s matching incentive program created by Business for the Arts with funding from Canadian Heritage and the Government of Saskatchewan Ministry of Parks, Culture and Sport, and SaskCulture Inc., and our official hospitality sponsor the Delta Bessborough.