The A Word

You can check out work by the senior photography students in the Art and Art History Department this upcoming week.

Their instructor, Karla Griffin, received a teaching excellence award this year, and they also benefited from the knowledge of Barb Reimer, as the photography technician, and based on some of the work from recent BFA exhibitions, this looks to be engaging.

…and ended in Los Angeles, to quote the Phil Ochs song I play during this week’s episode. You can listen to it here. A few other things to pass along have some images and information below. I’m also passing on a link that Amalie Atkins sent me, with a bit more praise for the coverage that she’s getting, from Canadian Art to MassMOCA.

Just a quick note: I often post articles I’ve written for Planet S here, but in response to a reader’s question, I post MY edit of it here, not the Planet S edit. This means you get a bit of a different edge, here and there, with the A Word version – or all the insults that are edited from the Planet S version are here for your enjoyment. So, enjoy.

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I often lack faith in the “Art” world. Many times I find myself utterly disappointed. But while the worst are full of passionate intensity and the best lack all conviction, a few renew my troubled faith. For example, when Ellen Moffat commented that her amazing work from PAVED needed a home, I greedily envisioned it in my apartment. And Shauna McCabe’s Rural Readymade at the College Art Galleries is sexy and smart, playing upon both ideas of art history and with a good dollop of immediacy and irreverence. I’ve praised previous curatorial efforts by McCabe (Formerly Exit Five) for their consideration of both beauty and intent, or (to again quote the inestimable Bob Boyer) works that are both well made and meaningful. This is a strong show.

The works are both part of the touring initiative and incorporating local components: not a big fan of the local components, but it’s well intended. Of the works that came from the first incarnation of this show in P.E.I, Cape Spear by Will Gill is among the best of these: it’s silly, and inane and beautiful, and I feel that I’m good to imitate it this summer, in the river here and that the artist would heartily approve. It’s a brief video that shows balloons that are lit from within catapulted into the frothing dark ocean, shining and hilarious and irrelevant, but also speaking to the “readymade” idea of beauty everywhere, in our everyday, if we just pay attention. I might add that a recent public art work in Calgary involve thousands of glowing orbs flowing down the river, and brief moments of joy and beauty are invaluable in our lives, as we got about our days.

Other works speak to the immediacy of beauty in our surrounding, through the idea of “readymade”. Marcel Duchamps is a god of the art world for his idea of the “readymade” – designating an everyday object as art to indicate that our ideas of “art” are more ephemeral than physical (or defendable), in that a urinal often requires more technical skill than what we see in that elusive beast, a U of S Faculty show. Or, more clearly, my favourite sculptors are reforming Model T Fords or making ceramic casts of engines and such – the latter being Clint Neufeld, one of the featured artists in Rural Readymade. His works are in the display case as well as the lower gallery: and like Janet Wright Cheney’s Coy Wolves, the literal materials contrast the shapes they mimic. The Coy Wolves look more like refined gypsies, with the taxidermy forms decked out as though on a bingo date, velvety and inviting some petting or scratching. American Beauty and SeaBreeze Dynaflow, by Neufeld, have such pretty names, for such pretty engine bits.

Other artists simply have an eye and an awareness of one’s immediate areas, like a whole series of readymades, or a “readymade landscape” (not to be confused with the beige, almost Stalinist landscapes of the downtown). Norma Jean MacLean does rough paintings of abandoned hovels that are lovely and poignant, with names like Lot 31 and Coleman suggesting emptiness and poverty. These make an uneasy pairing with Doug Lewis’ works downstairs, such as Drive In, with its blank old time movie screen, so pristinely blank and abandoned, like it’s never been used at all….

But here’s a good point to sample the curator’s words, and McCabe has demonstrated in the past an economy and focus in her statements that other curators should envy:

The effectiveness of the “readymade” has centred upon its probing of a key tension and confusion – between what is, and what is not, art. This exhibition will feature work by a number of contemporary artists who explore the mutability of interpretation and meaning through an investigation of the idea of the readymade in contemporary experience. Focusing on everyday surroundings where the use and adaptation of found materials are deeply engrained, the work of these artists playfully and adeptly blurs registers – between the mundane and aesthetic, low-tech and no-tech, found and familiar. The collective vernacular that emerges in the Rural Readymade is one that speaks of an agile and persistent drive towards the creative reimagination of art and everyday life.

Rural Readymade is another show (like past ones such as Peter Smith’s You May Find Yourself, or Animal by Corinna Ghaznavi, or The Mechanical Self by Leah Taylor) that makes a trip to the U of S campus worthwhile : perhaps when the art department is finally, mercifully shut down, all its money can be spent on exhibitions at the College Gallery, for more work and exhibitions like this one.

…especially a very good response by Stephen LaRose, who writes for Planet S. You can see his “letter” to Brad Wall here, in which he points out the massive subsidies – subsidies, money, cash gifts, etc. – that many industries receive from the Wall government. Did someone say something about making an industry stand on it’s own two feet?

LaRose is easily the best political writer we have in this province, and his coverage of the FNUC was both considered and honest. He’s a good reason to read Planet S, when some of their other writers are a little too “knee jerk” for their own good….

You can see his response to the Film Tax Credit decision here, just scroll a ways down the page.

This week’s radio show is a conversation with Ed Pien, who is one of the artists in Paper Doll which opens at the Mendel this Friday. You can listen to us talk about his work in this show, Revel, and a future project he will have at the Sydney Biennale.

Now, the talk / tour for that show is this Friday March 30th, with Ann Koval, the curator, and Ed Pien and Jeannie Thib, happens at 7 PM and the reception will begin at 8 PM, after a plethora of speeches and such. And here’s some images of previous installations of Ed’s work that will be in Paper Doll.

Nope, not a joke, people, though it sounds like one. If – a large IF – the Heritage Minister is not shining us on, than isn’t this an interesting thing, in light of the Wall government’s decision in light of the Saskatchewan Film Tax Credit?

To experience June Jacobs Shift Shaping is akin to walking into a woman’s closet: and I mean a genuine, “mature” woman, not so much in terms of age, but in terms of multiple aspects of self and facets of being that are more intimate and varied, perhaps wonderfully contradictory. Others might be protection against the outside world (Self Preservation, for example), like disguises or shields. Considering some of the comments and discourse around women these days, here and to the south, protection may be required.

The exhibition at the Affinity Gallery, at the Saskatchewan Craft Council, is a rare display of many of Jacobs’ works, and there are recurring motifs. Many of these fabric works share a common “dress” form, but these are simply a base to build upon, a common genesis or reference. Many of the works are beautiful, inviting you to touch, but as so often happens when I visit the Affinity Gallery (as I joked to Les Potter, one of the people responsible for this excellent show) I had to clench my hands, to avoid feeling (“groping”?) everything in sight. This would be inappropriate, as I would also think that these are proxies for Jacobs, like the aforementioned analogy to clothing, but also because the empty “dresses” that are the basis of so many works suggest by an absence a body within them.

But I want to feel the bits and pieces of Flower – Deflower, or to lie down on – or next – to Bed of Roses, so I can feel and stroke it, resting in the comfort it proffers to me. It even is installed in the front area, so you have the window spaces, a comfortable site to rest within. One diptych work – Is That All There Is? - seems to expose its inner parts to us in this manner: another level of intimacy, like with the work that has a border (the aforementioned Self Preservation), where we may look in, but not be inside of it. Other works have brightly coloured components to set off the off-white of the majority of felt works, looking soft but that would undoubtedly be sullied (literally) by too many hands.

One might postulate an analogy about ideals and practicum there, or about a remote perfection that is literally unreal, and what that says about how we see women, and gender. It gets pleasantly messy when Galatea steps off that pedestal and comes to life and actually speaks, or demonstrates a mind of her own (my nod to International Women’s Day, ladies). I like an intelligent woman who can argue: makes her real, and much sexier, bluntly. And these are “shifts” that indicate a personality that is complex and real, sometimes colourful (Never just Black and White) and serious (Rooted to a Firm Stand).

But enough hyperbole: let me praise more of the works, specifically. Vestal, in its title, plays upon the historical notion of vestal virgins, and is one of the plainest works here, appropriately. Loves me…Loves me Not II is another dress that has both simple flowers upon it, and some scatter upon the gallery floor. I can’t help but feel the old game has not gone well, here. It’s like Flower – Deflower, in that the dresses are bases, with different personalities or aspects, moving outwards, literally, spilling outwards, but Flower-Deflower seems to have extraneous bits, and all I can think of is how the term “Deflower” used to refer to taking a woman’s virginity…and the complications therein and after the act itself and what symbolic space (no pun intended) that held. And continues to…

It’s funny – but appropriate – to me that I’m seeing better sculptural works in craft spaces than in “art” spaces lately. Perhaps this comes back to (another) failure of the U of S art program. Or perhaps it’s the “Po Mo” discourse of ideas over object, irony over intent, or maybe I’m thinking harder on it that it merits. I raise this as we’re seeing better feminist, post modernist, engrossing work from June J. Jacobs  (and members of Flock and Gather, a local collective) than from a “school” whose best contribution to sculpture in this site would be to be shut down, to cauterize its hemorrhaging ­damage.

But never mind: let us speak of good things, and the complicated beauty of this show. Go see June J. Jacobs work in Shift Shaping at the Affinity Gallery at the Saskatchewan Craft Council, and go see her talk in early April. Like Kai Chan, her works are engaging and well made and will make you want to see her work again, as her ideas (and by extension herself) are literally manifest in the forms she creates and displays.

…which I steal from this  excellent article in the Regina Leader Post.

In 2008/09 Saskatchewan television and film production stimulated $75 million in economic activity and created over 1200 jobs in the province.

Since it’s inception, Saskatchewan film employment tax credits have generated 623 million in production with a cost of $100 million to the government.

Or, to paraphrase Rick Mercer, Sarah Polley has employed more carpenters and workers in making a film than Brad Wall ever has, or will.

I am passing on a request to send letters decrying this ignorant decision to SYMIA at: vanessa@smpia.sk.ca and these letters will be posted at Brad Wall’s office to demand an explanation and not the usual governmental stonewalling and silence.

Here’s a JPEG of an example letter: my regrets for not having it in word, but you can add or subtract what you like with this.

It is worth noting that part of the “boom” here is due to cultural industries: and that we will take that boom with us, if we leave. I would also suggest contacting your MLA (hey, there’s going to be three more of them – guess we don’t mind paying for something like that, when most of them don’t do anything. There is no government subsidy like when it subsidizes itself….that sounded obscene, but not in the way I meant it.)

Here is this week’s radio show: and I talk about a few things, from the latest issue of Canadian Art to a few other things that are going on in the city. Enjoy.

…and you may think this is a self serving, arrogant post (what, is this a message from the U of S used car salesmen in Fine Arts and Humanities. No, wait, that’s not fair to the used car salesmen….), but listen to it, and you will enjoy it, I’m sure.

And I like to say “bacon” as a warm up word when doing voice overs….and it may also be because I once bitched that I’d done about 5 of these, and when was I going to get mine? Should have known to be careful what I wish for….

I include with this post a wonderful image of chicken hearts that the artist Yuka Yamaguchi once sent me, because it’s pretty.