The A Word

….I steal the title that my editor at Planet S used, as I like it very much. This was my year end commentary on 2011 and the shows we “saw” this past year in Saskatoon. Enjoy: and I’ve resisted putting this up at the A Word, but it is 2012, and “so shall it be at the end of the world : the angels shall come forth and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Matt 13:49, 50). This will undoubtably make many wail and gnash their teeth – but hey, who am I to disagree with the Star Phoenix calling me a “Civic Art Star”?

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It was a largely good year, with many changes, in the Saskatoon Visual Arts community. PAVED arts welcomed a new Director, a long overdue event. Dan Ring, who has been a curatorial mainstay at the Mendel Art Gallery so long that I suspect he has a secret room (with a wet bar) in the basement, has retired, and we’ll know his successor in 2012. AKA gallery also welcomed a slate of new staff, and like PAVED, and the Mendel, new people mean new directions. Now, at the U of S Art “department” for 2011 / 12, there’s not new people so much as fewer people, with significant cutbacks and a chunk of faculty on sabbatical. Has the university started fundraising for the Clarion Project yet, or will it be stillborn? But my (much suffering) editor cautioned me I’m to talk about relevant things, so I shall attempt to do so. I make no guarantees.

I’d like to frame this in a larger narrative: with the re election of the Sask Party, the myth of the “New Saskatchewan” permeates us all. And I don’t think it’s accidental that nearly everything I’ll be mentioning seems to challenge that narrative. Or I can tell you that the billboard I mentioned in writing on Jayce Salloum’s work that warned that “you’re being lied to, SK” is now advertising some event that has to do with the Titanic. I think I’ve said I don’t believe in coincidence.

Jeff Thomas : Resistance is [Not] Futile at PAVED arts was a worthy exhibit in the same way that Jayce Salloum’s history of the present is : both challenge our assumptions of history, here and beyond. In Thomas’ case, his exploration of where – and how – stereotypical images of Aboriginals appear across Canada matters not just because of the years behind this project, but because his own son Bear has gone from being part of it to a contributor. Salloum works in this same vein, but expanding beyond the “colony of Canada” (his term) to what we think / assume about the Middle East. Another point Jayce made to me was that the Mendel is unique in that it features voices that have no interest in going along to get along : and in this past year, Ruth Cuthand’s retrospective Back Talk offended all the right people in all the right ways, with works both new and old that give a history of this place that won’t be featured at the Western Development Museum any time soon.

Influenza, image credit / artist : Ruth Cuthand

Karine Giboulo and Olga Mishchenko used disarmingly lovely means in Habitaptation at the Mendel to indicate that the 1% are more than happy to keep pissing on the 99% : the toys and tableaux of the former denied their sinister story, just as the latter artist’s images of universities made them look like Orwellian bureaucratic monoliths…. and to top it all off, Michèle Mackasey in face à nous had the audacity to point out that single mothers can be good parents, and worthy of being painted like queens. You can still see that show, along with the aforementioned Salloum.

The College Galleries on campus are never included in my gleeful contempt for the art “department” there. Like a number of places (such as the new Make Work Projects, on 20^th Street, who brought in two significant visiting speakers this year) they step in to fill a need. Two shows stand out this year: Shauna McCabe’s Formerly Exit Five : Portable Monuments to Recent History explored success and failure of urban environments, and Peter Smith’s posthumous exploration of self, creativity – and mental illness  – in his You May Find Yourself. Both offered frank views, and both were shows that you needed to experience repeatedly. Jon Sasaki’s Good Intentions was both heartfelt and hilarious, meaning well and mocking at the same time, and the galleries ended the year with Corinna Ghaznavi’s engaging project Animal, which seemed to be here too short a time.

Going from the theme of animals, Michel Boutin’s Great King Rabbitt at AKA also offered an alternative – and caustic – take on many revered historical figures, and “ways in which history is constructed to perpetuate both personal and ideological power.”: I am curious if Michel will be adding our current Prime Minister to his list of “portraits” along with the Pope, the Queen and a few others deserving of a critical makeover. As a brief aside, PAVED arts showed exhibitions by David Clark (88 Constellations for Wittgenstein) and Ellen Moffat (PickUpPutDown) that are among some of the best new media work I’ve ever “seen”.

I’ll end with what is arguably the most significant event in the visual arts community of the past year: Ellen Remai’s generous donation to the AGS, stepping in to support culture as many governments step out. I mention this not just to praise her but also to end with a question to our respective political “overlords”: do they imagine that the current rapacious rental companies will be making such efforts to support the Saskatoon and Saskatchewan communities, as Remai seems to be re investing money made here back into here, or will they simply take the money and run? Now that governments have begun to abdicate their responsibilities so gleefully in this manner, this is the question that I’ll keep in mind for the start of 2012 – as the most significant exhibition of the past year has been Ruth Cuthand’s Back Talk, and we all know how much politicians like dissent.