Tag: Nuit Blanche

Nine art exhibitions to be excited about in 2020

Posted on by Rosemary Heather

Look out for shows by Laurie Anderson, Michael Snow, Wendy Coburn, Tau Lewis and Nuit Blanche’s move into Etobicoke and North York

BY ROSEMARY HEATHER JANUARY 2, 2020

Art, OCAD, Wendy Coburn, Toronto, Slut Walk
Wendy Coburn’s UHAUL Suite, a giclee-print photograph from 2012. Photo: Courtesy of the Estate of Wendy Coburn/Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto

It’s fitting that a Michael Snow survey exhibition kicks off Toronto’s 2020 art season. The influential Toronto-born multimedia artist’s practice has been a baseline for contemporary art in the city for an incredible 70 years. A marvel of productivity – and longevity – Snow deserves much of the credit for the sheer eclecticism of formats and styles that comprise contemporary art today.

As artists like Snow made increasingly experimental and challenging work, the venues where art is shown also expanded. All-night art event Nuit Blanche, which will take place in North York and Etobicoke for the first time this year, is possible because artists have an ability to consider any venue as suitable for showing work. The annual event is part of a wider push to grow art audiences in the city, which includes a major emphasis on public art in 2021. In the meantime, Torontonians have plenty of mind-expanding options in the coming year. Here are our most-anticipated shows.

Laurie Anderson: To The Moon

Royal Ontario Museum, January 11-25

Like Snow, American avant-garde artist and composer Anderson is another influential name with a long track record of experimentation, to great success, across a range of art forms. This winter, she’s exhibiting a VR artwork made in collaboration with Taiwan’s Hsin-Chien Huang. The 15-minute experience is an immersive trip into outer space, and through the DNA of dinosaurs. Anderson is also performing a sold-out show at Koerner Hall, giving a lecture and screening her film Heart Of A Dog at Hot Docs Cinema during her visit to Toronto.

rom.on.ca

Listening To Snow: Works By Michael Snow

Art Museum, University of Toronto, January 18-March 21

The sheer scope of 91-year-old Snow’s practice allows galleries to experiment with the presentation of his work like this exhibition, which focuses on the artist’s use of sound. Sound installations, two recordings and a film will create a sonic experience within the space of the gallery. U of T’s Innis Hall will also screen three of Snow’s most celebrated films, including his landmark 1967 short, Wavelength. Snow will also give a solo piano performance in the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery on March 21.

artmuseum.utoronto.ca

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa: Asymmetries

The Power Plant, January 25-May 10

Absurdist and mordant humour, often about the civil war his family fled when he was a child, infuses the work of this Guatemalan-Canadian artist. Something of a superstar internationally, this is his first major exhibition in Toronto. It will mostly include works from the past decade, as well as a newly commissioned work based on the cacaxte, a ladder-like tool used in Latin America for carrying objects on one’s back.

thepowerplant.org

Tau Lewis

Oakville Galleries, January 26-March 22

Currently on a tear through the international art world, Toronto-based Lewis is a self-taught prodigy. With a focus on “telling stories about Black identity,” Lewis creates gallery installations in which multiple figures and their accompanying landscapes and backdrops are sculpted from found textiles and other materials.

oakvillegalleries.com

Krista Belle Stewart’s 2019 installation Truth To Material.
Photo: Courtesy of the artist/Sean Fenzl

Fatma Bucak and Krista Belle Stewart

Museum of Contemporary Art, May 1-June 2

Part of Contact Photo Fest, this show presents the two artists’ work in dialogue. Kurdish-Turkish artist Bucak shows photos from an ongoing series, still lifes of found objects taken from border landscapes (including Syria-Turkey and U.S.-Mexico). Stewart, a member of the Syilx First Nation and now based in Berlin, presents work about the artist’s investigation into “Indianers” – the notorious German hobbyists who enact a fantasy of Indigeneity each summer.

museumofcontemporaryart.ca

Fable For Tomorrow: A Survey Of Works By Wendy Coburn

OCAD Onsite Gallery, May 13-October 3

This is a posthumous exhibition of work by the much-loved influential artist and OCAD University professor, who died in 2015. For those introduced to her work through the mind-blowing investigative video Slut Nation: Anatomy Of A Protest – documenting the world’s first SlutWalk protest in 2011 – this survey will provide an excellent chance for Toronto audiences to better understand Coburn’s wide-ranging art practice and activism.

ocadu.ca

Vector Festival

InterAccess and other venues, July 16-19

This festival, which showcases art about digital technology, takes place online and at venues across the city. For the eighth edition, the festival asks what happens after the gamification of everyday life – how do artists respond to tech’s ability to engineer our behaviour? The deadline for art and curatorial proposals responding to this theme is February 1.

vectorfestival.org

Nuit Blanche

Various venues, October 3

The annual all-night art event keeps getting bigger. Judging by the crowd sizes, its expansion to Scarborough (starting in 2018) has been a huge success. Next up: moves into North York and Etobicoke. The event has also appointed Dr. Julie Nagam as artistic director for the next two years. Nagam is planning a city-wide exhibition focused on Toronto’s ravines and waterways. By connecting exhibits via the city’s historical trade routes, visitors will enjoy an entirely different experience of the city.

toronto.ca

Kristiina Lahde: Follow A Curved Line To Completion And You Make A Circle

MKG127, November 21-December 19

A coolly inventive artist, Toronto’s Lahde makes delicate, geometric artworks using everyday items like wooden rulers, envelopes or paper clips. Her upcoming exhibition promises more of her precise minimalistic abstractions, with a focus on circular sculptural works, including circles discovered in found items and the “zeros clipped from advertising flyers.”

mkg127.com

@rosemheather

Toronto wants to make the year 2021 all about public art

Posted on by Rosemary Heather

The city is revamping its public art strategy for the first time in 30 years, but Doug Ford’s developer-friendly Bill 108 is causing uncertainty

BY ROSEMARY HEATHER DECEMBER 4, 2019

After a move to Scarborough, city-run art event Nuit Blanche will expand to North York and Etobicoke in 2020. Photo: Samuel Engelking.

Toronto has declared 2021 “the Year of Public Art,” but new legislation proposed by Doug Ford is already causing uncertainty.

Mayor John Tory announced the city will update its public art strategy for the first time in around 30 years.

“We want to grow Toronto’s reputation as a creative city,” he said during a press conference on November 18, adding that the inspiration for the 10-year strategy – which delivers on one of his 2018 campaign promises – was a 2017 study led by OCAD University president Sara Diamond and University of Toronto associate professor of sociology Daniel Silver.

“This is a rare example of academic recommendations being put into action,” said Diamond, an advisor on the new strategy, at the press conference.

The 2017 study called for an update to the city’s existing public art policy, which was drafted in the 1980s. The program’s costs will be determined through the city’s 2020 budget process, and the proposed strategy will be considered by the city’s Executive Committee on December 11.

Tory noted that since 2017 the city has delivered on its goal of investing $25 per capita in the arts.

The public art strategy took the OCAD study as its starting point and added to that an extensive process of city-led consultation with the arts community, stakeholder groups and an advisory committee.

According to the proposed strategy, the city will coordinate an overall vision for Toronto’s public art offerings and ensure art is evenly spread out across the city. The idea is to create more landmarks, like the dog fountain at Berczy Park, that can foster stronger neighborhood identities and a deeper sense of belonging.

Another recommendation is better integration between public art and city planning, including coordination of how pieces might work together in dialogue with one another. The study also advises the city to broaden its definition of public art to include temporary works – basically, public art pop-ups that might include performances or screen-based works.

At the press conference, the mayor talked about Toronto Man, the controversial sculpture on St. Clair West by German artist Stephan Balkenhol. “I felt joy to see the debate that this work has inspired,” he said.

He added that art plays a role in branding a city’s identity. “I visited Austin,” he said, “to try and understand how that city got its reputation as a creative hub.”

Fostering Toronto’s reputation as a similar hub is a goal that lies behind the new strategy.

However, incoming provincial legislation from Doug Ford’s arts-averse conservative government could complicate the strategy.

Late last year, the Tories cut the Ontario Arts Council budget cut by $5 million, and chopped more than $2 million from the Indigenous Culture Fund, effectively eliminating it.

Now the premier’s developer-friendly Bill 108 jeopardizes Toronto’s ability to obtain benefits such as public art from developers.

To date, “developers are responsible for over 300 public art projects getting built,” councillor Gary Crawford, one of the leads on the Year of Public Art’s advisory committee, noted during the press conference.

The city runs three public art programs, including the Percent for Public Art Program, which mandates that one per cent of a new development’s cost is budgeted for public art initiatives. New commissions are funded by developers on a per-project basis and administered by the city.

Bill 108 puts the future of the program in doubt.

The Percent for Public Art Program dates back to the mid 80s, but the last 15 years saw the majority of new projects built thanks to the explosion of condo developments. Though the rate of new condos developments is slowing, the first quarter of 2019 saw 242 condominium projects constructed, an all-time high for the city, according to Urban Toronto.

“The province has replaced development-related revenue and benefit tools with the community benefits charge,” a city spokesperson told NOW. “The impact on the city’s Percent for Public Art Program is unknown.”

However, others see less reliance on developers for public art funding as a good thing.

“If [Bill108] helps to uncouple public art from condo development, this would be a positive effect,” says Rebecca Carbin, a public art consultant who advised on the city’s strategy. “One goal of the strategy was to look at other sources of funding. Currently the city’s dependence on developers creates public art deserts.”

Ensuring that public art is evenly spread out across the city is one of the strategy’s goals. Carbin notes the majority of new major public art commissions are concentrated in the core. The suburbs are home to many street mural projects, but the exact number of these and other works is a question that will be answered by a newly announced public directory of projects.

But public art is more than sculptures and murals. “One-hundred-year monuments and one-night events” are also considered public art, says Carbin.

At the press conference, the mayor made clear his commitment to the latter format, announcing that annual all-night art event Nuit Blanche will expand to Etobicoke and North York in 2020. The previously downtown-centric initiative branched out to Scarborough over the last two years.

The Year of Public Art will also be supported by new funding opportunities for artists, administered through the Toronto Arts Council (TAC). There will be grants of up to $20,000 for Nuit Blanche projects and up to $50,000 for Year of Public Art projects.

Given that Percent for Public Art Program budgets are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the TAC grants will cover only a portion of an ambitious art project. As such, major art institutions like the Toronto Biennial of Art and the Power Plant will partner to help raise funding.

While new money to make art is always welcome, how artists will  continue to afford to live in the city was not discussed at the mayor’s press conference.

Giving funds to public art initiatives is an easy concession developers can make. This allows them to expand the terms of a building project in the face of opposition. Working with artists helps to burnish their image, and Toronto condos are increasingly home to some impressively ambitious projects like Balkenhol’s sculpture or Israeli artist Ron Arad’s monumental work at Yonge and Bloor, Safe Hands.

But many people who make art may not be able to afford a unit in these buildings. A November 2019 report says that the average rent in Toronto is now $2,350 for a one-bedroom apartment. As a next step, Mayor Tory could declare 2020 as the Year of Affordable Housing.

@rosemheather

The best Toronto art shows in fall 2019

Posted on by Rosemary Heather
Including the inaugural Toronto Biennial of Art, Hito Steyerl at the AGO, Hajra Waheed at the Power Plant, Nuit Blanche and more

BY SEPTEMBER 5, 2019

An Embassy of Imagination and PA System’s Sinaaqpagiaqtuut/The Long-Cut procession began in Cape Dorset, Nunavut and continues at the Toronto Biennial of Art. Photo: Alexa Hatanaka

The upcoming art season is packed with interesting shows, but the biggest hype is around the newly hatched Toronto Biennial of Art, launching at multiple locations on September 21.

A staple in cities internationally (there are over 300 biennials globally), Toronto is a latecomer to the format of a large-scale international art show presented every other year. The curatorial team is led by Candice Hopkins, who was one of the curators for the Canadian effort at this year’s Venice Biennial, the granddaddy of the format (founded in 1895).

Complementing the Biennial is the 14th edition of Nuit Blanche. The always popular all-night event encompasses City Hall, Don Mills and Scarborough’s Civic and Town Centres (added last year), while offering an expanded program at Fort York that extends to the edge of Liberty Village.

Crowds who frequent Nuit Blanche will know what to do at the Biennial: venture out into the city to see it anew as it gets reframed and repurposed by artists’ works. Here is a list of our most-anticipated exhibitions for further art-going in the coming months.

Deanna Bowen, God Of Gods: A Canadian Play
At Art Museum at the University of Toronto (7 Hart House)
September 4-November 30

Black Canadian artist Bowen is renowned for using archival research to tell stories left out of official histories. For Hart House’s centennial celebrations, she reimagines Carroll Aikins’s play, originally staged there in 1922, which used Indigenous motifs to look at the horrors of war. Bowen has created a film that examines Aikins’s work through dialogue with Indigenous writers and artists.

Jay Isaac, Midnight Repairs / Ron Giii, Geometry Street
At Paul Petro Contemporary Art (980 Queen West)
September 6-October 5

These simultaneous shows of painting and drawing are by a mid-career and senior artist respectively. Isaac presents a suite of witty black-and-white paintings with urban themes. Much loved artist Giii is self-taught and known for drawings featuring a solitary figure on the page. Recently he surprised fans by branching out with the sparse geometric works presented in this show.

Lois Andison
Olga Korper Gallery (17 Morrow)
September 7-October 5

Over the course of 30-odd years, Toronto artist Andison has refined her practice, which focuses on kinetic sculpture and installation. Whereas earlier work has an outright figurative emphasis, Andison more recently is making smart, minimalistic kinetic works that have no less relevance to the body as it is changed by an encounter with artworks.

Joani Tremblay
Zalucky Contemporary (3044 Dundas West)
September 13-October 12

Based in Montreal, Tremblay has built up a thriving international painting career by making effortlessly cool-looking still life abstractions. For her second show with gallerist Juliana Zalucky, the artist is showing a series of works based on her visit to Arcosanti, an experimental eco-architectural community in Arizona.

Undomesticated, Mary Anne Barkhouse, Sandra Brewster, Erika DeFreitas, Lucy Howe, Nicolas Fleming and others
Koffler Gallery (180 Shaw)
September 18-November 17

This sprawling group show sheds light on how domestic lives are in an uneasy relationship with the natural world. Lucy Howe’s melting couches and other deformed furniture sculptures are typical of the ways artists are adept at making everyday things look unfamiliar. Nicolas Fleming adds an extra dimension of strange to this show through a rough-hewn immersive environment that frames the overall exhibition.

Toronto Biennial of Art, Maria Thereza Alves, Judy Chicago, Dana Claxton, Shezad Dawood, Naufus Ramírez Figueroa, Kapwani Kiwanga, and Curtis Talwst Santiago and others
259 Lake Shore East and other locations
September 21-December 1

This milestone art event for the city features a stellar international lineup of artists and an extensive slate of public programs. All events are free, spanning numerous venues – including Riverdale Park and a film program presented at the Cinesphere – along with the show’s massive main venue on Lake Shore East. How we live “in relation” (and also out of sync) is the show’s overarching theme. On view is a procession featuring visiting youth artists from Cape Dorset, Nunavut as well as their banners, costumes and sculptures.

Hajra Waheed, Hold Everything Dear
The Power Plant (231 Queens Quay West)
September 21-January 5

The widely shown multidisciplinary Montreal artist (who is also part of the Biennial) has created an installation that includes 100 small works on paper. Through the intimacy of handmade details, Waheed investigates complex themes like geopolitics and surveillance. These preoccupations, derived in part from a childhood spent in a gated compound in Saudi Arabia, speak to how the complexity of the contemporary world gets filtered through personal experience.

Nuit Blanche, Daniel Arsham, Esmaa Mohamoud, Ghost Atelier, Javid Jah, Simin Keramati, Kent Monkman, Sophia Oppel, Ebony G. Patterson and others
Nathan Phillips Square, Scarborough Civic Centre and other locations
October 5

Given the massive crowd that enjoyed the Raptors’ victory parade, it’s fitting that the spirit of that event continues at Nuit Blanche. Artists Bryan Espiritu and Esmaa Mohamoud unveil their sculpture commemorating the team’s 25th anniversary. Other highlights include Daniel Arsham’s luminous monochrome Zen Garden at City Hall, and Drake collaborator Director X, who offers a sequel to his landmark work about environmental destruction from Nuit Blanche in 2016. Presented at the Ontario Science Centre, the installation is on view until January 5.

Hito Steyerl’s three-channel video installation HellYeahWeFuckDie (2016) goes on display at the AGO on October 24.

Hito Steyerl, This Is The Future
Art Gallery of Ontario (317 Dundas West)
October 24-February 23

The AGO hosts celebrated German artist, filmmaker and writer’s first solo show in Canada. Steyerl is known for looking at the production and circulation of images as a way to tell a story about wider issues of global politics, technology and economics. Three of her large-scale works are featured, including HellYeahWeFuckDie (2016), a standout at the Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017. Steyerl chats with critic Brian Droitcour on October 23.

Maryse Larivière, Under the Cave of Winds
Gallery 44 (401 Richmond #120)
November 1-December 14

The always inventive Larivière has a multi-faceted practice that includes sculpture, collage, performance and writing. For this exhibition, she presents a black-and-white 16mm film featuring a female protagonist held captive at a remote island location. A follow-up to a novel she wrote with the same theme, Larivière sees such scenarios as an analogy for her role as an artist.

@rosemheather

https://nowtoronto.com/culture/art-and-design/best-toronto-art-shows-fall-2019/

11 art exhibitions to be excited about in 2019

Posted on by Rosemary Heather
Look out for the Toronto Biennial of Art and exhibitions featuring work by Brian Jungen, Chantal Akerman, Carrie Mae Weems and Daniel Arsham
Untitled, a 2017 photograph by Carrie Mae Weems.
Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

If last year is anything to go by, 2019 promises more social media exodus and a world slightly less obsessed with connected devices. Art galleries offer a good alternative. Instead of the light emitting from the mobile or computer screen, light therapy as art is on offer. And come September, Toronto gets the art biennial it has long been waiting for, featuring local and international artists at venues adjacent to Lake Ontario.

VAJIKO CHACHKHIANI: THEY KEPT SHADOWS QUIET

Scrap Metal Gallery, October 11, 2018-March 30, 2019

The first solo show in North America by the young Georgian artist is the most ambitious exhibition staged to date by this private gallery. It features a number of works, including a specially built “inverted” immigration checkpoints. Using two way mirrors in reverse direction, visitors can surveil the occupants of the booths, which are manned by actors every Saturday from 1-4 pm for the duration of the show.

SANAZ MAZINANI: LIGHT TIMES

Stephen Bulger Gallery, January 12-February 23

Known for her large-scale mosaic works embedded with political content, Mazinani returns to her hometown for this back-to-basics study of photography. Camera-less photos (i.e., light exposed to photosensitive paper) form the basis of this show – but Mazinani’s larger agenda is revealing the manipulations, framing and cropping that create photographic “truth.”

TRUE TO THE EYES: THE HOWARD AND CAROLE TANENBAUM PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION

Ryerson Image Centre, January 23-April 7

A presentation of over 200 works from the Toronto philanthropists’ private collection. The sheer range and eclecticism of the photos on view – including Brassaï, vernacular works, Diane Arbus and Edward Burtynsky – offers insight into how genres within the medium have evolved. A useful point of reference for photography’s expanded digital life today.

Inverse Squares Yellow on Black, an abstract painting by Swedish-born artist Jaan Poldaas.
Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid / Courtesy Birch Contemporary and estate of Jaan Poldaas

JAAN POLDAAS: A COLOURFUL LIFE

Birch Contemporary, February 7-March 2

This is a memorial exhibition for the Swedish-born Toronto-based artist who died in October. Poldaas made vibrant, hard-edged abstract paintings, working within set rules he imposed on his practice such as using primary colours and the colour grey in differing shades. This framework allowed him to discover constant variation in composition throughout his career.

APOLONIJA ŠUŠTERŠIČ:
LIGHT THERAPY &
CHANTAL AKERMAN

MOCA, November 28-April 30/ MOCA, February 14-April 14 

Here are two good reasons to visit MOCA’s new location. Slovenian artist Šušteršič presents a light therapy room as part of the museum’s interest in exploring the role galleries play in supporting well-being. Visitors who become MOCA members can also book it for private sessions. Filmmaker Akerman, who died in 2015, was one of Europe’s foremost auteurs of the last 50 years. While many of her films have screened in Toronto, MOCA is hosting the first museum presentation of her installation work.

CARRIE MAE WEEMS: HEAVE

Art Museum at University of Toronto, CONTACT Photography Festival and three public sites, May 3-July 13

Part of this year’s Contact Photography Festival, this show marks the first solo exhibition in Canada by this important African-American artist. Weems is known for her photo-based installations that incorporate film, daguerreotypes, textiles and period-specific dress. Her tableaux reflect on how power functions in society, in part by making viewers aware of the constructed nature of photography.

Brian Jungen’s Warrior 1 sculpture from 2017 is made from Nike Air Jordans and leather.
Photo: Jason Wyche / Courtesy of the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York

BRIAN JUNGEN

Art Gallery of Ontario, June 20-August 25

A solo exhibition by the celebrated West Coast artist touches down at the AGO this summer. Jungen is known for remaking everyday items, like Nike shoes or plastic lawn chairs, into powerful sculptural works. The artist’s always inventive refashionings often reference his Indigenous heritage. His use of mass-produced materials also critiques the conventions of museum display and the value of the objects collected therein.

KATE NEWBY

Cooper Cole Gallery, September TBA

The New Zealand-born artist’s debut solo show will feature beguiling works that are part sculpture, part installation. Working with ceramics, bricks, glass and found materials like pebbles and other detritus, she often uses the floor and other overlooked parts of the gallery to subtly shift visitor experience – as well as the concept of what can be art.

TORONTO BIENNIAL OF ART

Various venues on Lake Ontario, opens September 21

Biennials are the lingua franca of the international art world and Toronto is long overdue to host its own. This 90-day event is helmed by Candice Hopkins and Tairone Bastien, two smart, experienced curators who have announced a theme focused on the history embedded in the city’s waterfront – the site of settlement, trade and Indigenous histories. Featured artists include Althea Thauberger, Shezad Dawood and Syrus Marcus Ware.

NUIT BLANCHE

Various venues, October 5

The city’s all-night public art event again includes venues in Scarborough and adds first-time locations Fort York and the Garrison Common. Nathan Phillips Square will host an installation by Daniel Arsham. Few details are available, but given he works with meta-architecture firm Snarkitecture, it’s a good bet the New York artist’s piece will be big and involve the colour white. The deadline for artists to submit proposals for the Open Call section is February 4. 11 art exhibitions to be excited about in 2019

NOW Magazine: 11 art exhibitions to be excited about in 2019
@rosemheather 

The best Toronto art shows in fall 2018

Posted on by Rosemary Heather

Including MOCA’s grand reopening, Nuit Blanche in Scarborough and a monumental light installation at the Bentway

Amy Kazymerchyk (left), Chandra Melting Tallow, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill and Tania Willard’s film Coney Island Baby runs to November 3 at Gallery TPW. Photo Courtesy of Amy Kazymerchyk and Aaron Leon.

BY 

SEPTEMBER 17, 2018

One reason art is good for you: generally, you need to walk around to see it. Do it with a friend, adding conversation to the mix, and you have a program for healthy cogitation.

This fall, the ambitious art lover can get a lot of walking done. Toronto’s arts organizations have a slew of events and exhibitions planned. Some of these take place outdoors as temporary installations. Others are launching new art venues, kicking off fresh prospects for the city’s scene. Below is a list of upcoming events to get excited about – and plan a day’s outing or two.

WILL KWAN, A PARK FOR ALL
At Don River Valley Park Art Program, Lower Don Trail
Summer 2018-Summer 2023

Part of an ongoing series of art commissions for the Don Valley Park, Kwan wrote a text piece that has been writ large on a retaining wall of the Don River. A five-year-long installation, the work reflects on the way public space is defined by the imperfect coexistence of its members.

SARAH MUNRO AND JOSI SMIT, A VIEW TO A ROOM
At Zalucky Contemporary (3044 Dundas West)
September 8-October 6

Munro presents collage works that use photos of the dwellings occupied by Belgian surrealist René Magritte (a Canadian, Munro lives in Belgium). Complementing this is an installation by Toronto’s Smit, evoking the armature of home decor.

GORDON PARKS, THE FLÁVIO STORY
At Ryerson Image Centre (33 Gould)
September 12-December 9

This show is about a 1961 Life Magazine exposé that changed the life of a 12-year-old boy from a Rio de Janeiro favela. African-American Parks was a pioneer of photojournalism. He went on to direct Hollywood films, including Shaft.

BETSABEÉ ROMERO, BRAIDED ROOTS/TRENZANDO RAÍCES
At Art Gallery of York University (4700 Keele)
September 13-December 3

Mexican artist Romero developed this sculptural installation at the AGYU after a number of visits to Toronto. It’s result of a series of workshops she did with the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation, along with research into Canadian mining practices abroad.

JENEEN FREI NJOOTLI, GABRIELLE L’HIRONDELLE HILL, CHANDRA MELTING TALLOW AND TANIA WILLARD, CONEY ISLAND BABY
At Gallery TPW (170 St Helens)
September 13-November 3

Shot on the territory of the Secwépemc Nation in B.C.’s interior, Coney Island Baby is a collectively authored film, made by four women. Focusing on skills that are often the responsibility of women in Indigenous communities, like the snaring of rabbits, the show also features sculptural installations by two of the artists.

THROUGH LINES
At Koffler Gallery (180 Shaw)
September 13-November 25

A show about “redaction” suggests the long history of political censorship; as an artistic method, however, redaction is essentially collage. As the works in this group show demonstrate, the technique provides endless scope for artists to cut and recombine materials – to bracing effect. Includes Lise Beaudry, Nadia Myre, and Michèle Pearson Clarke.

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, INTERNATIONAL GRAND OPENING WEEKEND
At 158 Sterling
September 22-23

The title says it all. With its move to a new location in the Lower Junction, Toronto’s MOCA is announcing the scale of its ambitions. Its inaugural exhibition, Believe, features celebrated artists like Barbara Kruger, Rajni Perera, Ange Loft and Jeremy Shaw, among others. Occupying five stories in a former aluminum factory, the show is free all weekend.

STYLL AT NUIT BLANCHE
At Scarborough Town Centre and Scarborough Civic Centre
September 29

This year, Toronto’s all-night art event includes Scarborough as a location. All projects on view in STYLL – including performances, soundscapes and projections – were made by Scarborough-based artists, or are the result of collaborations between artists and community members or groups. Artists include Hiba Abdallah (also included in the MOCA show), Reaching Intelligent Souls Everywhere (RISE), Ekow Nimako and Director X.

DAAN ROOSEGAARDE, WATERLICHT
At The Bentway (250 Fort York)
October 12-14

The Bentway presents the Canadian debut of this monumental light work by the acclaimed Dutch artist. Made from LEDs and special projection lenses, it’s part of a series of art-based installations called If, But, What If? running through November under the Gardiner. A range of public programs will accompany it.

JANET MORTON AND MORLEY SHAYUK
At Paul Petro Contemporary Art (980 Queen West)
November 16-December 22

These two solo shows help celebrate the gallery’s 25th anniversary. Morton is known for her knitted works, sometimes at building scale; Shayuk makes fine abstract paintings that often incorporate sculptural elements.

art@nowtoronto.com | @rosemheather

https://nowtoronto.com/culture/art-and-design/best-toronto-art-shows-fall-2018/

10 art shows to be excited about in 2018

Posted on by Rosemary Heather

From Yoko Ono and Yayoi Kusama to Indigenous architecture and Nuit Blanche in Scarborough, here are the artists and exhibitions to watch out for this year

BY JANUARY 2, 2018

Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono’s Mend Piece will be part of her exhibition The Riverbed at the Gardiner Museum.

Toronto is gaining in confidence, in part because it is learning to appreciate the ways it isn’t like anywhere else. Visit a city that lacks this town’s remarkable and yet unselfconscious multicultural mix and it is bound to seem hopelessly retrograde.

The starting pointing for some highly influential art careers (Michael Snow, General Idea, Peaches), Toronto looks to be on the cusp of something more broad-based: becoming an influential art scene in its own right that leads by example. Here are the names and exhibitions set to make waves – in the city and beyond – in the year ahead.

CARL MARIN AND VERONIKA PAUSOVA
Franz Kaka, January 11 to February 3

Interesting things happen in this small basement space that’s home to not one but two art galleries that alternate shows. (Towards is the name of the other venture.) Sculptures by Marin and beguiling paintings by Pausova bring together geometric abstraction and surrealist figuration.

HERE WE ARE HERE: BLACK CANADIAN CONTEMPORARY ART
Royal Ontario Museum, January 27 to April 11

The ongoing dialogue between Toronto’s cultural institutions and artists about what Canadian identity looks like today includes earlier efforts at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Museum at U of T and the Aga Khan. This presentation at the ROM of works by nine African-Canadian artists features Sandra Brewster, Michèle Pearson Clarke and Chantal Gibson.

YOKO ONO’S THE RIVERBED
Gardiner Museum, February 22 to June 3

At 84, the artist, musician and social activist is a marvel for her ability to keep the language of conceptual art, which she helped to pioneer, relevant. Small gestures like the chance to mend broken crockery create moments for quiet and contemplation. Accompanying the show is a thoughtful slate of Ono-inspired programming featuring music, lectures and performance art.

YAYOI KUSAMA’S INFINITY MIRRORS
Art Gallery of Ontario, March 3 to May 27

Art exhibitions that are genuine events happen too rarely in the city. This show, already an international Instagram sensation, gives Toronto a chance to abandon its cool – and the frenzy has already started. Step inside the kaleidoscopic refractions of a Kusama Infinity Room and get an experience of the sublime not based in nature.

NANCY PATERSON’S THE FUTURE, BEFORE
InterAccess, March 7 to May 5

For its 35th anniversary, this organization for art and technology moves from Ossington to a new, bigger location at 950 Dupont. First up are works by veteran media artist Nancy Paterson, a timely exhibition showcasing this early contributor to discourse about the internet and cyber feminism.

NADIA BELERIQUE
Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens, April 8 to June 3

After getting some significant exposure abroad in two major group exhibitions, this will be the first solo show in a museum for the Toronto-based artist. Belerique forges her own unique aesthetic language by using sculptural installation to reflect on the 2D vocabulary of photography.

UNCEDED: VOICES OF THE LAND
2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, May 26 to November 25

Renowned Canadian architect Douglas Cardinal and Indigenous co-curators Gerald McMaster (of OCAD University) and David Fortin are taking a team of 18 First Nations designers from Turtle Island (Canada and the U.S.) to Venice. Storytelling is a key component of Indigenous culture and will be used as a framework for looking at architecture and its related issues – like habitat and stewardship.

HELEN CHO’S YOU REMAINED DISMEMBERED
Trinity Square Video, summer 2018

Cho presents a new video work from a series made with Tai Lam – a fast food worker who came here as a refugee from Vietnam – combined together with words from the video “re-imagined as poetry,” and sculptural works made with vinyl, salt dough and ceramics.

NUIT BLANCHE IN SCARBOROUGH
September 29

This year begins the era of the multipolar Nuit Blanche. A portion of the annual all-night event will move outside the core to the east end. The shift recognizes that the vibrancy of the city is not exclusive to its downtown. Participants include Ghana’s Ibrahim Mahama, known for his use of draped jute sacks as a sculptural material.

UNTITLED ART TV SHOW
To be announced

This has yet to be confirmed, but there have been rumblings that a major broadcast network is working on a documentary series focused on artists who call this city home and those who hail from here and are forging significant careers elsewhere. Purportedly hosted by a local talent and ex-child actor who boasts a Degrassi: The Next Generation credit on his resumé.

art@nowtoronto.com | @rosemheather

https://nowtoronto.com/art-and-books/art/ten-art-exhibitions-to-be-exicted-about-2018/

Melanie O’Brian takes the helm at The Power Plant

Posted on by Rosemary Heather

Melanie OBrian
Melanie OBrian (foreground), Elizabeth Milton (centre) and Colleen Brown.

Melanie O’Brian, Director/Curator of Artspeak in Vancouver for the past six years, recently moved to Toronto to take up the post of Curator & Head of Programs at The Power Plant. With this appointment, O’Brian makes the shift from what’s known in Canada as the artist-run sector to one of the country’s major venues. We spoke over email in March, 2011.

RH: Your professional career up to now has been firmly rooted in Vancouver. How do you think this experience will translate to Toronto? Do you expect to shift your priorities, or will you continue with the type of programming you developed at Artspeak?

MO: My goal is to maintain a strong foundation in the local while intersecting with international practices and dialogues. My programming interests regarding site will undoubtedly shift at The Power Plant. At Artspeak I addressed the institution’s mandate to reflect a dialogue between language and contemporary visual art and I also extended the program outside of the limited confines of the gallery. Through the OFFSITE program (2008-2010), I took artists’ projects into various ‘public’ situations using the street, parks, print, large-scale advertising, building sites, the postal system, etc. While I certainly maintain a desire to do offsite projects in Toronto and address contextual specificities, the institutional spaces at The Power Plant will allow me to initiate projects that would never have been possible at Artspeak.

RH: Speaking about OFFSITE, why do you think art institutions feel the need to develop audiences beyond what you refer to as the “confines” of the gallery? Is this tendency artwork-driven or institutionally-led?

MO: Artists are engaging strategies that re-activate wide cultural, political, and economic discussions within the process of art production and its reception. Institutions are encouraging this activity, often arguing that the audience for contemporary art is wider than ever before. But only a select audience overtly sustains contemporary art’s dialogues. Contemporary art is intersecting with audiences on multiple levels from the gallery to the street, from the blockbuster to the festival, from the biennial to the incidental. Perhaps the spectacularization of contemporary art’s presentation is a point for discussion?

RH: Toronto has a wildly successful Nuit Blanche event, presenting public art works across the city for one night. It attracts an estimated audience of one million people. The number one criticism of the event is that it tends to feature spectacular artworks. This could be seen as pandering to the crowd, or it could simply reflect the changing nature of art. Any thoughts?

MO: These types of events are increasingly common, whether autonomous or embedded in the Olympics. They do not necessarily reflect the changing nature of art, but rather the changing nature of the art system.. Art fairs, biennials, and other large scale spectacles provide a point of comparison. They are formats that often request, if not demand, art that competes with or withstands the spectacle. I might add that in what could be touted as a post-relational aesthetics, post-participatory moment, artists and artworks must not just engage with the art system, but intervene in it and question it productively.

Interview by Rosemary Heather

This text originally appeared in the May/June 2011 issue of Flash Art.
Melanie OBrian is the Editor of Vancouver Art and Economies, an anthology of writing about the Vancouver art scene, which can be purchased here.