Things of Desire Issue #3
September 4, 2008
Howdy! Welcome to the third issue of Things of Desire. The big change this week is that the blogzine is now and forever will be (hopefully) a weekly venture. So you can rest assured every Wednesday night that a brand spanking new issue will be online when you wake up. As always, if you haven’t already subscribed to Things of Desire you can do so by firing off an email to thingsofdesire@gmail.com. Enjoy!
—Mike Landry
Postcards from the Void
September 4, 2008
By Mike Landry
"Deep resonance," part of Aleksandra Rdest's latest series.
In the city of Kitchener, where Aleksandra Rdest grew up, roads didn’t have ends. So when the visual artist was told to take “the road into town,” head to the end and go to the house across from the convenience store, she couldn’t help but feel a little scared.
“I was like number? Street name? No,” says Rdest. “I didn’t really know what I was getting into going out there. I had a kind of idealized notion of what small town life would be, and it was very quaint but the reality wasn’t so.”
That was last Spring when Rdest first made it to the end of the road to Pouch Cove, about 20 minutes outside of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Rdest has returned from the artist in residency program and she brought a new series of work called, Postcards from the Void with her.
In Tandem and in 3D
September 4, 2008
By Mike Landry
Part of Dave & Jenn's new work, "We Told Adam We'd Get Over This."
As if painting in tandem for Calgarians David Foy and Jennifer Saleik wasn’t difficult enough, they’re beginning to work with sculpture. Dave & Jenn’s latest series, In Which They Find Themselves Between Here and There, showcases their new double-sided paintings on plinths and their 14-foot-wide painting with 3D elements.
“Our interest in painting has always been in how we can mess with the basic ideas of [painting],” says Saleik. “It’s dangerous when any person who’s used to doing two-dimensional things tries to muck around in 3D. We’re painters not sculptures, and sometimes we can be painfully aware of that.”
Self-described landscape artists, Dave & Jenn have spent the past four years crafting a narrative that combine inner mythology and historical documentation. Their new work looks to refine this new world they’ve created.
Shedding Light on Building
September 4, 2008
By Stacey Ho
Swintak was inspired by the everyday in creating her Self-Aware Shed.
Condominiums, hospitals and art galleries are all places that are, for one reason or another, sterile environments. Their emptiness makes them funny, awkward structures for people to do human things in.
Placed in such an environment for a residency at YYZ, artist Swintak spent the summer dealing with awkward, empty space. Her solution? Take a genuine countrified shed and transpose it into the gallery.
“It sort of looks like it dropped from the sky, or appeared there a la Wizard of Oz,” she explains.
Group of Seven Awkward Moments
September 4, 2008
By Mike Landry
An awkward moment featuring Tom Thomson peeing overboard.
Winnipeg artist Diana Thorneycroft once read that the Group of Seven were the visual equivalent of our national anthem. Her reaction was a quick, “Whoa! I’m not sure about that.”
“Some people think they represent Canadian culture, and they might have in the 20’s. We didn’t have much of a culture at all then,” says Thorneycroft. “But today they don’t represent Canadian culture. It’s mostly out of Quebec and Ontario and is done by white dead guys.”
Thorneycroft latest series, Group of Seven Awkward Moments, aims to subvert Canadian identity in the Group of Seven. Using Group of Seven paintings as backdrops she plunks dolls and props in front to turn the famous paintings into darkly humorous photographs.
Let’s Talk About Sex
September 4, 2008
By Mike Landry
A film still from Brian Batista's "Battle Between the Sexes."
That statement was just one of hundreds that destroyed Batista’s preconceived ideas of sex and modern relationships. Batista interviewed dozens of individuals just like Ms. Monroe for his new video project Battle Between the Sexes.
He wasn’t interested in Prince Charmings or Snow Whites, he wanted players. With sex more prevalent than ever in pop culture—from pop star exploits to shows like Keys to the VIP and Neil Strauss’ bestseller The Game—Batista wanted to understand 21st century sex.
Carlito Dalceggio Trips Out
September 4, 2008
By Mike Landry
Carlito Dalceggio working in Mexico.
It was like the 60s come alive last winter for Quebec artist Carlito Dalceggio. Driving in a van around Mexico, he picked up hitchhiking artists and dancers, stopped to paint sacred deserts, and participated in peyote ceremonies with native shamans. It was the much traveled Dalceggio’s inaugural journey of his Project ART—Art Road Trip.
Dalceggio brought back with him about 30 large paintings for his upcoming show Splendours of existence II. The new show includes furniture the artist has repainted to show “art is not something that’s distant from everyday life.”
“I wanted to show that art is a free ritual without boundaries or rules. So I went all over Mexico painting deserts, cities, villages, the oceans.” says Dalceggio.
The Ottawa City Project
September 4, 2008
By Mike Landry
Ottawa artist Greg Hill's "Cereal Box Canoe."
Moving from Montreal to Ottawa seven years ago, Ottawa Gallery curator Emily Falvey was a bit worried Ottawa would be boring. It’s something she says a lot of people assume about the city.
“A lot of people assume that about the city, and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” says Falvey. “It’s a city that’s a victim of its own stereotypes”
Inspired by local poet rob mclennan‘s 2007 book The Ottawa City Project and her own experience, Falvey is trying to alter popular misconceptions about Ottawa in a new exhibition.
More than Meets the Mind
September 4, 2008
By Mike Landry
Kristopher Karklin bends reality and art in "No Vacancy."
Emerging photographer Kristopher Karklin isn’t trying to fool you, he just can’t help that he’s so good. Fresh out of ACAD, Karklin is showing four large prints from his series No Vacancy. Although each image looks like a normal, albeit surreal, photograph, they’re all constructed.
“The viewer is approached with a situation that is really seductive and glossy and that really draws them in,” says Karklin. “Once they’re in it becomes really isolated, melancholy and contemplative. You get a sense you’re not in a friendly space.”
Karklin creates his unsettling beauties by photographing small 3×2 foot diorama spaces he constructs out of Masonite and lights in a specific way. He then inserts a scaled down photo of a model, usually nude and facing away from the camera, into the photograph of the diagram. The effect of the composition is a richness of colour and an absence of tones, creating what Karklin says is a more painterly type of photography.
Edmonton: Explored
September 4, 2008
By Mike Landry
Monica Pitre's billboard above a bar in Edmonton.
Amy Fung walks by the billboard at the end of her street in Edmonton at least once a day. Usually it advertises “just offensive billboard ads” for cars or loans she says. But one day last year, as people headed to the bar under the billboard as usual, she saw the ads had been replaced with art.
The billboard installation by local artist Monica Pitre was one of more than a dozen projects commissioned as part of Edmonton’s designation as a Cultural Capital of Canada in 2007. It was also one of the few pieces from visual artists designed to engage with the public. For Fung, installations like Pitre’s marked a change in her city’s understanding of itself.
“For a city that’s more about sports and oil I think people need to know that art does actually interact with people on a daily basis,” says Fung, who is curating the show Edmonton: Explored at the Art Gallery of Alberta. “We’re finally looking at ourselves like we’re our own city. We’re not pretending we’re Dallas, Vancouver, LA or whatever.”
Among the Inuit
September 4, 2008
By Mike Landry
"Among the Inuit" captures nearly 30 years of Robert Semenuik's.
Following Inuit hunters for weeks on end, Vancouver-based photojournalist Robert Semeniuk was constantly cold, lived off of raw fat, and his face turned into one big scab. To re-spool his film took a number of mitten changes. Everything was slow. Everything was hard work.
Over the past 30 years Semenuik has ventured up north more than a dozen times to capture life in the arctic. Last year a collection of images from his travels were compiled in a book called Among the Inuit. He will show selected prints in Halifax and Vancouver.
“For me there’s no magic at taking good pictures. You take good picture by putting in your time,” says Semenuik. “Photography for me has always been a means to an end—a way to tell stories. I see myself more as a storyteller than as a journalist.”
A Nakusp Narrative
September 4, 2008
By Stacey Ho
A delicate fabric-based works documenting Wendy Toogood's new life.
Nakusp is a place that you get to by ferry. A busy day means that three cars are backed up behind the village’s one traffic light. When Wendy Toogood bought a village inn in this lushly vegetated area, retiring from her position at Calgary’s Alberta College of Art and Design, her life was undergoing a series of major changes.
Given a year to complete a body of work for exhibition, she began producing small pieces on canvas and linen, employing techniques such as hand-stitching, machine sewing, embroidery, and appliqué. These one hundred delicate, brightly-coloured pieces reflect Toogood’s changing experiences in Nakusp, with a playfully exaggerated character figuring as herself.
“Contemporary artists deal with big issues,” says Toogood. “I don’t like to focus on that. I find myself engaged in the things around me.”
A Nakusp Narrative often focuses instead upon events in Toogood’s life such as gardening, setting up a studio, volunteering at a thrift shop, or receiving a quilt from her mother. It is a journal that pieces together everyday things that people can relate to, one that draws upon a practice engaged in textiles for over thirty years.
Awareness of the everyday ties into Toogood’s experience as an artist who began her practice in a predominantly male art context. She recalls a professor telling her in university that women couldn’t become great artists because they lacked souls.
“I don’t want to imitate men,” says Toogood, “Rather, I celebrate women’s perspectives.”
For Toogood, soulfulness is found not in grand abstractions, but rather in the pleasures, frustrations and excitements of living. A Nakusp Narrative emphasizes this by placing importance upon the small details of life, transforming the quiet and the personal into art.
A Nakusp Narrative will be on display from Fri September 5th – Sat October 4th at Calgary’s Stride Gallery.
Michel de Broin: Usure Mentale
September 4, 2008
By Mike Landry
One of Michel de Broin's photographs of the Berlin tram.
New York City’s graffiti tagged subway cars have long since thugged their way into the contemporary art scene, and now Montreal artist Michel de Broin is making room for the Berlin tram’s ferociously scratched up windows in his new exhibition Usure Mentale.
The windows are scratched up so badly that it is difficult to see out of them. But de Broin wasn’t interested in seeing out of them, he was looking in.
“When I started to photograph them they became windows again, and they open to another view,” says de Broin. “They create a view of something where there was something that was blocking the view.”
Topiarium
September 4, 2008
By Mike Landry
A spooky capture of Jenine Marsh's installation, "Topiarium."
Like The Beatle’s infamous student in “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” Jenine Marsh is quizzical and studied ‘pataphysical science at home. The Calgary artist was drawn to the supposing science of imaginary solutions, because it epitomizes the artistic nature of science.
Marsh has been exploring this idea with a series which focuses on conservatory gardens. Her latest project, Topiarium is a large half dome of mylar and clear plastic on a structure of topiary petunia wire. Lit from within, the viewer can see giant tree-like pointy structures and with architectural conservatory drawings. The floor is also made of reflective vinyl and Plexiglas mirror—making the dome into a sphere.
“[Conservatories] are these cool spaces where what’s natural and artificial are completely overlapped, and what normally defines natural and artificial is ignored or redefined,” says Marsh. “All it is, is a personal idea. It has nothing to do with truth or nature. It’s about display in nature.”
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