Takin’ It To the Streets With Art Spin
As an avid cyclist and art fan I’ve been anxious to take part in Art Spin since it got rolling last year but so far my schedule just hasn’t aligned with this monthly summer event. And so it will be again tomorrow night (June 30) when a rag tag band of art lovers sets off from Trinity Bellwoods Park without me for a tour of neighbourhood galleries and studios. I already have the July 28 date blacked out in my calendar.
Founded last year by visual artist Rui Pimenta, (far left) Art Spin is 100 per cent free and staffed entirely by volunteers. Says co-organizer Casey Hinton (centre with her sister Layne Hinton, right), “We do it for the love of it. We’re all artists and/or curators and avid cyclists, and we have so much fun putting these tours together. Also, it’s a really fantastic way to participate in the Toronto arts community. We’re able to promote art, choose what should be on display, encourage and work with emerging and young artists, provide unique opportunities for artists to be seen – and as artists and curators ourselves, it is an amazing way to network, meet gallery owners, artists and other creative types with whom we are lucky enough to work and collaborate.” READ MORE
Mythologizing A Time and Place
For anyone who lived through it the time and place evoked by This Is Paradise, opening tonight at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, is palpable. The exhibition celebrates the art scene that grew up around the Cameron House tavern (408 Queen Street West), which was transformed into an art hotel in 1981 by then owners Herb Tookey (above left), Paul Sannella and Ann Marie Sannella.
Tookey, who curated the MOCCA exhibition with the help of artist Rae Johnson (above right) — sees the show as “a beginning in terms of attaching a bit more importance to this work and this time. Torontonians seem to have an aversion to history and self promotion, there’s no mythologizing. So, if anything, here’s an attempt to bring back this story. It got us to where we are, there was a process involved and it was meaningful.”
“I’m hoping this show is a gift to the young,” adds Johnson, who has been teaching at OCAD for the past 20 years. “As a teacher I’m aware that if it’s not on the internet it doesn’t exist so we’re working with Bill Kirby at the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art to document and preserve this legacy. We need to get it up there before we all drop dead, while people still remember what happened.” READ MORE
Painting the Past in High Park
Many artists would question the value of a residency that didn’t come with some kind of financial reward but not James Ridyard. In fact, it was Ridyard who proposed the terms of his stay at High Park’s Colborne Lodge museum last winter and it wasn’t money he was after, it was history.
Although Ridyard’s artistic practice is mostly concerned with landscapes, the painter is nevertheless fascinated by the past, with “trying to figure out exactly why I like things that are old and mysterious. I’d long been looking for how to put my work into a historical context, not just ripping off issues of historical representation but looking for history that’s actually present today.”
Ridyard certainly found what he was looking for. Located toward the south end of High Park, Colborne Lodge was the home of Park founders John and Jemima Howard, who deeded the 165-acre property to the City in 1873 on the condition that the park remain “for the free use, benefit and enjoyment of the citizens of Toronto and it be called High Park”.
MoMA Masterpieces Dazzle at AGO
MoMA Director Glenn Lowry is obviously biased but when he describes Abstract Expressionist New York as a “killer exhibition,” he’s not exaggerating. Lowry and MoMA curator Ann Temkin joined AGO CEO Matthew Teitelbaum this morning to kick off a media preview of the summer blockbuster which opens Saturday (May 28) and runs until September 4.
Drawn entirely from The Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection, Abstract Expressionist New York features more than 100 major works from Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell, among others. For anyone interested in contemporary art the show is a must; to see Pollock’s Number 1A, above, on a computer screen is one thing, but to stand in front of the nearly 9′ wide canvas is to be washed away by the intensity of the artist’s expression. What’s more, there are 13 Pollocks in the show, which lend real insight into how the artist’s style evolved from the 1930s through the 1950s.
The exhibition also features stunning, large-scale works by lesser known talents like Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, David Smith, Clyfford Still, and Canadian-born Philip Guston. Several other works by Guston accompany Patterson Ewen: Inspiration and Influences up on the Gallery’s fifth floor until June 19.
Lynne Cohen Captures Inaugural SPA
The first ever Scotiabank Photography Award — SPA for short — was presented yesterday evening with a swish reception on the 63rd floor of Scotia Plaza: Montreal’s Lynne Cohen, above right, is the winner of the $50,000 cash prize in addition to a book deal with art photography publisher Steidl and a curated photography exhibition at next year’s Contact festival. Pictured above with Cohen are, from left, Scotiabank Senior VP Duncan Hannay, Scotiabank Director Jane Nokes and renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky, who chaired the jury panel.
Said Nokes: “For 30 years Lynne Cohen has invited us into a world of contemplation. Her profound, powerful and provocative work is astonishingly three dimensional, I like to think of it as the shock of the familiar.”
Untitled 2010 by Lynne Cohen
Also shortlisted for the prize were Toronto’s Robin Collyer and Vancouver’s Roy Arden, both of whom received $5,000 cash prizes. Lynne Cohen’s work is on display at Olga Korper Gallery as part of Contact until June 1.
