MOCCA Award For Edward Burtynsky
Toronto-based photographer Edward Burtynsky was honoured last night at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art where he receives the $20,000 MOCCA Award for Contemporary Art 2011. Presented biennially and sponsored by BMO Financial Group, the MOCCA Award was established in 2007 to honour a Canadian active in the field for innovation, accomplishment, contribution over time, or for a specific project, that has national or international significance.
In recognition of the prize, Burtynsky and his Toronto dealer, Nicholas Metivier, have mounted a lightning-strike show – open to the public this Saturday and Sunday only — featuring a small retrospective of the artist’s provocative “manufactured landscapes” and the first-ever showing of work shot last summer in Spain’s Monegros region.
The dryland farming images debuted in the New York Times Magazine this past Sunday where a striking, single image recalled the work of French abstract painter Jean Dubuffet. Burtynsky, who walked me through the show Wednesday morning (he’s seen above doing an interview with BravoTV), says he sees other artistic references in the aerial photos including suggestions of North American Aboriginal art. READ MORE
Sheree Rasmussen: In Living Colour
Avenue Road’s new Studio Vogue Gallery was jumping late Saturday afternoon for the opening of Fabrications, a solo exhibition by Toronto textile artist Sheree Rasmussen. The walls were practically vibrating with the artist’s vivid, abstract works.
“It’s very improvisational,” Rasmussen said of her practice. “I don’t plan before hand. I think it’s a lot like improvisational music, the same kind of process drives it. Colour is vibration just like sound is.” READ MORE
Nonworks Preserved for Posterity
Art Metropole was the scene of a sad celebration Saturday afternoon as friends and colleagues of Toronto artist Gordon Lebredt came out en masse to welcome the arrival of Nonworks 1975 – 2008 and to say goodbye to the artist who lost his valiant fight with cancer on February 26. Edited by Lebredt’s partner Lin Gibson, Nonworks is a monograph containing sketches of works that were conceived but never realized, hence the title.
In the book’s prologue David Court and Josh Thorpe note that the book “constitutes a major retrospective of a body of work that exists only as possibility . . . Our hope, in initiating and assisting in the publication of this book, is that some of these works will be “realized,” but also simply a wish to support Gordon’s position of art-making as a matter invested with intellectual and ethical urgency — a pursuit that is neither straightforward nor easy and which stubbornly follows its own skewed trajectory and proceeds with no expectation of reception or return.”
Nonworks 1975 – 2008 is available through Art Metropole (788 King Street West, 416.703-4400).
Travis Shilling: Flooded With Feeling
It would be easy to presume that the many animals in Travis Shilling’s powerful new show at the Gladstone Hotel are related to his Aboriginal heritage but they’re not, at least not directly. The majority of the 21 works sprawling over the hotel’s third and fourth floors depict a flooded world where humans and animals endure atop icebergs or in boats. At its core the work is about survival and adaptation says Shilling, who walked me through the show Friday afternoon.
“I’m not trying to convey a post-apocalyptic scenario,” he stresses, “this feels like right now to me. When people talk about the end of the world it’s like they think it’s going to happen in one day, but it’s going to happen over a long period of time and they’re going to get used to it, they’re going to adapt.” READ MORE
JUNO Musicians Find Soul at AGO
Canada’s annual celebration of recorded music, the JUNO Awards, is back in Toronto for 2011 and to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of Canada’s answer to the Grammys, a complementary series of events has been developed. From fancy footwear exhibits – JUNO Sole at Bata Shoe Museum to artistically themed gardens – JUNO Rocks at Canada Blooms and sporting competitions (musicians vs. ex-Leafs at the JUNO Cup Hockey Game and a basketball tournament with members of the Arkells, Skratch Bastid and former world champion Canadian sprinter Donovan Bailey at JUNO Hoops), there is something for everyone.
Last week, I went to the opening of the JUNO Tour of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario and I was tremendously inspired by the passion of the musicians explaining what particular artworks mean to them. Eight Canadian musicians chose their favourite pieces then recorded short videos explaining their inspiration. It’s like taking a journey deep into their artistic minds and underscores the idea that art is not just for the eyes, but really for the soul.
Listening to four-time JUNO winner Jane Bunnett, above, as she enthuses about her favourite piece – Chevreuse by Jean-Paul Rioppelle – I could almost hear the jazz music come alive in the multi-coloured painting. READ MORE
