Whale Fall

Whale Fall

Strange bodies meet

where taxidermists stitch

by tall tales and lamplight

Flesh erupts in putrid neon,

and bones float softly in their sockets.

Filtering anodyne dreams, you sleep

wrapped in sweat-damp sheets

yellowed and rippling.

A wake attended by the hungry.

And I'm standing here,

sucking in iodine tears

for a fallen whale.

 "In this collaborative exhibition, artists Nicholas Crombach and Nurielle Stern explore subject matter derived from the complex, problematic and often mythologized human relationship to the natural world." On at the Clay & Glass Gallery until September 8, 2019

Centrepiece - Samara Contemporary

Apologue I (The Anteater) - Emily Jan

Resilience Plate - Kent Monkman

David Salazar

From the elaborate to the absurd, centrepieces can direct and command attention or initiate and guide conversation. A centrepiece can exist as a concept, such as a central political or social issue in a debate. It can aesthetically unite a space, or set the tone for a soirée. 

SAMARA Contemporary's inaugural exhibition joins a whole array of centrepieces, drawing the surreal and fantastical into a competing environments where each individual seeks the spotlight. The diversity of the works means that most function as their own 'centrepiece' though some more so than others. Described as curated islands, many of the works are transportive, fantastically bizarre dreamworlds where animals merge with plants, or fairytale like creatures come to life. David Salazars wall of floral-bird like forms could be crash landing or emerging from hibernation. Emily Jan's anteater bursts into bloom as they eye the onlooker as though this is a regular occurrence. Kent Monkman's "Resilience Plates" re-imagines a famous portrait of the Canadian fathers of confederation where a nude Miss Chief Eagle Testikle gestures in front of John A. in 150 years of indigenous resistance. 

Suburbia

Small World, a series of sculptural vignettes by Julia Hepburn, explores traditional aspects of motherhood through eerie, surrealist snapshots. These tiny dreamlike worlds explore the changing power dynamics and shifting of individual freedoms in the "often undervalued" role of domesticity. Each of the scenes is contained within a box, it's own small world in which the subject is distanced and isolated from the viewer, allowing us only a small glimpse into their reality. For myself, a woman with no experience of having children or the seismic shifts that come with it, this is especially apt. I have that small window into the experience but it is in many ways incomprehensible, surreal and disconcerting. I can imagine that the subject feels something of the same. 

This series is part of a wider exhibition, Suburbia, at the Clay and Glass Gallery exploring the domestic experience, how we live, and what is home.

Then, now and next

Then, now and next features a variety of artists who are using ceramics and glass in fascinating ways. All work in quite different methods and mediums but come together to form contrasting portrayals of contemporary clay and glass.
The exhibition continues at the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery until September.

Artists pictured - Samantha Dickie, Zachary Logan, Audie Murray

Gallery Visit: Artist and the Sea

As a small island, Scotland is understandably deeply influenced by its proximity to the ocean. One of the many ways this is evidenced is through a long history of artists who have been inspired by the sea and the plethora of industries, cultures and lives that revolve around it.
The Artist and the Sea gathers a host of different artists and subject matter that relate back to the ocean whether it is through the portrayal of harbours, boats, fishermen/women or through the attempts to evoke that feeling the sea awakes in us. There is a huge variety of perspectives and media–art and artists from opposite ends of the spectrum inspired by and working with the same theme. It is fascinating to see such contrasting perspectives that surround a similar subject matter.

The Artist and the Sea is on until May 2016

Unikkaaqtuat

Happy Nunavut Day! July 9 celebrates two acts passed in 1993, the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act and the Nunavut Act. Nunavut then officially became a territory on April 1, 1999.
The museum of Inuit Art is marking this date with the opening of a wonderful new exhibition, Unikkaaqtuit: Inuit Creation Stories. It features pages from several different creation myths along with many sculptures from the collection.

Gallery Visit: Misled by Nature at the MOCCA

The current exhibition on at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art takes its inspiration from aspects of the Baroque period–its material excess, theatricality and constructed immersive environments among others. Misled by Nature: Contemporary Art and the Baroque is most obviously an homage to these ideals in the three massive, overwhelming works that occupy the main space at MOCCA.

Tricia Middleton "Embracing oblivion
and ruin is the only way to live now" 2012

Tricia Middleton's glitter covered, waxy, igloo-like structure is an attention stealing presence at first sight.

Walking through the construction allows one to gaze up at the perilously supported roof. The influence of the Baroque is evident in the vast amount of detail and ornamentation that is encompassed in and upon the building from wax covered roses emerging from the walls to delicate crystals that hang from the branches around the doorway. There are a multitude of discoveries to be made amongst the sometimes haphazard piles of material.

David Altmejd's The Holes is another massive sculptural installation that shows two giant sasquatch-like figures lying within a landscape of trees, flowers and mirrored crystal forms. The huge figures are ripped open with their internal organs surrounding them. There is a sense of mystery in their situation–are they decaying back into the ground? have they just emerged? or are they slowly being reassembled?–but overall it is a convoluted picture that tells many different stories. 

Lee Bul "After Bruno Taur" 2008

Lee Bul's seemingly delicate mass of suspended chains, jewellery and metal forms a floating city that is reflected in the mirrored floor below. It's less haphazard than the other two works in the space and the metalwork and jewellery give an interesting contrast to the more organic installations.

More than a celebration of the Baroque, Misled By Nature emphasizes the contrasts and intersections in nature and culture through vastly different viewpoints. Seen together, these artworks invite considerations of the places we inhabit and the different ways we interact with aspects of both nature and city spaces. 

Misled by Nature is on until April 6 at the MOCCA.

Gallery Visit: Jane Ash Poitras at the ROM

"Potato Peeling 101 to Ethnobotany 101" Jane Ash Poitras, 2004
mixed media

Jane Ash Poitras is a well recognized figure in First Nations contemporary art and the paintings featured in the ROMs First Peoples gallery show why. Bursting with colour and rich in imagery, they give a profound sense of narrative that explores the impact of colonialism in First Nations people.

Gallery Visit

I was recently able to visit the McMichael Collection of Art which features a permanent collection of many works from Tom Thompson, the Group of Seven, and their contemporaries, Inuit and first Nations artists, as well as changing exhibitions from other Canadian artists.
Formerly the home of Robert and Signe McMichael, the buildings have expanded to house over 5000 works of art. Their private art collection was dedicated to the works of Canadian artists, especially those who were inspired by the beauty of the natural landscape.




As their mass of paintings accumulated through purchases and donations, their private gallery received hundreds of visitors and the McMichaels eventually decided to donate their entire collection, as well as their home and land, to the province of Ontario. The gallery has continued to grow and is now also home to the cemetery where the McMichaels and six of the Group of Seven are buried.

I love the location of the gallery. Surrounded by forest, it is reminiscent of the scenery that inspired the artists within.

The exhibitions I saw included "Fashionality: Dress and Identity in Canadian Art" which had some beautiful and interesting works-some that I loved were by Nicole Dextras, who's pieces in the show are based around transience and environmental sustainability within fashion.  I also loved the encaustic paintings by Jacques Payette, they had a beautiful ethereal and romantic quality which I find fits in greatly with encaustic. Something about the texture and light qualities of beeswax.

McMichael gallery is definitely worth a visit and I look forward to seeing their next exhibition!