Akimblog
Toronto
John Greyson and TIFF | Peep Show at Lonsdale Gallery | Robert Palmer at Launch Projects | Time's Up Jackal, Point To My Eyes at Clint Roenisch | Scott Conarroe at Stephen Bulger
posted by Terence Dick - September 3rd, 2009.
This must be the slowest week for gallery-hopping bar none. The spaces that didn’t shut down for the traditional August hiatus are now mostly shuttered as they prepare their break-out fall shows. A bunch are tied to the Toronto International Film Festival’s Future Projections installation/exhibition program, but that doesn’t start until next week. The lull gave me time to catch up on the most recent (the third this year by my count, after Theatre Passe Muraille’s staging of Seven Jewish Children and the Koffler Centre’s dropping of Reena Katz’s Luminato project) instance of Israeli politics causing conflict within the Toronto arts community: in an open letter sent to the directors of TIFF last week, filmmaker/video artist John Greyson pulled his film Covered from the festival to protest the selection of Tel Aviv for TIFF’s inaugural City-to-City Spotlight. Greyson identifies a link between this program and the Israeli government’s “Brand Israel” campaign, a new initiative that seems to be in direct response to the increasingly prominent framing of Israel as an apartheid state by those who are critical of the treatment of resident Palestinians. In this battle of symbolic gestures, Greyson’s sacrifice is tied to a larger cultural boycott movement, but his individual decision was made after reflecting on issues of political silence in a cultural context (in this case, the cancelled 2008 Sarajevo Queer Festival) as depicted in his own film (viewable for the duration of TIFF here).
Festival Co-Director Cameron Bailey has responded with his own open letter (and numerous website and comment boards have thrown in as well), defending the Spotlight on the grounds of the programmers’ independence and the role of film as a place where productive political dialogue can take place. The whole incident must be particularly awkward considering the close-knit Toronto film community and the shared roots many have in united political activism of years past.
Alex McLeod, Banked Tallship, 2009
In the meantime, I scooted through Peep Show, Lonsdale Gallery’s exhibition of up-and-coming artists, a two-floor extravaganza with Alex McLeod being the only name familiar to me. Either he’s refining his technique or I’m getting used to it, but these virtual landscapes, created “in computer”, approach the combination of representation and spatial disorientation that makes Neo Rauch such a wealthy man. McLeod’s nowhere near that dense yet, but he’s heading in a direction; let’s hope it’s the right one. Besides him, Bogdan Luca shares some easy-on-the-eyes wide-brushed impressionistic work inspired by blurry photographs. Each one looks like it could be part of a larger canvas, so they, in a weird way, leave me wanting more. Amanda McCavour’s thread-drawn birds would look perfect on my daughter’s walls and are so much finer when released from their glass cages. Osheen Harruthoonyan’s photographs are murky and textured. They’re a bit too murky for me, but intrigue when they emerge from the darkness. And the fashionably posing youth in Jamie Bradbury’s watercolours are copping so much ‘tude, I roll my eyes and move on.
Robert Palmer, Indo-Malayan Pavilion
Down on Adelaide, the Toronto School of Art runs Launch Projects to feature works by both students and emerging to established artists. The current exhibition goes by the mouthful of a title, Infelicitous: Acclimatized Nature on Display. Of the two artists included, Robert Palmer is the one to watch with his photos of imprisoned alien climates looking for all the world like stills from some environmental disaster film á la Twelve Monkeys. Having hung out earlier in the week with a couple rabid collapsitarians, these portents of planetary doom are all too frighteningly likely for my comfort.
In another part of town, I stumbled into Clint Roenisch’s quickie end-of-summer group show, Time’s Up Jackal, Point To My Eyes. I got so caught up chatting with the man that I didn’t realize what I was looking at until I got home and read the press release. Roenisch’s delightfully evocative exhibition title reveals his poet’s soul and invites an equally lyrical look at a recombinant selection of folks from his stable. Heather and Ivan Morison’s architectural insertion in the back room is still there and still worth seeing, particularly found amongst new works, as are some spooky photos by Jack Burman and Roger Ballen.
Scott Conarroe, Streetcar Stop, New Orleans, LA, 2008 (© Scott Conarroe, courtesy: Stephen Bulger Gallery)
Spooky in a less Goth, more elegiac sense, Scott Conarroe’s landscape photographs at Stephen Bulger Gallery depict North America’s fading railway system in the ghostly, depopulated moments of early morning. Nature in these images is either suffocated under concrete and steel in cities or scarred by train tracks across the country. The border of humanity and nature isn’t a pretty sight but Conarroe catches the conflict in arrangements that float in layers and remain distinct well into the distance.
Terence Dick is a freelance writer living in Toronto. His art criticism has appeared in Canadian Art, BorderCrossings, Prefix Photo, Camera Austria, Fuse, Mix, C Magazine, and The Globe and Mail. He is the editor of Akimblog.
Lonsdale Gallery: http://www.lonsdalegallery.com/
Peep Show continues until September 27.
Launch Projects: http://launchprojects.wordpress.com/
Infelicitous: Acclimatized Nature on Display continues until September 6.
Clint Roenisch: http://www.clintroenisch.com/
Time’s Up Jackal, Point To My Eyes continues until September 12.
Stephen Bulger Gallery: http://www.bulgergallery.com/
Scott Conarroe: By Rail continues until September 12.