Kate McQuillen - Instant Messenger posted on October 13th, 2009
Kate’s show featured at Median in the spring of this year left quite an impression. Check out her work at: katemcquillen.com.
GALLERIES
trashterpiece posted on October 13th, 2009
I found this floating around the world wide web and was blown away by its sublime beauty. The works are done by Tim Noble and Sue Webster. They live and work together in Shoreditch, East London. Their work was included in the exhibition Apocalypse: Beauty and Horror in Contemporary Art at the Royal Academy in 2000, as well as the opening show of the Saatchi Gallery in County Hall.
Vilnius posted on October 13th, 2009
keeping busy in the cold weather…
Cold War Modern 1945-1970, courtesy of the Victoria and Albert, currently on at the Vilnius National Gallery:
www.culturelive.lt/en/vilnius2009/news/coldwarmodern
Check out Superfuture and Artico for more info.
Video word made Flesh. posted on September 16th, 2009
This is a still from another projection-based video art piece that Middleschool conceived of for the David Cronenberg inspired art show that took place during this year’s TIFF at 107 Shaw Gallery. Faye Mullen, a performance and installation artist was the muse and collaborator, along with Agi Gutkowska as the liaison. Parallels‘ Cameron Findlay scored the short video piece and to add some more star power Adrian Grenier of HBO’s Entourage was seen mingling at the opening:
middleschool had a bad day posted on September 9th, 2009
middleschool WAS ASKED TO TAKE SOME PHOTOS AT THE LAST BAD DAY MAGAZINE PARTY.
HERE IS A LINK TO THE PHOTOS THEY CHOSE:
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LINK
Stutter - after show! posted on June 3rd, 2009
draft four posted on May 22nd, 2009
DRAFT FOUR
(a bring-your-own-headphones event)
Concept and Choreography by Alicia Grant and Cara Spooner
Featuring Writers: Daniel Cockburn, Norah Franklin, Simon Rabyniuk and Caylie Staples
June 3 – 6, 2009
Performances start promptly at 8pm each evening,
Reception: Saturday June 6th, to follow performance Draft Four is a collaborative performance between Choreographers Alicia Grant and Cara Spooner and invited writers Daniel Cockburn, Norah Franklin, Simon Rabyniuk and Caylie Staples. Through performative and spoken investigations into movement and action these artists question our relationship to narrative. Throughout the duration of the performance viewers will be asked to interact with varying forms of linear and non-linear narration, including visual, written, recorded and performed methods of storytelling. We commonly look to narrative to help things “make sense.” However, the sensorial variation found in Draft Four reveals narratives that are altered and re-positioned, each dependent on ones proximity and interaction with the surrounding environment. Individual moments become joined and personal experiences shared?
@ XPACE Cultural Centre, 58 Ossington Ave
Happiness + Kindness posted on April 19th, 2009
“With The Happiness Project, Spearin blurs the line between speaking and singing — life and art — and writes music based on accidental melodies. With the help of some of his musician friends, Charles plays the instruments to match these natural neighbourhood melodies inspired by interviews with his own downtown city neighbours, all on their thoughts of happiness. He then arranges them as though they were songs. As Charles says, “All of the melodies on this album are the melodies of every day life.” This technique recalls the work of 20th century composers such as Harry Partch and Steve Reich (“Different Trains”).” ~ excerpt from the Music Gallery’s show description. Happiness Project was preformed in Toronto on March 11 and 12, 09 at the Music Gallery.
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~this quote is dedicated to a close friend of mine … who needs to believe that people are still kind.
“there was once many kind people, and even unkind ones pretended to be good because that was the thing to do. Such pretense was the source of the hypocrisy and dishonesty so much exposed in the realist literature at the end of the last century. The unexpected result of this kind of critical writing was that kind people disappeared. Kindness is not, after all, an inborn quality - it has to be cultivated, and this only happens when it is in demand. For our generation, kindness was an old-fashioned, vanished quality, and its exponents were as extinct as the mammoth. Everything we have seen in our times - the … class warfare, the constant “unmasking” of people, the search for an ulterior motive behind every action - all this has taught us to be anything you like except kind.” from hope against hope: a memoir by nadezhda mandelstam.
nadezhda mandelstam In her memoirs, Hope Against Hope and Hope Abandoned, gives an epic analysis of her life and criticizes the moral and cultural degradation of the Soviet Union of the 1920s and later. The titles of her memoirs are puns, Nadezhda in Russian meaning ‘hope’.
VideoSPACE: The Psyche-Master Chronicles posted on April 19th, 2009
mark pellegrino @ Images festival + xspace
Pellegrino’s project is about the artist’s never-ending pursuit for conceptual identity throughout time, and video as a vehicle to reach those goals. In VideoSPACE: The Psyche-Master Chronicles, Pellegrino argues that video unlike film, allows the viewer to enter a heterotopic space where he/she assumes the role of the camera and how, unlike our perceivable/bodily space/time, the video artist can control and manipulate the space/time of this ‘other space’ that the viewer temporarily inhabits.
Mark Pellegrino is a Toronto-based video artist who works with antiquated video equipment, experimental software and electronics to explore the discourse, structure and anomalies of the medium. He is currently the Technical Coordinator at Vtape and will receive his BFA from the Integrated Media department at Ontario College of Art & Design in 2009.
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from the vtape days…
“Young”equates with speed - of movement and of mind - an ad man knows that you can stretch the or shrink the appearance of time by how fast you put your message across. The older I got the quicker the time passed, but I seemed to get less done. I couldn’t keep up. It was a perfect idea - to commit a crime in order to experience time - to stop time and live in that moment - knowing that the penalty for failure would be a surfeit of time imposed by a jealous society in all its interminable slowness.
neil r. armstrong, video artist, 1983