Not many would associate Capital Ex with an art exhibition, but inside Hall A, adjoining the Capital Casino and behind the craft vendors, is a garden art exhibition.
Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts is prominently on display, and if you weave in and around the faux stone garden, you'll find diorama sculptures, an art "snack" vending machine, along with 2D works on sale from the centre--which continues to foster and nurture artists with development disabilities.
Hanging overhead on several metal gates is Ted Kerr's work from the Shell Scotford residency; The Paint Spot has set up on one side of the room with a drop-in craft centre; large scale "organic" art made from blueberry oils and crushed diamonds took up several panels in the middle of the space; and Phil Alain's Night of Artists round out the rest of the space.
There was little lighting and the general atmosphere was hollow and rather depressing, but encountering unknown artist Myka Jones was all that was all that was needed to salvage the entire experience. Aside from the usual fray of dime-a-dozen still lifes of flower petals and wine bottles, Jones textural swipes of energy and muted colours continually drew in the eye. Extremely simple, the works communicated an unmeticulous and joyous sense of abandonment to all structure and form. (The ideas may not be new, but rarely does work made in this vein reflect the theories they are based upon.)
With no background information whatsoever available for Jones, the only assumption can be made that this artist is extremely young in career or has only just began to exhibit after years of seclusion. A guess would be made for the former, as Jones' pieces emanate something pure (a quality that usually fades with time).
Friday, July 20, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Art Walk, July 13 - 15, 2007
In its 12th year, Art Walk fell on one of the hottest, muggiest weekends of the summer. That didn't stop pedestrians from strolling up and down Whyte, but it did certainly hinder the mood of many vendors. Always the prime venue for artists to reach the very general public, I couldn't help but feel disappointed by the lack of non-commodified art. Art Walk, for most, remains a place to only sell art; but in its history, there have been a very few occasions of performance art and conceptual art, none of which is for sale, but on display for the high volume of transient public to take in a broader sense of "art."
Owning originals is just a baby step to further advancing the art scene here, but giving space and time for investigative art will hopefully become more prominent in future editions of Art Walk.
Owning originals is just a baby step to further advancing the art scene here, but giving space and time for investigative art will hopefully become more prominent in future editions of Art Walk.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Prairie Artsters: Vue Weekly July 11, 2007
As discussed in an interview within these pages with cohort Mary Christa O’Keefe, I decided to start up my blog, PrairieArtsters.com back in April of this year as a way to document the Edmonton visual arts scene in a consistent and critical fashion. With a burgeoning flux of local exhibitions, a handful of previews per month was no longer sufficient or even remotely satisfactory.
There is a real and diverse visual arts community here, but you would never know it from just absorbing media. The handful of local arts writers (all three or four of us) are often bound to covering the “legitimate” shows up in commercial and artist-run galleries. In comparison to the local music scene, this would basically be the equivalent of only previewing gigs happening at Rexall, Shaw Conference and Commonwealth—minus the defining review that situates a community as “being there” too and deciphering together an experience and an effort.
There are of course exceptions, like the installation-driven curation behind “The Apartment Show” that occurred in the spring and the do-it-yourself graffiti posters of the “Make It Not Suck” projects along Jasper Avenue—both of which received plenty of media attention, with the latter spurning a lot of discussion. This needs to happen more, across the board, if this relatively young arts community is going to survive and gain notoriety.
But even these two independent shows are just the larger tips of the metaphorical iceberg happening within Edmonton’s arts scene. There are low-key art exhibits and openings happening in restaurants and cafes, record shops, hair salons, basements, flower shops and other spaces all across the city. The arts scene is invisible to those outside of it, and the scene is deaf and mute to those within it.
Starting with this edition, Prairie Artsters will be a biweekly column in Vue Weekly as a print companion to the ongoing reviews online. The print version will fall more along the lines of ruminations on a cluster of shows or something equivalent.
Everyone is talking about the economic boom, but the reality is that most artists will or already have been abandoned by it. All that remains is the work and the voices in the community, and for this community to foster and develop, work—and thoughtful discussions of the works produced—needs a communal venue from which to grow.
There is a real and diverse visual arts community here, but you would never know it from just absorbing media. The handful of local arts writers (all three or four of us) are often bound to covering the “legitimate” shows up in commercial and artist-run galleries. In comparison to the local music scene, this would basically be the equivalent of only previewing gigs happening at Rexall, Shaw Conference and Commonwealth—minus the defining review that situates a community as “being there” too and deciphering together an experience and an effort.
There are of course exceptions, like the installation-driven curation behind “The Apartment Show” that occurred in the spring and the do-it-yourself graffiti posters of the “Make It Not Suck” projects along Jasper Avenue—both of which received plenty of media attention, with the latter spurning a lot of discussion. This needs to happen more, across the board, if this relatively young arts community is going to survive and gain notoriety.
But even these two independent shows are just the larger tips of the metaphorical iceberg happening within Edmonton’s arts scene. There are low-key art exhibits and openings happening in restaurants and cafes, record shops, hair salons, basements, flower shops and other spaces all across the city. The arts scene is invisible to those outside of it, and the scene is deaf and mute to those within it.
Starting with this edition, Prairie Artsters will be a biweekly column in Vue Weekly as a print companion to the ongoing reviews online. The print version will fall more along the lines of ruminations on a cluster of shows or something equivalent.
Everyone is talking about the economic boom, but the reality is that most artists will or already have been abandoned by it. All that remains is the work and the voices in the community, and for this community to foster and develop, work—and thoughtful discussions of the works produced—needs a communal venue from which to grow.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)