Amy Fung's interview with musician Greg Amundson
*Originally aired on CJSR News with Tiffany Brown Olsen on Friday, July 9, 2010
Photo credit: Rebecca McKay
Friday, July 9, 2010
Audio Interview with Greg Amundson*
Amy Fung's interview with musician Greg Amundson
*Originally aired on CJSR News with Tiffany Brown Olsen on Friday, July 9, 2010
Photo credit: Rebecca McKay
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Prairie Artsters: The Art of Viewing Freely
On a recent road trip through Saskatchewan, I had a chance to visit The Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon and both the Dunlop and Mackenzie galleries in Regina. Varying in programming, the exhibitions included an Adrian Stimson solo exhibition and the excellent Jen Budney-curated Innocent Years group show, featuring renderings from three international artists' childhoods during significant 20th century shifts. Also up for viewing were the Canadian premiere of Geoffrey Farmer's Ongoing Time Stabbed With A Dagger—his first use of kinetics that had a world premiere at the Art Basel in Miami Beach—ex-Edmontonian Sylvia Ziemann's Possible Worlds and an interesting contrast between James Henderson's historical representations of First Nations identity answered back with to be reckoned with ... featuring works such as Nadia Myre's "Indian Act" and Ruth Cuthand's "Trading".
What all of these exhibitions have in common, besides being in Saskatchewan, is that they are all free, all the time.
The most direct result of having your galleries and institutions accessible to the general public is the diversity of the audience, and subsequently the experience for the audience. The first person I passed at the Mendel after the clear donation box filled with colourful bills was a woman sitting on the floor with her tattered backpack, back against the wall, watching Marjane Satrapi’s Oscar-nominated Persepolis attentively. She was laughing aloud at times and clearly the only one who watching the entire film. There was a cross range of families with strollers and walkers pointing to things and talking to one another, young men and women roaming from piece to piece, and a single guard who supervised unobtrusively. Grabbing a bite at the gallery cafe, my travel companion and I each had a fresh lunch that came under the admission price for most cultural institutions. While the impending future of the Mendel remains uncertain as a brand new building is on its horizon, I can only be reminded that the experience of art in the modern age of galleries and museums has become an inclusive one, where admission prices and lineups can become headlines and viewership dangerously becomes a class and income issue.
In our own AGA and galleries from around the world, I have experienced firsthand, heard troubling accounts, and witnessed guards ask audiences to quiet down, step back, and in one case, ask a mother and her children to leave because her kids were getting too excited about the art.
All of these accounts were from institutions where you felt watched as you walked around, where guards hovered over you as you were simply looking at art, fearful that somehow the art will be desecrated. While vandalism and ignorant behavior certainly exists within this realm, there is a marked difference between an errant child with chewing gum and those who just wish for a closer and longer look. Sometimes we accept this lording behavior on how to view art as we fall prey to the elitism of being in a gallery, that there must be rules and decorum that govern how we look and how long we look for.
But that is that what we are paying for? To be policed on how we view and who gets to view? As I was reminded at the Dunlop, located in Regina’s central library, a young man asked to bum a smoke off me on my way into the library. I shrugged I didn’t have any. Farmer’s sculpture installation dominated the majority of the gallery, assembling shapes and dimensions and clocks wearing bowler hats into a theatrical presence, and unfortunately not quite successfully integrating movement into his contemplation of time. Walking around the piece a few times, a gallery staff came up during a pause and offered to discuss the work further if I had any questions at all. The young man from outside had come in by this time and come up to me again. Only this time he asked, “Do you think this is art?” I shrugged yes. The gallery facilitator quickly joined the conversation that unfolded into tangents of inspiration, street art, graffiti, surrealism, collage, and kinetics. There was no didacticism or underestimating going on, we didn’t have to lower our voices, there was simply an open conversation on art between three strangers from different backgrounds, and we all walked away from the encounter learning something new, if not profound.
*First published in Vue Weekly in an abridged version
What all of these exhibitions have in common, besides being in Saskatchewan, is that they are all free, all the time.
The most direct result of having your galleries and institutions accessible to the general public is the diversity of the audience, and subsequently the experience for the audience. The first person I passed at the Mendel after the clear donation box filled with colourful bills was a woman sitting on the floor with her tattered backpack, back against the wall, watching Marjane Satrapi’s Oscar-nominated Persepolis attentively. She was laughing aloud at times and clearly the only one who watching the entire film. There was a cross range of families with strollers and walkers pointing to things and talking to one another, young men and women roaming from piece to piece, and a single guard who supervised unobtrusively. Grabbing a bite at the gallery cafe, my travel companion and I each had a fresh lunch that came under the admission price for most cultural institutions. While the impending future of the Mendel remains uncertain as a brand new building is on its horizon, I can only be reminded that the experience of art in the modern age of galleries and museums has become an inclusive one, where admission prices and lineups can become headlines and viewership dangerously becomes a class and income issue.
In our own AGA and galleries from around the world, I have experienced firsthand, heard troubling accounts, and witnessed guards ask audiences to quiet down, step back, and in one case, ask a mother and her children to leave because her kids were getting too excited about the art.
All of these accounts were from institutions where you felt watched as you walked around, where guards hovered over you as you were simply looking at art, fearful that somehow the art will be desecrated. While vandalism and ignorant behavior certainly exists within this realm, there is a marked difference between an errant child with chewing gum and those who just wish for a closer and longer look. Sometimes we accept this lording behavior on how to view art as we fall prey to the elitism of being in a gallery, that there must be rules and decorum that govern how we look and how long we look for.
But that is that what we are paying for? To be policed on how we view and who gets to view? As I was reminded at the Dunlop, located in Regina’s central library, a young man asked to bum a smoke off me on my way into the library. I shrugged I didn’t have any. Farmer’s sculpture installation dominated the majority of the gallery, assembling shapes and dimensions and clocks wearing bowler hats into a theatrical presence, and unfortunately not quite successfully integrating movement into his contemplation of time. Walking around the piece a few times, a gallery staff came up during a pause and offered to discuss the work further if I had any questions at all. The young man from outside had come in by this time and come up to me again. Only this time he asked, “Do you think this is art?” I shrugged yes. The gallery facilitator quickly joined the conversation that unfolded into tangents of inspiration, street art, graffiti, surrealism, collage, and kinetics. There was no didacticism or underestimating going on, we didn’t have to lower our voices, there was simply an open conversation on art between three strangers from different backgrounds, and we all walked away from the encounter learning something new, if not profound.
*First published in Vue Weekly in an abridged version
Review: The Art of Warner Bros Cartoons, AGA, June 19 - Oct 11, 2010*
Just because the word "art" is in the title of the exhibition, there shouldn't be a natural assumption that The Art of Warner Bros Cartoons will actually be art. I don't want to dismiss the show entirely, as it's completely enjoyable and it's already becoming a summer favourite for adults and children alike, but still, after taking in the show, I'm left wondering what this exhibition is doing on the walls of an art gallery.
The exhibition has been touring across North America since 2005 and was originally part of a four-month tribute to animation at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1985 that was greatly expanded upon into this current display. Just coming from the Winnipeg Art Gallery, where I heard its bemoans from way over here, I tried to keep an open mind before entering the show about not just what the show is about, but what a gallery could show.
One major criticism I have for the show is that the art of the machine, namely, the Warner Bros brand, is what is raised as artistic impetus and not the names and artisans who collectively worked on the cells and who largely remain anonymous. The production of animation often raises comparisons to sweat shops and though I'm hoping the working conditions are better, this show does nothing to give insight into the labourious part process of the show, with minor information on production and immense focus on the history of the recognizable favourites such as Porky the Pig and Tweety Bird.
So while I strongly believe animation certainly holds a valuable place in the realm of art history, this show unfortunately focuses too narrowly on just the achievements of Warner Bros the company. Disney of course looms over the exhibition, with minor mention of the conglomerate giant in a competitive light, but I felt that was redundant, as Disney cartoons were fundamental to bringing animation into the minds and hearts of the general public. The main difference between the two are of course the inherently Americana feel of Warner Bros, which led to a more focused political and social subtext on America. As a Hollywood animation studio that ran for nearly 40 years until its closure in 1969, Warner Bros has certainly received its fair share of mass and critical acclaim, and here is where it becomes muddy why this show is at an art gallery. As a multiple recipient of Academy Awards, Warner Bros is certainly highly regarded for its artistic achievements, but this fact also reinforces that cartoons remain in the realm of motion pictures and a gallery exhibition dealing with mostly stills falls flat.
My greatest concern with this exhibition is that it simply is not an exhibition that belongs on a wall, no matter how historically important it is to the history of art. I can see how this show may fit into the context of the gallery's museum mandate, but the primary difference is that most film and television museums convey their visual information very differently, namely stretching out a chronology of its development in the medium of the moving image rather than just focusing on facts and diagrams. While there are video stations within the exhibition, the show could have infinitely benefited from far more stations that showed the development of its production in the medium in which it was meant to be seen.
*First published in Vue Weekly
The exhibition has been touring across North America since 2005 and was originally part of a four-month tribute to animation at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1985 that was greatly expanded upon into this current display. Just coming from the Winnipeg Art Gallery, where I heard its bemoans from way over here, I tried to keep an open mind before entering the show about not just what the show is about, but what a gallery could show.
One major criticism I have for the show is that the art of the machine, namely, the Warner Bros brand, is what is raised as artistic impetus and not the names and artisans who collectively worked on the cells and who largely remain anonymous. The production of animation often raises comparisons to sweat shops and though I'm hoping the working conditions are better, this show does nothing to give insight into the labourious part process of the show, with minor information on production and immense focus on the history of the recognizable favourites such as Porky the Pig and Tweety Bird.
So while I strongly believe animation certainly holds a valuable place in the realm of art history, this show unfortunately focuses too narrowly on just the achievements of Warner Bros the company. Disney of course looms over the exhibition, with minor mention of the conglomerate giant in a competitive light, but I felt that was redundant, as Disney cartoons were fundamental to bringing animation into the minds and hearts of the general public. The main difference between the two are of course the inherently Americana feel of Warner Bros, which led to a more focused political and social subtext on America. As a Hollywood animation studio that ran for nearly 40 years until its closure in 1969, Warner Bros has certainly received its fair share of mass and critical acclaim, and here is where it becomes muddy why this show is at an art gallery. As a multiple recipient of Academy Awards, Warner Bros is certainly highly regarded for its artistic achievements, but this fact also reinforces that cartoons remain in the realm of motion pictures and a gallery exhibition dealing with mostly stills falls flat.
My greatest concern with this exhibition is that it simply is not an exhibition that belongs on a wall, no matter how historically important it is to the history of art. I can see how this show may fit into the context of the gallery's museum mandate, but the primary difference is that most film and television museums convey their visual information very differently, namely stretching out a chronology of its development in the medium of the moving image rather than just focusing on facts and diagrams. While there are video stations within the exhibition, the show could have infinitely benefited from far more stations that showed the development of its production in the medium in which it was meant to be seen.
*First published in Vue Weekly
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