Long stretches of industrial landscapes. Endless expansion of freeways and suburbia. Homogenous storefronts. Dilapidated storefronts. Islands of civic amenities surrounded by six-lane traffic. Gravel-covered parking lots everywhere you turn. Underused green spaces. Spartan sidewalks. Dust. Dirt. Trucks.
Listening to Vancouver-based landscape architect Greg Smallenberg give his lecture on reclaiming lost and forgotten urban spaces last Friday evening, I wanted to believe him in thinking that a city perpetually needs the derelict in order to inspire change. However, I couldn't quite accept that notion wholeheartedly when thinking specifically about Edmonton.
Smallenberg—who's made a name in turning wasted urban space such as dead zones below freeways into average inhabitable human spaces—hinges his practice on the notion of turning the incidental into the exceptional. Speaking largely to a room of architects and artists, with at least one city councillor taking notes, Smallenberg gave a series of examples of how civic intervention can reclaim spaces both temporarily and dramatically. From traditional examples such as New York City's High Line park and Melbourne's revitalization of its back-lane alleys, to guerilla examples of planting flowers in potholes and creating a movable forest consisting of shopping carts planted with trees, Smallenberg's examples pressed the idea that we need to see the potential in our existing spaces and engage these spaces with human activity.
There's a tendency to turn to art, or the idea of art, as the stand-in presence for human activity, as art in the broadest sense engages and enriches our perceptions of the world. But engaging in art and design alone is clearly not enough to provoke potential, as that art needs to consider its demographic in terms of traffic density, population diversity or what can be summed up as the lost space's relational engagement with its surroundings.
Looking at downtown alone, I think of spots like Beaver Hills Park or Churchill Square, public spaces that have undergone major renovations and still somehow fail to live up to their potential as civic centres. Formerly a derelict park used mostly for trafficking or using drugs, the tiny park on the corner of Jasper and 105 Street is today a leisurely layout with a mini-waterfall and small, rolling hills ideal for weekday picnics. Only, situated alongside two major corridors of busy automobile traffic, it's never a resting place that makes you want to linger. Its size remains more decorative than inviting, and the public art is more suited to a playground or at least near a bike path.
A few blocks east, the Square is sizable in scope and is making attempts with more sitting areas, but I still doubt if anyone ever proposes Churchill Square as a meeting place or thinks to go there as a social outing outside of a festival context.
What Edmonton has always lacked has been a year-round gathering place where one can just go and be socially engaged without participating in a framework of commerce. The battle may not actually be between public and private space, but about what we consider free spaces. Churchill Square is designed as a blank slate to host major events rather than welcome everyday citizens, and in redefining what derelict means in terms of civic engagement, spaces like the Square rank just as derelict in terms of everyday human engagement.
Exploring the potential of urban open spaces is not to just look at the forgotten or ignored, as those spaces are more often than not inhabited already, but inhabited by what has been deemed socially undesirable. While we continually redevelop our cityscape, we should first cater to the needs and desires of those walking the city streets rather than pander to the inflated projections of what may or may not come.
*First published in Vue Weekly
Thursday, April 29, 2010
We Don't Talk About The Weather, ArtsHab, April 22 - May 15, 2010*
With such a declarative title as We Don't Talk About the Weather, one could only assume the current ArtsHab One exhibition would address everything but the trivial and the mundane. But be forewarned: the title and works have very little to do with each other. According to the show's organizer, Robert Harpin, the title is suppose to be tongue-in-cheek, but I can only gather that being tongue-in-cheek rests on a fine line between being humorous and being nonsensical.
"Most of my works are more funny than serious, or at least hopefully they are," Harpin says, who is a current tenant of ArtsHab One and gathered his peers for this group exhibition. "And when you name your show We Don't Talk About The Weather, people are going to come to the show and talk about the weather. It's kinda funny that it's a way to introduce things or start a conversation, and I feel art starts conversations as well."
From the conventional to the silly, the works range from more established artists like Gloria Mok to new last-minute experiments by Eric Burton. Conversation starters or not, the offering of work hinges on the idea of collage, but with little insight into the variety of collages offered, the show is a mish-mash of concepts that are held very loosely together.
Calgary-based artist Michael Welchman offered the most engaging work, filling out an aged portrait of a British Commander-in-Chief in South Africa with drawings that seem to haunt the old Field-Marshall. While I am told there is a video component to the work, it was not present on the day I visited, but the portrait alone showed the most coherent artistic concept bridging the realm of existing images with the imagined narrative possibilities of collage.
The other strongest works belonged to Mok, who stands out from the rest of the group quite immediately in form and execution. Harpin, who knew all of the artists except for Mok, feels that she actually tempers the exhibition.
"I'll probably get into trouble for saying this, but Gloria situates the show. She makes it seem more artistic," Harpin says, before adding, "The rest of the show is silly, but she remains very true to the original sense of the word collage, giving a place of where the rest of the work is coming from."
Mok, who then assumes the anchor point for the show, plays between the real and the imagined of the natural world with watercolour collages she already had in the studio.
"I have a background in science and medicine," shares Mok, who is a practicing doctor by day. "So these concepts are quite familiar to me, but they are all imagined forms, inspired from the mind."
Facing most of Mok's collages are Harpin's own works. Predominantly occupied with the notion of hyper masculinity in pop culture, his boyish collages carry through a camp theme that is certainly more '50s retro in aesthetic. Working with sparkles and one-liner texts like "Dentists are nice" and "We Have No Agenda," Harpin's works engage the viewers to read into his juxtapositions, but falling just short of absurdity, his contrasts lack their suggested depth and process for this reviewer.
Soon to be the first tenants of ArtsHab Two, Harpin with wife and artist Aspen Zettel, hopes to continue organizing shows in the new building on 118 Avenue, and it is with hope that the next show will ignite a conversation that goes beyond the surface scope of not talking about the weather.
*First published in Vue Weekly
"Most of my works are more funny than serious, or at least hopefully they are," Harpin says, who is a current tenant of ArtsHab One and gathered his peers for this group exhibition. "And when you name your show We Don't Talk About The Weather, people are going to come to the show and talk about the weather. It's kinda funny that it's a way to introduce things or start a conversation, and I feel art starts conversations as well."
From the conventional to the silly, the works range from more established artists like Gloria Mok to new last-minute experiments by Eric Burton. Conversation starters or not, the offering of work hinges on the idea of collage, but with little insight into the variety of collages offered, the show is a mish-mash of concepts that are held very loosely together.
Calgary-based artist Michael Welchman offered the most engaging work, filling out an aged portrait of a British Commander-in-Chief in South Africa with drawings that seem to haunt the old Field-Marshall. While I am told there is a video component to the work, it was not present on the day I visited, but the portrait alone showed the most coherent artistic concept bridging the realm of existing images with the imagined narrative possibilities of collage.
The other strongest works belonged to Mok, who stands out from the rest of the group quite immediately in form and execution. Harpin, who knew all of the artists except for Mok, feels that she actually tempers the exhibition.
"I'll probably get into trouble for saying this, but Gloria situates the show. She makes it seem more artistic," Harpin says, before adding, "The rest of the show is silly, but she remains very true to the original sense of the word collage, giving a place of where the rest of the work is coming from."
Mok, who then assumes the anchor point for the show, plays between the real and the imagined of the natural world with watercolour collages she already had in the studio.
"I have a background in science and medicine," shares Mok, who is a practicing doctor by day. "So these concepts are quite familiar to me, but they are all imagined forms, inspired from the mind."
Facing most of Mok's collages are Harpin's own works. Predominantly occupied with the notion of hyper masculinity in pop culture, his boyish collages carry through a camp theme that is certainly more '50s retro in aesthetic. Working with sparkles and one-liner texts like "Dentists are nice" and "We Have No Agenda," Harpin's works engage the viewers to read into his juxtapositions, but falling just short of absurdity, his contrasts lack their suggested depth and process for this reviewer.
Soon to be the first tenants of ArtsHab Two, Harpin with wife and artist Aspen Zettel, hopes to continue organizing shows in the new building on 118 Avenue, and it is with hope that the next show will ignite a conversation that goes beyond the surface scope of not talking about the weather.
*First published in Vue Weekly
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Human / Nature: Portraits, University of Alberta Gallery A, until May 8, 2010
Acquiring works from fine art to ethnographic artifacts since 1908, the University of Alberta is not only one of the oldest collecting university institutions in Canada, but also one of the largest. As one of the institution's 35 different collections that range from print to earth sciences, the art and artifacts collection has put together a two-part exhibition inspired from donations and additions acquired over the past seven years.
Jim Corrigan, curator of the University of Alberta Art and Artifact Collection, has gathered 46 art works and artifacts made by 34 artists and craftspeople from around the globe spanning centuries. The first half of the series, Human / Nature: Portraits, contrasts historical prints by William Hogarth and Francisco Goya to contemporary prints and drawings by Helen Kalvak and Pitseolak Ashoona. Culling from over 2500 works collected since 2003, Corrigan notes that he began to see a pattern on human nature, particularly on portraits and landscape, which will be the second part of the exhibition series.
It is arguable that most works of art address the theme of human nature in some manner, as art in its essence is a continual dedication to shed light on the intangibles of existence. From Edo-era hairpins to beaded moccasins to a contemporary self-portrait by local painter Julian Forrest, the exhibition certainly appears discombobulated in what it is trying to say, but the show does celebrate the Friends of the Museum's 25th anniversary by exemplifying the depth and global reach of the U of A and its friends and associates.
Aware of the ethics of collecting and exhibiting works from other cultures and turning them into art objects rather than contextualizing them in their history, Corrigan shares, "Everyone that looks has a bias and a point of view, and it's important to understand that you have one and that you have a consensus on what you're trying to say.
"I wanted to make people think about objects in a different way, by placing things together like traditional adornments to figurative representations," continues Corrigan, who notes that the limitations of space also inhibited the amount of works to be included.
With some gems like the large prints by Seishi Ozaku, who combined woodblock prints and transferred them to lithography plates, it is the first work the print-focused U of A has acquired that uses this particular technique.
Emphasizing most strongly the importance for the collections to reach a larger public, he says, "Taking a line from the President's message: we need to be connected to the community. It's important for people to know that we have these collections and that they are not just for people on campus."
The second part of the series opening in June will focus on landscapes, and it appears similar in scope. Featuring a newly acquired Lawrence Harris that the Group of Seven artist gave as a gift to Emily Carr, a 1530 woodblock by Albrecht Altdorfer, one of the earliest western artists to use landscape as more than a backdrop, and a gift of a 1930s etching of the U of A as seen from the north side of the river, the broad Human / Nature series may not fulfil a clear vision of an educational exhibition, but it does satisfy the eclectic archivist and historian side in most of us.
*First published in Vue Weekly
Jim Corrigan, curator of the University of Alberta Art and Artifact Collection, has gathered 46 art works and artifacts made by 34 artists and craftspeople from around the globe spanning centuries. The first half of the series, Human / Nature: Portraits, contrasts historical prints by William Hogarth and Francisco Goya to contemporary prints and drawings by Helen Kalvak and Pitseolak Ashoona. Culling from over 2500 works collected since 2003, Corrigan notes that he began to see a pattern on human nature, particularly on portraits and landscape, which will be the second part of the exhibition series.
It is arguable that most works of art address the theme of human nature in some manner, as art in its essence is a continual dedication to shed light on the intangibles of existence. From Edo-era hairpins to beaded moccasins to a contemporary self-portrait by local painter Julian Forrest, the exhibition certainly appears discombobulated in what it is trying to say, but the show does celebrate the Friends of the Museum's 25th anniversary by exemplifying the depth and global reach of the U of A and its friends and associates.
Aware of the ethics of collecting and exhibiting works from other cultures and turning them into art objects rather than contextualizing them in their history, Corrigan shares, "Everyone that looks has a bias and a point of view, and it's important to understand that you have one and that you have a consensus on what you're trying to say.
"I wanted to make people think about objects in a different way, by placing things together like traditional adornments to figurative representations," continues Corrigan, who notes that the limitations of space also inhibited the amount of works to be included.
With some gems like the large prints by Seishi Ozaku, who combined woodblock prints and transferred them to lithography plates, it is the first work the print-focused U of A has acquired that uses this particular technique.
Emphasizing most strongly the importance for the collections to reach a larger public, he says, "Taking a line from the President's message: we need to be connected to the community. It's important for people to know that we have these collections and that they are not just for people on campus."
The second part of the series opening in June will focus on landscapes, and it appears similar in scope. Featuring a newly acquired Lawrence Harris that the Group of Seven artist gave as a gift to Emily Carr, a 1530 woodblock by Albrecht Altdorfer, one of the earliest western artists to use landscape as more than a backdrop, and a gift of a 1930s etching of the U of A as seen from the north side of the river, the broad Human / Nature series may not fulfil a clear vision of an educational exhibition, but it does satisfy the eclectic archivist and historian side in most of us.
*First published in Vue Weekly
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