The Office Show, May 21-25, 2009, REVIEWED by Pam Baergen

“Office art” has never particularly excited me, especially when art exists in an office solely to mask the sterility and conformity of the space. No one goes to an office to check out its art. But what if the office space is the art?

The Office Show re-presents office space to the public through mixed media installation and performance in a way that is current, poignant, and refreshingly unique. Curated by Tiffany Shaw-Collinge and installed on the main floor of an office building on 10341-124 St., The Office Show is a conscious continuation of the notion of “public art” that The Apartment Show introduced in March of '07. I find myself drawn to art that comments on aspects of the everyday, so naturally I found the subject of this exhibition fascinating, but it was the space itself that really brought the artists' ideas about this subject to life. Being set in an office eliminated the need to translate space, or “pretend,” that is necessary when experiencing many gallery installations. Interacting with cubicles in an office rather than a gallery constructed to feel like an office greatly deepened The Office Show's impact on me.



Image credit: Detail from Amie Rangel, 2009

Within the confines of the office space, artists from Edmonton and beyond were allotted their own cubicle (or cubicle-sized section) to work with, mimicing the space allotted to an actual office worker. Shaw-Collinge's curatorial statement explains: “Although cubicles are partitioned, they are not completely separate from each other. By placing 15 artists together within cubicles, their ideas, like those of office workers, will inevitably permeate into each other.” From Tim Rechner and Craig Talbot's string web of spontaneous drawings and collages to Kenneth Doren's ominous and reflective audio installation, the works presented are radically different, yet their ideas do permeate and play off of each other in challenging, intriguing ways.

Out of all of the installations featured in this exhibition I found the more heavily interactive works to be the most intriguing- maybe because I am a tactile person, or maybe because being in an office makes me feel like I should be “doing something.” Regardless, two works in particular resonated with me. The first was Lindsay MacDonald's “It's not in my Outlook;” an average-looking workspace with a desk, chair, and computer. Exploring the work involved selecting different tasks from a Microsoft Outlook calendar that brought up different videos displaying all but “office appropriate” tasks. The second work was by Amie Rangel, which involved peering through surveillance windows into an organized, generic, model-sized office space. Being set in the same office building not only allowed the ideas of these two works to permeate eachother (as well as the rest of the works), but it also blurred the line between reality and the artist-created environment.

Invading a public space gives the installation art featured in The Office Show a way to successfully connect with and expand upon people's experiences of a common reality. Offices; apartments; I have even seen pictures of an exhibition in a Calgary motel room-- these spaces are redefining “public art,” and I look forward with anticipation to see which spaces prairie artists will be taking over next.

Artists:
Blair Brennan, Kenneth Doren, Robert Harpin, David Janzen, Jon Lawson, Lindsay MacDonald, Royden Mills, Gerry Morita, aAron munson, Christopher Payne, Jan Peacock, Amie Rangel, Tim Rechner, Patrick J. Reed and Craig Talbot

- P.B. Edmonton

Prairie Artsters: What Continues To Be Wrong With Edmonton*

Finally, there seems to be some level of critical dialogue occurring within and about Edmonton's visual art scene in the 21st century. Breaking from our routine standard model of safe previews and moving into territories of in-depth reviews, think pieces and commentary, there is finally a multitude of voices where dialogue is actually happening across and between individuals with differing opinions.

Being incredibly conscious about generating dialogue, there is a sense that, collectively, we have now reached the arts-writing equivalent of socially awkward junior-high schoolers. Maturing from happy-go-lucky grade-school-level opinions into the beginnings of fleshed-out personalities ranging from shy and weird to the brain and the bully, arts writing in Edmonton is currently in its pubescent era. Each camp thinks they're right and completely misunderstood by everyone else. The next few years' worth of activity will be dysfunctional to watch, inane to listen to, and downright painful to experience, but these are the formative years that typically shape a being's long-term core values. Ebbing in cycles, there is certainly a charge in the air.

A recent effort by fellow Vue writer and artist Adam Waldron-Blain took up the position on Prairie Artsters that situated a potential explanation of why Edmonton artists are frustrating and frustrated from a brief historical lens. Waldron-Blain brings up some strong points: tying together converging intersections of institutional edifices and the gentle evolution of civic and aesthetic identities. Written partially as a response to my ongoing columns about the state of Edmonton's art scene, most notably in regards to the lack of context to present and create fearless works, Waldron-Blain's piece has triggered another angle to the perpetual debate of "What's Really Wrong With Edmonton."

One anonymous response has stated flatly, "There is nothing wrong with Edmonton." Agreeable in intention, I do however believe there is something wrong with every city—so long as you pay attention and care enough to try and improve the conditions. The same problems exist everywhere, just varying in degrees, and the inherent problems of our artist-run centers, major institutions and the disconnected production and creation of locally contextualized works should be at the forefront of our concerns.

Waldron-Blain steers the reader towards the history of Edmonton's artistic legacy as the major cause of why the city's next generation of artists don't seem to care. Ending the otherwise thorough essay with: "We barely expect any public or critical response, and so we tell ourselves that we don't want it. We don't treat our work as a representation of our professional selves, and as a result are unconcerned with its quality and cohesiveness. It is then no surprise that our explorations of local identity are scattered and messy and lacking in quality"

Waldron-Blain enters a dangerous position of playing the blame game. There are certainly elements that ring true, but since when did professional artists create works on the condition of engaged public response? Engagement, or respect, has to be earned. Especially for the upcoming generation of which I feel I belong to, there is a responsibility to look back at where your place comes from, but if conscious (and I do believe most artists who choose to work in Alberta have to be conscious on some level) then there is no excuse to keep defaulting to historical parameters. I do sense there is a generational tiff that keeps rippling through our respective positions on art, which in my opinion is more our different approaches to professionalization. Waldron-Blain and I are a mere four years apart in age and I view myself as an emerging arts writer nearing the end of this first arch of my career. After seven years as a freelancer, three focused solely on visual arts, I feel elated to finally have peers in my city. Discussions are starting, and we certainly don't all have to like each other, but letting go of the past legacies of Edmonton, I look forward to exchanging a more professional attitude in the shape of continuing this dialogue.


*First published in Vue Weekly, May 28 - June 3, 2009

-A.F. Edmonton

The Icelandic Love Corporation Meets the Discriminating Gentlemen’s Club, Platform Gallery. April 24 - May 30, 2009. REVIEWED by Noni Brynjolson

This exhibition is part of Núna (Now), a festival currently in its third year that celebrates connections between Icelandic and Canadian arts and culture. More than one hundred years ago, Icelandic settlers came to Manitoba and settled on Lake Winnipeg. They formed what is now the town of Gimli, home to the largest population of Icelandic people outside their native country. The legacy they left was more than vinatarta and difficult to pronounce surnames: it also included a strong sense of cultural tradition that has been preserved and continuously reinterpreted. Núna is focused on showcasing hybrid relationships between Icelandic and Canadian cultures in the form of contemporary art, dance, and music.

The exhibition at Platform, curated by J.J. Kegan McFadden and Freya Olafson, works along these lines of juxtaposition and convergence. Within one small room, the ladies of the Icelandic Love Corporation (Reykjavik) have been formally introduced to the lads of the Discriminating Gentlemen’s Club (Montreal). Both collectives have created videos that combine wintery scenes of nature with caricatured representations of the traditions of high society. Issues of gender and class are brought to the forefront in this making of acquaintances; this is immediately evident in comparing the ILC’s logo of vulva-shaped hearts with the DGC’s crest of flame-ejaculating penises.


Photo courtesy of Platform Gallery, 2009


The ILC exemplify the quirkiness of Icelandic culture. Not surprisingly, they have worked with Björk (they created the colourful crocheted costume on the cover of her 2006 album Volta). Their video "Dynasty" (2007) was created at the Hydro Power Plant in Vatnsfellsvirkjun, and imagines the end of electricity due to Global Warming. The ladies hunt, fish, golf and crochet, before symbolically removing their jewelry and placing it in a box along with their useless cell phones. They bury these precious cultural mementos on a point of land surrounded by the beauty of snowy mountains and icy streams. The video ends with the ladies disappearing into thin air as they walk towards the camera. Adjacent are nine large photographs, which vividly emphasize the textures and details of certain scenes. Bright orange yarn contrasts with the greys, browns and whites of background and figures. Well manicured hands clutch a dead fish with its mouth gaping open. Rich furs, an intricately carved silver ring, and the box of treasures buried beneath the rocks suggest culture, in the sense of the word that corresponds with a dynasty’s material possessions.

An interesting inclusion by the curators is a cloak from the Costume Museum of Canada, made of green velvet, silk and ermine. The garment was created in 1924 to adorn the first Fjallkona of Islendingadagurinn (translation: a mother figure symbolizing the spirit of Iceland, selected to symbolically preside over Manitoba’s first Icelandic festival. This is a tradition that continues to the present day, minus cloak).

In an essay accompanying the show, Laurie K. Bertram notes that the garment signifies the construction of gender and identity in Canada in the early twentieth century, through the symbolic status it conveyed. This can also be witnessed in the two video pieces.

While the ILC takes the mock-form of a corporation, the DGC satirizes the Gentlemen’s Club - the old-fashioned version, that is. Their artwork has involved the organization of social events, accompanied by the promotion of a faux-elite image. In "The Discriminating Gentlemen’s Club’s Fox Hunt" (2006) the five dapper fellows wear traditional riding costumes and gallop around on pink styrofoam horses. They hunt down a headless fox, celebrating with drinks after they capture the stuffed creature.

The ILC’s video leaves a lasting impression for its remarkable contrasts between intricacy and expansiveness, technology, nature, and the precariousness of human existence. Not immediately noticeable are several surreal elements, such as a stream of water flowing backwards. The DGC’s foxhunt, while charming, does not go much beyond prancing and posing. However, exhibiting these works together parallels their similar parodying of the upper classes on frozen terrains. In the context of Núna and the discourse on Icelandic-Canadian culture that has come out of the festival, this brings up questions familiar to prairie dwellers: does isolation breed creativity? Does it nurture culture, or merely encourage the repetition of tradition? The works in this show elicit these questions using sublime backdrops of snow-covered lands, upon which the contradictions inherent within the rituals and traditions of the elite have undergone a little northern exposure.

- N.B. Winnipeg