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National Gallery of Canada exhibition celebrates recipients

On view from 30 March to 17 June 2012

OTTAWA, March 28, 2012 /CNW/ – Through their innovative, daring work, the recipients of the 2012 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, awarded by the Canada Council for the Arts, have each made their mark on the Contemporary visual arts scene. Recently, their rich and influential careers were honoured with this prestigious award and from 30 March to 17 June 2012, these great Canadian artistic talents will have some of their most important works shown at the National Gallery of Canada (NGC), in the Contemporary Galleries (B108).

Significant pieces by performance artist Margaret Dragu, photographer Geoffrey James, visual artist Ron Martin, visual artist – media and installation Jan Peacock, sculptor Royden Rabinowitch, visual artist Jana Sterbak, and artist-goldsmith Charles Lewton-Brain, recipient of the Saidye Bronfman Award, will be showcased in the exhibition, as will the outstanding contribution of Diana Nemiroff, director of the Carleton University Art Gallery.

“We are proud to pay tribute to the exceptional careers of these outstanding artists by showing their work in the context of this celebration,” said NGC director Marc Mayer. “The National Gallery salutes each one of them for there remarkable contribution to the advancement of Canadian art, both at home and abroad.”

The Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts 2012 exhibition, organized along with the Canada Council for the Arts and His Excellency David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, is comprised primarily of works from the NGC Collection. It’s a wonderful opportunity for the public to witness the vitality of Canadian culture.

The Awards, funded and administered by the Canada Council for the Arts, were awarded for the 13th year last February 28 during a press conference held in Toronto. They recognize distinguished career achievements in the visual and media arts by Canadian artists, as well as outstanding contributions through voluntarism, philanthropy, board governance, community outreach or professional activities.

Exhibition Highlights

Collaboration is the basis of multi-disciplinary performance artist Margaret Dragu’s practice. After studying dance in New York City in the early 1970s, she returned to Canada and worked with such artists as Tom Dean, Elizabeth Chitty and Kate Craig. Using burlesque and cabaret dance styles, she sought new ways of incorpor-ating the politics of spirituality and sexuality into her performance by producing interactive pieces for non-dancers intended to establish vernacular expressions of movement within the domain of high art. She has since continued develop her distinct relational and community-based practice. Dragu strives to produce work that undermines isolation, blurs the boundaries of art and life and creates extraordinary experiences from the seemingly mundane, most recently through her personas Lady Justice, a politically active rapper and frequent internet blogger, and Verb Woman, a listener, healer and collector of actions that are at risk of being forgotten.

Geoffrey James investigates Western society through his photographs. His ability to locate human aspirations within constructed environments, coupled with his keen sense of pictorial structure, has allowed him to discover poetry and irony in both planned and landscaped gardens from the past, as well as in the visual complexities of our contemporary urban environments. His series Running Fence (1997) documents the results of Operation Gatekeeper, an initiative under Bill Clinton’s government to erect a twenty-three-kilometre wall of corrugated metal between Mexico and California to fortify a frequent point of entry for illegal immigrants. Working with a large-format camera, the tool of historical record for mapping frontiers, James chose viewpoints on both sides of the border to contrast the desolate security zone of the US side with the haphazard development of Tijuana and its environs.

Ron Martin began his painting career amidst the boisterous art scene of the sixties in London, Ontario and has become known for his systematic and conceptually driven abstractions that exploit the materiality of his medium. Contrary to prevalent modes of modernist abstraction, Martin’s work emphasizes the relationship between each work and the viewer – rather than the artist and the canvas – and the resulting tactile experience. Despite aesthetic variances within his work, all of his paintings retain a tangible physicality and sensuous quality. Lovedeath-Deathlove No. 15 (1975) and Untitled No. 39, January 1 to January 3 (1981) are volcanic, hand-worked surfaces, which serve as antitheses in his exploration of the perceptual and visceral properties of black paint, while Untitled (1973) challenges the possibility of the purest white.

Video artist, writer, curator and teacher Jan Peacock has been redefining new media since the 1970s. Her single channel videos and multi-channel installations propose complex, often poetic investigations of the politics and structure of language. Collecting notes or sketches with her camera, she mixes personal footage with stock images or those pulled from the mass media – often layering them with grating soundtracks and hypnotic voiceovers – to activate the allusive threads of temporal and subjective experience. Juxtaposing landscape and language, Reader by the Window (1993) reflects the complex ways we construct memory and identity in relation to place. Here, the viewer is invited to “read” the fractured travel-log she has created. The sound component collapses the possibility of a narrative or sequential logic while the images of vistas that are simultaneously no place and any place evoke the viewer’s own memories.

Royden Rabinowitch approaches minimalism with a conviction that our experience of reality – defined by the rationality of science and the sensuality of physical knowledge – can be expressed in sculptural form. Taking cues from both the natural world and the study of music, he choreographs the viewer’s movement around his pieces, thus encouraging active participation with the work. His series After Kharakorum (1972) synthesizes several of his past sculptural explorations of height, width, and volume, which speak to the human body’s orientation in space. The sculpture on view references the ancient city established by Genghis Khan within the vast and rugged geology of the Himalayas in the thirteenth century. With its multiple layered surfaces, it conjures the idea of the area’s colliding tectonic plates and inspires a sense of great distance, as though viewed from atop a mountain.

Jana Sterbak’s practice focuses on the human body and addresses themes of power, control, desire and sexuality. Her vast body of work – from performance and sculpture to photography, video and installations – oscillates between seduction and aggression, and interrogates the physical and emotional fragility of the human state. Taking her cues from the physicality of her materials, she is famous for using meat, metal, ice, glass, fire and chocolate to challenge traditional female iconography. Seduction Couch (1986-87) suggests the presence of a female body that channels her alluring sexual energy through intimidating electrical currents, while The Real Princess (2012), based on a tale by the Brothers Grimm, further invokes notions of disturbance as it unravels the legend of the young woman whose social worth was determined by her physical sensitivity.

Jeweller Charles Lewton-Brain pushes the sculptural, material and conceptual boundaries of wearable art. His geometric constructions range from oversized, architectonic structures that attach to or envelop the body, to delicately welded and beaded accessories. Lewton-Brain views his works as drawings in space that express the social, cultural and political systems we impose on ourselves. Works in his Cage series (1997-present) create a tension between structured order and organic form, and as of late, have been inspired by the artist’s travels through Thailand. An avid educator and prolific writer and publisher, Lewton-Brain also advocates for the rights of jewellers and craftspeople. A pioneer in his field, he invented a distinct metalworking method known as fold-forming, the first new metal-smithing technique in more than 100 years, now widely used by sculptors and jewellers around the world.

A former senior curator at the National Gallery of Canada, and the current Director of the Carleton University Art Gallery (CUAG), Diana Nemiroff is widely acknowledged for her contribution to the world of Canadian contemporary art. Her distinguished career is marked by her advocacy for the inclusion of women and Aboriginal artists, and by her ambitious national and international exhib-itions of contemporary art. She has also served numerous arts organizations, and is currently president of the University and College Art Galleries Association of Canada, and a vice-president of the Canadian Museums Association. Since her appointment to CUAG in 2005, Nemiroff has been a mentor to young curators and students interested in a museum career, and has expanded the program to include such nationally recognized artists as Edward Burtynsky, Jocelyne Alloucherie, Diana Thorneycroft, and Damian Moppett.

From from March 16 through Sept. 30 the Smithsonian American Art Museum will display “The Art of Video Games”. Following its run in Washington, D.C. this exhibit will be traveling to 10 cities in the U.S. I wish that it was coming to a Canadian city near me so I could go to see it too.

Here’s a description of what visitors will see from the Smithsonian’s press kit;

“The Art of Video Games” focuses on the interplay of graphics, technology and storytelling through some of the best games for 20 gaming systems ranging from the Atari VCS to the PlayStation 3. The exhibition features 80 video games, selected with the help of the public, that demonstrate the evolution of the medium. The games are presented through still images and video footage. In addition, the galleries include video interviews with developers and artists, historic game consoles and large prints of in-game screen shots.
…
Visitors to the exhibition are greeted by excerpts from selected games projected 12 feet high, accompanied by a chipmusic soundtrack by 8 Bit Weapon and ComputeHer, including “The Art of Video Games Anthem” recorded by 8 Bit Weapon specifically for the exhibition… An interior gallery includes a series of short videos showing the range of emotional responses players have while interacting with games. Excerpts from interviews with 20 influential figures in the gaming world also are presented in the galleries.

This story has certainly captured a lot of attention; after all the ‘what is art’ and who gets to define it argument will likely go on forever. Me, I just don’t want to go there. The online comments about this exhibit already run the gamut from “This is great, I’ll be right there!”, to “This doesn’t belong in the Smithsonian, it isn’t art!” I’m paraphrasing here, but opinions are bound to be all over the map on this one.

Me, I’m happy that the video gaming industry gives slews of creative people a way to make a living. Good riddance to the garret I say. I don’t play video games, but it sure would be nice to see the art of video games all in one place!

At the end of this month the Copyright legislation that has been written to bring copyright law in Canada up to date, Bill C-32 will be heading for it’s final reading.

While some groups, especially larger media producers seem happy with most if not all of these changes in copyright law it is likely that visual artists and many others may be facing loss of revenue and in some cases possibly legal expenses and years of litigation as result of these new laws.

According to a Globe and Mail article published on March 6th, “An unprecedented coalition of 68 groups representing visual artists, performers, writers, composers, musicians and publishers has presented a parliamentary committee with 20 possible technical amendments to Bill C-11, the government’s proposed copyright law, the Canadian Conference of the Arts said on Tuesday.

We certainly need new copyright law at this time, but we can only hope that our government will be open to making the changes that artists need in order to maintain and create income from their creative work. To find out more about how these laws may affect you, you can can read the “Presentation to the Legislative Committee on C-32 by the Canadian Conference of the Arts”. This title may sound a little daunting, but Alain Pineau, the National Director of the Canadian Conference of the Arts writes clearly and explains how these new laws will affect artists.

In the following excerpt he explains why he thinks that the Bill as written won’t work;

“The proponents of the Bill argue that it gives artists and creators the tools necessary to protect and monetize their work and develop new markets: they simply have to put digital locks on their works and resort to the justice system to have their rights respected. Locks trump exceptions, which has Professor Geist up in arms and does not satisfy the education community either. But since locks are not an option for most artists and individual content creators, the Bill is rightly perceived by them as a de facto expropriation of their property rights without compensation.

The lock/litigation approach is disconnected from the realities of life of most Canadian artists and creators. First, our artists do not want to lock their work away, they want them to be as accessible to Canadians and to the world as possible, but they want to be compensated for their labour and the uses made of their intellectual property. Second, in the case of music, locks have proved to be inefficient and have been abandoned by most large recording companies.

More to the point, the world of most Canadian artists is not that of Ubisoft or of CRIA. 42% of Canadian artists are self-employed. They do not have the resources to monitor internet and wireless users to see if they are infringing their property rights. Because they are busy creating their art and developing new business models that seize upon the opportunities of direct access to their audiences, they don’t have the time or financial resources to launch complicated court cases against those who illegally copy their work, whether for commercial or non-commercial use.”

Now is the time to take action on this issue if you haven’t already. Tonight I will be writing a letter to my Member of Parliament asking that he give serious consideration to the changes proposed by the Canadian Conference of the Arts. If you believe that these laws will affect you I hope you can do the same.