James North Art Crawl: November

Compared to last month’s poorly attended affair, this month’s Art Crawl on James Street North was able to boast an increase in numbers milling through the various galleries. Much of this activity was crammed into the neighbouring spaces of James North Studio and You Me Gallery, who were collectively hosting a juried exhibition from the Potters’ Guild of Hamilton. There were a number of interesting pieces of display, and my viewing companion and I did duly vote for the people’s choice prize or whatever they’re calling it, but craft has a certain immunity to criticism that would make any further comment here useless. Still, glad to see those spaces buzzing with life this time around.

The return walk southward from there sadly revealed a different story for two consecutive stops. Hamilton Artists Inc. had all the surface appearance of liveliness thanks to a combination of video projection works and a live DJ blasting Bob Marley tunes for some reason that I sensed was related to the partial set-up of band equipment in the main gallery space. This left a definite sense of expectation, but not so much of the intriguing, deliberately-designed sort - cutting simply to the point, whatever art or performative action that was meant to occur in this space just wasn’t there yet. A video projection of an Irene Loughlin performance at least provided something interesting to look at while befuddled by the incomplete atmosphere of the gallery, but I doubt the chaotic jumble of microphone stands and speaker boxes were the best setting for the work, and am certain that drowning out the video’s own audio with reggae music was just plain weird.

The same phenomenon of the non-phenomenal sort was at work in Blue Angel Gallery, which was well and truly desolate save for the empty stage, cabaret-style seating and lush window-dressing. The point of such an exercise isn’t lost on me, but it might have had a greater impact had this not been identical to the gallery’s odd inactivity of last month as well. I may be missing a point, but from an objective point of view this is nothing short of lazy.

Things did pick up in the home stretch of my particular crawl-path, with a neat bit of synergy at work between the ‘Welcome to Cuba’ exhibit in the wonderfully gutted Bottrom and Sons space and Julio Ferrer’s installation ‘iPoder’ at The Print Studio. The latter was the definite stand-out success of the night, employing wallpapering, individual prints and found furnishings to create a pop-kitsch possibility of Cuban consumerism.

Also noteworthy was the historical exhibition on view at Hamilton HIStory + HERitage. Though not an art exhibition strictly speaking, Graham Crawford’s slick installation of black and white photographs and LCD monitors documenting the history of James Street North made for compelling viewing and drew a lingering crowd for much of the evening. Much of the fascination was no doubt due to the self-congratulatory spirit of the historical evidence positing the Jamesville neighbourhood as one of ambitious enterprise in the face of overwhelming odds; it’s an effective mindset that has kept the Art Crawl itself in operation as the latest chapter in Hamilton’s feisty resurgence. As such, that historical context has a significant role to play at a stage when this local art community has greater need for drive than cynicism.

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