- Lip(stick)service
I didn’t realize that arts award season was well and truly upon us until my morning skim of the BBC news feed heralded the announcement of this year’s Turner Prize nominees with the usual distancing panache designed to further mystify contemporary art for the general populace. This year’s opening zinger…
An artist who uses make-up and […]
- Off the Shelf: The DIY artist book edition
I’ve been thinking a lot about artists’ books lately, from future possibilities in my own studio practice to the collection I’ve accrued to date and my wish that more of these beauties were being produced in my immediate creative orbit. Which brings me back around to that impulse to simply do it myself, but that’s […]
- Prizes for fleeting moments in time
When Daniel Barrow was announced the winner of this year’s Sobey Art Award, I didn’t bother to register any particular degree of surprise, even though he wasn’t my first choice to win (that being the spectacular Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby). As I freely admitted at the time of making my picks, I was […]
- Off the oft-beaten path
Most of my critical writing energies these past few days have been gobbled up in the task of producing another Hamilton report for Akimblog. As this is the fifth cross-city blog post that I’ve written for Akimbo, I’m beginning to recognize an alarming trend in my coverage - namely, my reliance upon a mere handful […]
- An open letter on Hamilton’s post-steel future
Partway through this lovely Victoria Day weekend, I received an email from an associate producer of The Agenda with Steve Paikin on TVO. Besides feeling relief at knowing I wasn’t the only person using the May Two-Four to catch up on work, I was pleased to learn that The Agenda will be hosting a panel […]
- A Tale of Two Cities
Like many thinking-minded Hamiltonians of my generation, I’m not normally a reader of The Hamilton Spectator, but a cursory glance at today’s paper left open by my mother revealed a Wade Hemsworth article giving the cursory results of a recent study on Hamilton’s creative industries. Leaving aside the cheesy accompanying photo of Imperial Cotton […]
