- TOMORROW: Supercrawl Artist Info Night
In the interests of boosting the signal as a member of the Supercrawl Curatorial Committee, I’m co-opting my digital soapbox to remind folks in my local arts community of an upcoming opportunity for art installations at this year’s Supercrawl. For those interested in presenting a site-specific project at this year’s event in September, the information […]
- City of Hamilton Arts Awards
Despite my reservations about the nominations process, I attended the City of Hamilton Arts Awards this past Monday with an uncharacteristic degree of optimism, assured that the “sold-out” status of free tickets for the event and the unique venue would guarantee a bustling, energetic night for the arts community.
Sure enough, attendance at the Awards […]
- 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 […]
- Elizabeth Bradford Holbrook friezes spared demolition
The local media has been quiet lately around the fate of Elizabeth Bradford Holbrook’s sculptural friezes on the ill-fated Federal Building in downtown Hamilton. From an immediate furore around their pending destruction at the hands of current owners Vrancor Group to eleventh-hour scrambles to block any demolition with a Heritage designation, this story received considerable […]
- Friday Links: A Fire in My Belly
I’ve been following the controversy around the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and their removal of David Wojnarowicz’s video A Fire in My Belly from the critically acclaimed exhibition Hide/Seek with a stomach-churning mix of disgust at the repressive forces at work in American society and relief that I live in Canada. The fact that I […]
- 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 […]
- Submit your Art for Supercrawl
Advertising calls for submission isn’t necessarily part of the new master plan for this blog, but the narrow timeline on this one calls for all the publicity possible. With a deadline of September 15, this is a great opportunity to showcase an exhibition-ready, outdoor-friendly work in this major Hamilton art event at the end of […]
- The Real Sobey Shortlist Announced
Knowing that my chances of guessing as well as I did in 2009 were pretty damn slim, I wasn’t terribly surprised to see that the proper, jury-selected Sobey Art Award Shortlist is not the exact mimic of my personal dork-motivated picks. Only two of my selections - Brendan Fernandes for Ontario, and Emily Vey Duke […]
- Louise Bourgeois, 1911-2010
After spending most of the last two days in my new studio on James North, there is something truly bittersweet and sad about coming back home tonight to learn that Louise Bourgeois, that veritable grand dame of contemporary art, has passed away today at the age of 98 in Manhattan.
Robert Mapplethorpe, Louise Bourgeois, 1982 (pictured […]
- Tivoli Theatre - a treasure worth preserving
My customary report on the most recent James North Art Crawl will be pending in the next day or two, but while I’m sorting through my myriad photos and notes (it was a busy one), I’d like to give a bit of extra attention to one of the unexpected highlights of the night.
Near the end […]
