- White cats and black humour: suicide as farce
Among my less-than-glowing observations of this month’s Art Crawl, few have lingered in my mind the last few days save for a comment left on the post by a fellow art crawler who took issue with Laura Paolini’s exhibition Hello, Schrodinger? at Hamilton Artists Inc. My preoccupation is certainly not with his negative impression of […]
- ReMix Institute Phase II Hits Hamilton Next Month
Hamilton’s art calendar for next month is going to be quite heavy on the Cubanos with the launch of various events and exhibitions of ReMix Institute Phase II across the Hamilton region. Continuing from Phase I of Proyecto ReMix in Cienfuegos and Havana, this international exchange brings together Cuban artists with participants from the Hamilton […]
- James North Art Crawl: August
This month’s Art Crawl followed something of a bizarro-world format - not just because I actually managed to make it out for the August crawl this year, but because a variation in plans caused my standard gallery tour to flow in reverse. My traveling companion’s girlfriend happens to be the cousin of Bryce Huffman, so […]
- It’s Friday…
…and I’m once again heading northward to a rural patch of Ontario devoid of internet access, which is really something of a blessing.
Before I hit the road, here’s a road trip far more expansive and engaging than the one I’m about to take up the 400: David Lynch’s Interview Project. The online documentary tracks the […]
- Marcel Dzama and Department of Eagles
One of my many art-school frustrations was with the expectation that someone who draws should also be trying their hand at video - I never found I had the knack for it, even though I knew full well that some of my favourite artists could do both quite successfully. The first time I saw a […]
- Top Five Hamilton Hits of 2008
This past year, and the fact of its ending very, very soon, affords me a perspective I didn’t have at this time last year - 2008 is the first calendar year in which I have had the privilege of watching Hamilton’s ever-growing art scene from January to December (didn’t even get half that in 2007) […]
- Richard Fung: Landscapes at McMaster Museum of Art
I’ve been making a habit of attending Thursday afternoon critiques for McMaster University’s Studio Art program, and managed to bonus up this week with the opening of Richard Fung’s Landscapes at the McMaster Museum of Art, as well as an Artist’s Talk earlier in the afternoon on the background of Fung’s practice leading into his […]
- Notes from the Front: Nuit Blanche
Nuit Blanche is the sort of thing that sounds good as a concept, because it sounds batshit insane. And I rather wish it had been as mad as all that, but in the epic battle against my numbing exhaustion, it didn’t stand a chance. Might have helped if there had been more zombies.
Jillian McDonald’s Zombies […]
- ‘Not Quite How I Remember It’ at The Power Plant
I’m writing these impressions of The Power Plant’s summer show, Not Quite How I Remember It, from the other side of a somewhat fuzzy Canada Day weekend that stands as a handy temporal buffer between the moment of viewing the exhibition and my writing on it now - it’s a gesture that is either an […]
- Killing Time and Tuesdays on Queen West
An interesting point to bear in mind when an impromptu day trip into Toronto gives one time to drop into Toronto’s Queen West art district - many, many of these spaces seem to think the week starts on Wednesday. I’m well familiar with the notion of closed-on-Mondays in contemporary galleries, but Tuesday as well? Seriously, […]
