LIVING TIME: TEHCHING HSIEH AND GUIDO VAN DER WERVE AT DHC/ART

DHC/ART presents DHC SESSION Living Time: Tehching Hsieh and Guido van der Werve
October 16 - November 22, 2009

DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art, is pleased to present DHC SESSION, a new compact autumn programming initiative comprising an exhibition, evening event series, in-gallery reading lounge and education projects. The curatorial focus is on presenting artworks and events within an annually changing and pedagogical framework that offers various paths for reflection and research on the work of artists, and is designed for visitors who want to make further explorations into contemporary art.

The inaugural DHC SESSION exhibition, Living Time, brings together selected documentation of renowned Taiwanese-American performance artist Tehching Hsieh’s One Year Performances and the films of young Dutch artist, Guido van der Werve. Time used as a material by both artists provides a vast thematic space in which they explore how time is felt and experienced and its role as the linchpin of human existence. Living Time is the Canadian premiere for Tehching’s Hsieh’s documentation and the works of Guido van der Werve.

Living Time presents a selection of documentation from two of Tehching Hsieh’s life and art-melding One Year Performances. In One Year Performance 1980-1981, the artist, dressed in a pale grey worker uniform, punches a time clock in his studio every hour on the hour for one year. For One Year Performance 1981- 1982, Tehching Hsieh lives outside for one year in New York City. The documentation presented in Living Time includes photographs, paper documents and films. Tehching Hsieh was born in 1950 in Nan-Chou, Taiwan and currently lives in Brooklyn. Beginning in the late seventies, Tehching Hsieh made five One Year Performances and one thirteen-year plan. The singularity of mission and endurance required in the performances heralded a radical approach to contemporary art. His performances achieved critical acclaim during this period. With his last two performances he retreated from the art world. His meticulous film, photographic and paper documentation of his performances has been presented internationally since 2000. Extensive installations of his documentation were presented at the MoMA and Guggenheim, New York in 2009. Website: www.one-year-performance.com

The exhibition also includes two films by Guido van der Werve. In nummer acht : everything is going to be alright (2007), the artist films himself walking slowly across the ice-covered Bothnian Gulf of Finland followed by an enormous icebreaker. And in nummer negen, : the day I didn’t turn with the world (2007), the time-lapse photography shows the artist standing at the North Pole for 24 hours and turning against time. Born in Papendracht, Netherlands in 1977 and now a resident of New York, NY, Guido van der Werve pursued studies in industrial design, archaeology, music composition and Russian language and literature at several universities in the Netherlands before creating his first video-documented performances around 2000. Since that time he has created a variety of works, including a series of films and videos and a musical composition titled by number in chronological order two to twelve. He has had recent solo exhibitions at La Maison Rouge, Paris and the Kunsthalle, Basel. He recently presented his new work, nummer twaalf (2009) at the MoMA, New York and will participate in Performa 09. Website: www.roofvogel.org

TOP IMAGE: Guido van der Werve, nummer negen, the day I didn't turn with the world, 8'48" time-lapse photography to HD video, the Geopgraphic North Pole 2007. Image by Ben Geraerts
BOTTOM IMAGE: Tehching Hsieh, One Year Performance 1981-1982, Life Image. Photograph by Tehching Hsieh. © 1982 Tehching Hsieh, New York

451 St-Jean Street (corner of Notre-Dame in Old Montreal) Montreal

www.dhc-art.org

WAR AT A DISTANCE AT GALLERY TPW

WAR AT A DISTANCE
Stephen Andrews, Richard Johnson, Allyson Mitchell, Andrew Moodie, Greg Nelson, Suzanne Opton, Louie Palu, Adam Pettle, Jason Sherman, Francesco Simeti, and Graeme Smith

October 24 - November 21, 2009

Gallery TPW is pleased to present War at a Distance. A group exhibition of diverse works by both Canadian and international artists, War at a Distance explores practices of representation implicated in how Canadians are struggling to make sense of the war in Afghanistan. While war has always been mediated through image and narrative, new technologies and forms of documentary and artistic practice are continuing to alter the range of impressions available to a civic culture. Representations of the Afghan conflict have appeared in forms as diverse as contemporary art practice, television news reportage, documentary film, radio docudrama, personal YouTube videos, illustrated blogs and social media platforms. This new cultural landscape is embroiled in setting the terms for public conversations about Canada’s on-going involvement in a conflict that is taking place within a culture very different from our own. Blurring distinctions between art and journalism, documentary practice and aesthetics, galleries and broadcast media, war artists and combatant-diarists, The War at a Distance exhibition looks at the mediation of war and grapples with questions that emerge when artistic and journalistic forms are brought into relation.

Thursday, November 12, 2009, 7PM
Artist’s Lecture: Suzanne Opton

Ryerson University, Library Building, Room 72

Thursday, November 19, 7pm
Moderator: Sara Matthews, Assistant Professor in Culture and Conflict in the Department of Global Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her work explores the affective difficulties of teaching and learning from traumatic historical events. Her current research considers how contemporary Canadian war artists are responding to Canada's mission in Afghanistan.

Matthews will begin the evening with a discussion of soldier-made YouTube videos as a viewing experience that disrupts the safety of critical or aestheticized distance.

Louie Palu, image detail from the series Zhari-Panjwai: Dispatches from Afghanistan, 2007

56 Ossington Avenue, Toronto

www.gallerytpw.ca

ANNIE ONYI CHEUNG: MI AT FLEISHMAN GALLERY

Annie Onyi Cheung: Mi
October 16 - November 20, 2009

Fleishman Gallery

Annie Onyi Cheung's work in time-based and three-dimensional media explores themes of memory, identity, shame and vulnerability, as well as generational and cultural difference. She is drawn to concepts that can be investigated through experiential environments, unravelling imagery and narratives, and bridging gaps between disparate perspectives. Her art manifests as combinations of performance, video and installation.

The exhibition, Mi, includes a wall-mounted paper grid which documents calligraphy practice of elementary-level traditional Chinese vocabulary and family vernacular, examining each character's construction and pronunciation. The video component, Untitled (She Me), features a dream-like narrative that is projected as a continuous loop. The video, presented as a triptych, attempts to reveal the various manifestations of femininity that compete within certain social structures such as family, gender and nationality. The video contains no dialogue, instead opting to communicate through a vernacular of gesture to find relationships between tradition, gender and identity. The subtitle, ‘She-Me' refers both to the phonetic Chinese pronunciation of ‘wash rice' as well as the self-reflective quality of the video's world of interiors.

The installation will also be accompanied by a third element, a performance piece to take place during the opening reception. The live performance featuring both the artist and her mother, will further explore the complicated and conflicting notions of femininity and womanhood that influence and inform the artist's relationships with her mother and with her cultures.

Annie Onyi Cheung is a recent graduate of Art History and Studio Art from the University of Toronto.

79a Harbord Street,Toronto

www.fleishmangallery.blogspot.com

www.onyi-ajar.com

SU RYNARD: APPLES AT PAUL PETRO CONTEMPORARY ART

Su Rynard: Apples
October 16 - November 14, 2009

Paul Petro Contemporary Art

Over 7500 different kinds of apples (malus domestica) are known to exist, but only a few are grown today. Each cultivar has it's own characteristics, and it's own name. I was intrigued by the names of apples that have all but disappeared – names such as Maidens Blush, Primate, Duchess, Snow, Wealthy and decided to document apple orchards on the older surviving farms around the perimeter of the city of Toronto. Journeys to this fray of urbanity lead me to discover another interesting series of names -- street names in housing developments and industrial areas named after the apples and orchards that once grew there.

The resulting dual projection piece juxtaposes two culturally constructed landscapes, the suburban and the agricultural, asking the viewer to consider how we live in the natural world. The lost cultivar names found on street signs draw attention to our dwindling biodiversity, yet naming is often a way to remember -- an act of commemoration. In this way, the apple names re-purposed as street names create a kind of pastoral history, evoking an image of what once existed, to market what now stands in its place.

Su Rynard works across a range of approaches: dramatic, experimental, documentary and installation. Her short video 'Signal' (3 min. 1993) marked the beginning of a trajectory where she began to look to science as a departure point for artistic inquiry. Her most recent feature-length film 'Kardia' - an exploration of the heart as soul and psyche, (85 min. 2005) completes this cycle. 'Kardia' was the recipient of the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Prize. Su Rynard’s video’s have been exhibited in galleries including The National Galley of Canada and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her short films and video’s have screened at film festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival and the Biennial of Moving Images Geneva.

Apples (malus domestica) is the third work in a trilogy of video installations including Bug Girl (2003) and Bear (2006). In different ways, these three works explore our cultural relationship to the natural world.

980 Queen St West, Toronto

www.paulpetro.com

surynard@ca.inter.net | www.kardiathefilm.com

DIANA THORNEYCROFT: THE CANADIAN MARTYRDOM SERIES AT OTTAWA SCHOOL OF ART

Diana Thorneycroft: The Canadiana Martyrdom Series
OTTAWA SCHOOL OF ART - MAIN GALLERY

October 15 - November 22, 2009

The OSA is pleased to present Winnipeg artist Diana Thorneycroft and her work “The Canadiana Martyrdom Series” as this year’s visiting artist from October 15 to November 22, 2009. In addition to continuing the annual visiting artist tradition, the OSA will be launching its first ever online exhibition catalogue for members of the public to have broader access to viewing the Series and providing feedback to the artist.

Image: Martyrdom of the Great One, The Canadiana Martyrdom Series, 2005

35 George St. Ottawa, ON

www.artottawa.ca

www.martyrdom.ca

WILLIE DOHERTY: PASSAGES AT PREFIX UNTIL NOVEMBER 28, 2009

Willie Doherty: Passages
September 24 - November 28, 2009

Curated by Scott McLeod
Presented by Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art

Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art is proud to present Passages, an exhibition of photo and video works by acclaimed Northern Ireland artist, Willie Doherty. Curated by Scott McLeod, this exhibition represents the artist’s first solo exhibition in a Canadian public art gallery in thirteen years.

Commissioned by the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland, and receiving its North American premiere at Prefix, Doherty’s video installation Buried (2009) explores themes of personal and collective memory, repression and loss while maintaining his characteristic concern for specificity of place. The exhibition also includes a selection of large, colour photographs that contrast the bucolic landscapes of Northern Ireland with a dark uneasiness, manifested through a series of roadblocks, barriers and traces of past violence.

Opening with an expansive, peaceful scene of a lakeside clearing, Buried depicts what appears at first glance to be an entirely natural, unspoiled setting. As the camera moves forward along a wooded path, remnants from past human activities are gradually revealed: a rope, latex gloves, a piece of fabric, wire tied to a tree. Each item becomes a tiny trace of some unknown, unknowable episode. Eventually the viewer is completely immersed in a dense, dark woodland, peering through a thick web of branches upon the glowing embers of a fire. With no explicit textual information to provide an explanation of events, it is the unknowable yet physically present narrative of the past, its sense of menace heightened by the inclusion of non-diegetic sounds, that provides the work with a chilling, unsettled atmosphere.

Created prior to Buried, the photographs in the exhibition demonstrate Doherty’s ongoing interest in nearly abstracting the traces of human presence in the landscape and provide an engaging complement to his most recent video installation. In Buried, the viewer only has access to fleeting glimpses of the traces of a traumatic past, traces that still mark the landscape. In the earlier photographs, those traces are writ large, to the extent that their mystery and sense of foreboding stem as much from the barely discernable objects depicted as from the works’ compelling titles and insistent contrasts of light and dark. Taken together, both the video installation and the photographs speak to the political history of Northern Ireland and its legacy of violence, a legacy that permeates both the landscape and the collective memory of its people.

Willie Doherty was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, where he currently lives and works. His work in photography and film and video installation addresses problems of representation, territoriality and surveillance. As a child, he witnessed Bloody Sunday in Derry, and many of his works deal with the politics and rhetoric of identity, particularly in his native Northern Ireland. Since the mid-1990s, his work has received wide international recognition. Doherty represented Northern Ireland, to great acclaim, at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007 and has participated in the biennial exhibitions of Berlin, Istanbul, São Paulo and Sydney, among others. In recent years, he has received solo exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), De Appel (Amsterdam) and the Dallas Museum of Art. Doherty was twice nominated for the Turner Prize, in 2003 and 1994. Willie Doherty is represented by Alexander and Bonin (New York).

Scott McLeod is a writer, curator and arts administrator. His work focuses on contemporary practices, with a specialization in photography, media and digital art. Since 2000, he has been the director and curator of Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, where he also serves as editor and publisher of Prefix Photo magazine. McLeod is a member of IKT, the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art.

Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art is a public art gallery and arts publishing house based in Toronto. A registered charitable organization, Prefix fosters the appreciation and understanding of contemporary photography, media and digital art. Recently, Prefix launched a new division, Prefix Press, and released its first book, Milk and Melancholy by Kenneth Hayes.

Prefix gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Toronto Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124, Toronto

www.prefix.ca

BLACKFLASH - FALL 2009 ISSUE NOW AVAILABLE

BLACKFLASH: PHOTOGRAPHY AND NEW MEDIA ART

www.BlackFlash.ca

MAGENTA FOUNDATION - CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR EMERGING PHOTOGRAPHERS IN CAN., US, AND THE UK

FLASH FORWARD 2010

The Magenta Foundation is pleased to announce year six of its Emerging Photographers exchange with BIG NEWS. The annual competition is now the bi-annual Flash Forward Festival, starting in October 2010. The annual Flash Forward competition will continue to take place each year, complemented by the larger bi-annual Flash Forward Festival every other year.

This is an open call for submissions. All photographers in Canada, the UK and the US, 34 years of age and under, may submit. Competition Prizing Has Increased, and the Bright Spark Award winner will receive $5,000. As in the past, all competition Winners and Honourable Mentions will be published. 2010 FF selected winners will be published as part of the festival catalogue. This year's group exhibition will take place as part of the Flash Forward Festival's nightly events.

JURORS FOR 2010:

CANADA: Liz Ikiriko - Photo Editor, Toronto Life Magazine; Daniel Espeset, photo-eye Magazine; Myrabelle Charlebois - Photo Editor, enRoute Magazine; Erin Elder - Manager, Business Development, Digital Media, The Globe and Mail

UK: Lorna Mary - Company Manager, Rhubarb-Rhubarb Festival; Chris Littlewood - Photography Coordinator, Flowers East Gallery; Simon Bainbridge, British Journal of Photography, London; Aaron Schuman - Director/Editor, Seesaw Magazine

US: Andy Adams - Editor/Publisher, Flak Photo; Amanda Maddox - Assistant Curator of Photography and Media Arts at the Corcoran Gallery of Art; Susan Bright - Independent art writer and curator based in NY

DEADLINE: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2009

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS VISIT THE FOLLOWING:

www.magentafoundation.org/submissions/ff2010

KATY MCCORMICK: THE PHILOSOPHER'S GARDEN - STILL/CHOREOGRAPHY NOW AT TIW

Examining Kew Gardens and Le Désert de Retz, two noted eighteenth-century romantic gardens, this exhibition of colour photographs focuses on the miniature architectural monuments also known as follies. Referencing past civilizations and the philosophies they represent, the folly serves as a locus of contemplation within the garden complex.

Conceived within the larger constellation of design elements: paths, plantings, ponds, etc., the folly is a representation of social and historical ideas rather than a site of shelter. Dispersed throughout garden grounds, they are read at the pace of a walker, inviting an active engagement with the dynamics of light, space, and time, as integral aspects of philosophical reflection. Apart from their philosophical and ideological functions, the gardens these photographs represent are also complex spatial schemes laid out in the interest of pleasure and discovery for all who visit them. Engaging with concepts reaching back to the Greeks, they serve to occupy the senses in the present.

Katy McCormick's photography deals with the relationships between landscape architecture, its histories and the way we perceive representations of space and time.

Her solo exhibitions have appeared in Toronto at G+Galleries, the Premiere Dance Theatre, Alliance Française Gallery, Gallery TPW, The Photo Passage, and Jamie Kennedy at the ROM, and elsewhere at The Photographer's Gallery, Saskatoon, The Other Gallery, Banff, and at Espace VOX and the Eleanor London Public Library, in Montréal.