Exhbitions Until January 23, 2010 at York Quay Centre in Toronto

Hinterlands: Fastwürms I Sky Glabush I Diana Thorneycroft I Colette Urban - Curated by Patrick Mahon
Until January 3, 2010 at York Quay Centre at Harbourfront Centre

The exhibition Hinterlands takes as its focus the works of five contemporary Canadian artists (Fastwürms are two) who mine the potential of distant and “unseen” places as zones of myth-making that encourage psychological disclosure. Each of the four projects represented in the exhibition is predicated on the notion of a place partially understood to be “out there” that betrays a readiness to be encountered as strangely familiar. Through painting (Glabush), photography (Fastwürms, Thorneycroft), and video and performance-installation (Urban), the artists of Hinterlands bring the periphery to the centre, maintaining a fascination for the particular and the psychologically charged qualities of places that are just beyond the reach of everyday experience. The artists of Hinterlands propose our re-consideration of the potential of “lost” zones to be engaged for the purposes of play, psychological speculation, and cultural and environmental criticism. – Patrick Mahon

Colette Urban, BARE, 2008 Performance
Diana Thorneycroft, Group of Seven Awkward Moments (Lake and Mountains with Double-double), 2008

Kalle Kataila: Landscapes and Contemplations
Until January 3, 2010

Kalle Kataila's photographic series captures the experience of being present in a moment and observing the landscape in stillness. Being part of the landscape that we interconnect can lead us to explore our relationship and understanding with the environment around us. Landscapes help us to reflect on our role as humans in the ever-changing diversity of our planet’s landscapes.

Kataila seizes moments of contemplation. A landscape shows nature in all its varied beauty, but also our ability to shape it in a harmonious and sustainable way. Landscapes also reveal the impacts of our acts that might not always be positive. The relationship between man and landscape is constantly redefining itself as man builds and changes his surroundings and the climate.

The challenge is to preserve the beauty of the natural world, and to alter it wisely. Increasing awareness of climate change and the ongoing financial crisis pushes us to more closely consider our impacts, and underlines a responsibility to take care of the environment and landscape that we are creating for future generations.

There is the opportunity to pause, carefully observe and consider what we want to see on the horizon.

Kalle Kataila (b.1978 Helsinki) is an artist currently based in Helsinki, Finland. Kataila's work is based around concepts of landscape, awareness and personal stories. He has exhibited with artists from The Helsinki School at Paris Photo, Art Forum Berlin, École des Beaux-Arts, Paris and the Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki. Kataila's works are in art collections at the Helsinki City Art Museum and the Finnish State Art Gallery as well as in several private and corporate collections in Europe and in the United States.

Kalle Kataila, Contemplation Lapland, 2007 from the series Landscapes and Contemplations

Directed North: Garett Walker: Sledhead I Eamon Mac Mahon
Until January 3, 2010

Two artists present two unique photo-based series of works that seek out communities in the northern wilderness.

Garett Walker | Sledheads

Beyond the urban centres of southern Ontario, beyond the sprawling suburban communities, and up into the rural north, the landscape changes as does the climate. The wilderness opens up in its natural state and envelops the smaller and more isolated communities. The snowmobile was born out of this topography. These “chariots of the north” serve as a functional transportation vehicle for individuals and communities living in more remote and snowbound places across Quebec, Ontario, Northern Michigan and beyond.

I had heard about a vintage snowmobile rally in Eganville and it piqued my curiosity. With a growing interest in documenting regional cultural festivals in Canada, and as an outsider to snowmobile culture, I made my way northeast towards the Ottawa Valley. I’ve been documenting some of the lesser known Canadian cultural festivals, celebrations, and rituals of the present. In documenting a diverse range of smaller regions, communities, and individuals, I am attempting to construct an understanding of my own relationship to the multifarious notion of Canadian identity.

I have been documenting regional cultural events that are seldom seen outside their locales. These events are traditions that are important in building and maintaining regional communities in different places across Canada. As a country, Canada spans 9,984,670 square kilometres, making it the largest country in the western hemisphere. Its culture is as diverse as its geography, and so it is not so strange for me to feel like a foreigner inside the country I call home. This is one of the reasons why I wish to bring these activities into focus and share them with a larger public in hopes of including these hidden treasures in a larger picture of how we as Canadians view Canada.

Garett Walker completed his BFA in Photography and is currently working on his MFA in Documentary Media Studies at Ryerson University. He is an active participant in the Toronto arts community and has been the recipient of many private and public artistic development grants, which help to fund his ongoing work. Various private collectors and public institutions in Canada collect his work. Walker lives and works in Toronto.

Garett Walker, part of the series Sledheads

Eamon Mac Mahon

Since 2004, Toronto-based photographer Eamon Mac Mahon has spent up to three months of each year working in the wilderness of northwestern Canada and Alaska. These slow journeys via bush plane have allowed him to intimately photograph remote landlocked communities, and the vast areas of uninhabited land surrounding them. His work has appeared in various publications including the Walrus, National Geographic, W and New York Magazine, as well as exhibition spaces such as The Power Plant, The Detroit Institute of the Arts, the Griffin Museum of Photography in Boston and Higher Pictures NYC. Mac Mahon also spends much of his time creating video projections for stage productions, short films and documentaries.

Eamon Mac Mahon, from the series Landlocked: Living room, Uranium City, Saskatchewan

Visual Arts at York Quay at http://www.harbourfrontcentre.com/

Will Kwan: Multi-Lateral at Justina M. Barnicke Gallery in Toronto

WILL KWAN: MULTI-LATERAL
November 12 - December 20, 2009 at Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Hart House, University of Toronto

Curated by Barbara Fischer

Multi-lateral is the first major solo exhibition of Toronto-based artist Will Kwan. Born in Hong Kong in 1978, Kwan’s work examines diverse cultural practices as impacted or resurrected in the flows of historical and contemporary economic relations. Involving intensive research and collaboration, the works presented in the exhibition map patterns and traces of colonialism as they persist within the global economy.

Will Kwan’s work often takes the form of searing iconographic formats. The exhibition includes Flame Test (2009), a series of flags imprinted with images of burning flags culled from the international press, installed in the Great Hall at Hart House. Inside the gallery, the artist has installed a large spiraling neon sign using NATO phonetic code, while a series of clocks indicate the local time in mostly obscure, but critical and hyper-specialized manufacturing centers of the global economy (Toyota City, Kibera, Halawa Heights and others) the way a wall behind hotel desks offers travelers the current time in Paris, London, Tokyo and New York.

Visually powerful, through photography, earth art, performance, and video, Kwan’s work often focuses on types of exchanges fostered within the multi-national banking system. For instance, Endless Prosperity, Eternal Accumulation (2009), presents a monumental series of photographic images of eighty varieties of hongbao—commonly known in North America as Chinese red envelopes. Containing money, and offered during festivities and social occasions, this Chinese cultural form has been appropriated by transnational financial corporations in North America, the European Union, East Asia and China for circulation to Chinese clientele. The envelopes suspend corporate insignia with the crenulated finery of chinoiserie consumed in both art historical and colonial references. Examinations of encounters between cultural identities are here staged through items that navigate the decorum of financial transactions with the graphic imagination of cultural history.

Will Kwan received his MFA from Columbia University, New York (2004), and was a research fellow at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, The Netherlands (2005-2006). His work has been presented at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2005); the 50th Venice Biennale, Venice (2003); the Montreal Biennale, Montreal (2007); Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai (2006); Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai (2007); Art in General, New York (2004); The Power Plant, Toronto (2008); CAC, Vilnius (2003); the Polish National Museum, Poznan (2007); and Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella (2004). Kwan is currently a Lecturer in Sculpture and Art Theory in the Department of Studio Art at the University of Toronto Scarborough and a graduate faculty member in the Masters of Visual Studies Program at the University of Toronto.

Will Kwan, Flame Test, 2009. Courtesy of the Artist.

http://www.jmbgallery.ca

Jeff Thomas: Home/land & Security at Render in Waterloo

Home/land & Security: A project by Jeff Thomas commissioned by Render
Until February 13, 2010

Opening reception, roundtable discussion and video screenings: Saturday, November 21
1 - 4pm at Render, University of Waterloo main campus

6 - 9pm at Waterloo Architecture, Cambridge

With Home/land & Security, artist and curator Jeff Thomas offers a distinct response to the land disputes that have erupted along Ontario’s Grand River valley on land defined as the Haldimand Tract. Initially developed out of a consideration of the ongoing conflict between members of the Six Nations and building developers in the town of Caledonia, Thomas’s project has expanded to embrace broader concepts of home and security and to explore the divisions between native and non-native communities. Commissioned by RENDER, the project embodies a hybrid artist/curator approach, with Thomas producing a new body of work that forms the basis of a dialogue with other artists. Thomas’s goal is to encourage cross-cultural dialogue and a deeper understanding of the history of the region.

The Six Nations were granted the Haldimand Tract by the British crown in 1784 following the American Revolution. Originally encompassing all of the land six miles back from each shore of the Grand River, the tract was reduced over the years through land transfers (many disputed) and government intervention, leaving the Six Nations with only a small reserve located between Brantford and Caledonia. Challenges to the loss of land have been ongoing since the late 18th century, however, in recent years these have become more high profile and confrontational with the recent standoff at the Douglas Estates near Caledonia being a prime example. Much of the original Haldimand Tract is now the site of established towns and cities, including Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge (RENDER’s primary programming region), and areas of these communities are the focus of additional land disputes.

Home/land & Security includes new works by Barry Ace, Sara Angelucci, Mary Anne Barkhouse, Michael Belmore, Ron Benner, Rosalie Favell, Lorraine Gilbert, Jamelie Hassan, Pat Hess, Penny McCann, Wanda Nanibush, Shelley Niro, Bear Thomas and Eric Walker, along with works by Jeff Thomas and archival images from Six Nations. Home/land & Security is a major programming initiative for Render. It represents a considered extension of Render’s interdisciplinary research approach and further expands on the critical links between the university and surrounding community by engaging with a complex issue that will actively define the future of the region.

In addition to the exhibition in Render’s gallery space on the main campus of the University of Waterloo, works will also be installed at Waterloo Architecture and at the Grand House in Cambridge. Home/land and Security has received the support of The Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

Image: Jeff Thomas, The Delegate posed along the Grand River, Waterloo, Ontario, 2009. GPS: N43 21.452 W80 19.002. Courtesy of the artist.

www.render.uwaterloo.ca

Melissa Ann Pinney at Alan Klotz Gallery in New York

MELISSA ANN PINNEY
November 12 – December 20, 2009 at Alan Klotz Gallery

Melissa Ann Pinney received a 1999 Guggenheim Fellowship for her photographs of American women and girls. This project became the book, Regarding Emma: Photographs of American Women and Girls, published in 2003 by the Center for American Places in partnership with Columbia College Chicago.

In her foreword to Regarding Emma Pinney states that: "The photographs in this book are based on my experiences growing up. Raised as a Catholic with five brothers and two sisters, I learned early on that girls had to fight for most everything: to get and keep one's share, for credit and recognition, to state one's view of things. When I found the courage to articulate my views, it was by way of wordless photographs that depict precisely what has often been considered insignificant in the domestic, social or cultural sphere. The pictures in this series look ahead to older women, then back to girlhood to see how our dreams and expectations of women are made visible; how feminine identity is constructed, taught and communicated between mothers and daughters."

Of her recent work Pinney has written: "My photographs are grounded in attentive observation of the world. I have come to understand that such mindfulness is rewarded by pictures more authentic and more mysterious than any I might have imagined beforehand ¾or manipulated in PhotoShop afterward. Family life , centered around my eleven year-old daughter, Emma, and my husband, Roger; Emma's friends; and the seldom- portrayed relationship of father and daughter; is my subject. A sense of place is essential to my way of seeing.

It is easy to take the familiar for granted and tempting to look to another place or culture for a fresh and more thrilling view. The challenge of working in depth and over many years with the familiar is to find the emblematic, to see with fresh eyes that which surrounds one day to day. I remain intrigued by ritual, the qualities of light and water and the passage of time."

In addition to the 1999 Guggenheim Fellowship, Pinney received a NEA in 1987 and Illinois Arts Council Grants in 1989 and 1987, among other awards. Pinney's photographs are included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1988 from the University of Illinois at Chicago, following her BA in photography from Columbia College Chicago in 1977.

Melissa Ann Pinney has taught at Columbia College Chicago since 1984. She lives in Evanston, Illinois, with her husband and daughter. Pinney's photographs have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, DoubleTake, the Chicago Tribune, Ms. and U.S. News and World Report.

Lake Michigan, August, 2009
Emma, Reflected, 2009

Washington Park, Chicago (Three Girls in Shower), 2000

http://www.klotzgallery.com/index.php

Bruce Davidson: Five Decades at Bryce Wolkowitz and Howard Greenberg Galleries

Bruce Davidson: Five Decades
Until December 19, 2009 at Bryce Wolkowitz and Howard Greenberg Galleries

Five Decades celebrates the fifty year career of Bruce Davidson with representative works from many of the artists essays. Photographs from Circus (1958), Brooklyn Gang (1959), Time of Change (1961) Los Angeles (1964) Subway (1980) as well as recent images are on display.

The exhibition at Howard Greenberg Gallery, entitled East 100th Street is a recreation of the Museum of Modern Art’s groundbreaking 1970 exhibition of forty-two highly regarded Bruce Davidson photographs curated by John Szarkowski.

505 West 24th Street, New York
http://www.brycewolkowitz.com/www/

41 East 57th Street, New York
http://www.howardgreenberg.com/

Laura Letinsky: To Want for Nothing at Brancolini Grimaldi in Rome

Laura Letinsky: To Want for Nothing at Brancolini Grimaldi in Rome
Until December 13, 2009

The gallery has the pleasure to announce a new project of Laura Letinsky’s work, which has been commissioned on site in Rome, Italy. During one month this past spring, the Canadian artist photographed tabletops in historic and elegant Roman palazzi. These new still lives will be presented in an exhibition of Laura Letinsky’s work, alongside other recent projects: “The Dog and the Wolf” and “Fall”.

Laura Letinsky's elegiac photographs of detritus on a table-top are both elegantly prosaic and art historically resonant in their reference to Dutch vanitas still life painting of the Seventeenth Century.

This dialogue with painting is an important aspect Letinsky's photographs. As the artist has explained:

"It's so important for me that the photographs hover between being painterly - in the sense of light, colour, composition and plasticity - and being insistently photographic. They're photographs on photographic paper; they're made with the camera, they aren't digital effects. I'm really interested in the plasticity of photography and the way one reads it - like 'How can that be possible? That must be digital!' But no, it's not digital. Photography is like painting; it's an incredibly plastic medium."

Ranging from domestic setting to studio staging, Letinsky's still lifes are both everyday and infused with significance. Lyrical and formal, the subjects are dissolved by light, often set off against white walls and table cloths.

I explore formal relationships between ripeness and decay, delicacy and awkwardness, control and haphazardness, waste and plentitude, pleasure and sustenance.

Laura Letinsky is a Professor and Chair at the University of Chicago, Department of Visual Arts. Museum and gallery exhibitions include Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa; Casino Luxembourg; Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York; Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Nederlands Foto Institute; and The Renaissance Society, Chicago. Collections include the Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Publications include Now, Again, Galerie Kusseneers, 2005, Hardly More Than Ever, The Renaissance Society, 2004, Eating Architecture, MIT Press, 2004, Blink, Phaidon Press, 2002, and Venus Inferred, University of Chicago Press, 2000. She is represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York.

Recent shows include To Say It Isn’t So, Yancey Richardson Gallery, NY, Dirty Pretty Things, Brancolini-Grimaldi Gallery, Rome, Italy, Interiority, Hales Gallery, London, and Allusive Moments, Rena Branstein Gallery, San Francisco, CA. Letinsky received her B.F.A. from the University of Manitoba in 1986 and her MFA from Yale University 1991. She has received support from the Richard Driehaus Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, the Anonymous Was A Woman Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and the Canada and the Manitoba Arts Council. yanceyrichardson.com

http://www.brancolinigrimaldi.com/

Massimo Vitali: Landscape with Figures 2 at Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York

Massimo Vitali: Landscape with Figures 2
December 3, 2009 - February 27, 2010 at Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York

Bonni Benrubi Gallery

Bonni Benrubi Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work by Massimo Vitali, LANDSCAPE with FIGURES 2. The exhibition will present recent photographs from Italy, Turkey and Croatia. From a vantage point high above a scene, Vitali’s large-scale color images capture a surreal, sometimes voyeuristic view of the landscape that is often inhabited by carefree figures, such as sunbathers on a beach or tourists on holiday. His vistas allow the viewer to reflect on the rituals of modern leisure as captured by his large format camera. Oblivious to his presence, the people in Vitali’s images offer a wealth and depth of narrative action, allowing the viewer to discover reality in unexpected ways. His panoramic view of an amphitheatre in ruins in Turkey, while almost devoid of modern-day tourists, evokes the temporal nature of human existence, evidence of leisure rites of times past. Massimo Vitali began his career as a photojournalist and in 1994 went on to pursue his own vision. His work is represented in major public and private collections around the world and has been the subject of several monographs and museum retrospectives. This is his fourth solo exhibition at Bonni Benrubi Gallery.

Massimo Vitali, Scala dei Turchi Island, Sicily (2009)

http://www.bonnibenrubi.com/index.html

MARKO VUOKOLA: THE SEVENTH WAVE AT GALERIE ANHAVA IN HELSINKI

Until November 22, 2009

MARKO VUOKOLA: THE SEVENTH WAVE

Galerie Anhava

"The works of The Seventh Wave are pairs of photographs each with precisely the same cropping and angle of view… The camera is on a tripod. I first take one photograph, and after a while another. I have wanted to vary the interval, keeping it "unscientific" and even indefinite. Anything between two seconds and six hours can pass between the moments when the pictures were taken."

"In some of the pairs, the difference can be seen easily, while in others it is less obvious. Even in the blink of an eye, many atoms will revolve, a grasshopper can leap, and a glimmer of light can change place."

This was how Marko Vuokola (born 1967) described the works of The Seventh Wave in 2007. By that time, the subjects of the images had ranged from Finnish sea and lake scenes to the grounds of Versailles, the earth and skies of Texas, and an Audi dealership in Helsinki's Herttoniemi suburb. Since then, the series has been expanded with images of paradise islands in Vietnam, an urban landscape and the window of a Finnish apartment building.

A characteristic feature of Marko Vuokola's work is that he takes large numbers of pictures, which he then sorts, selects and rejects until only one pair, almost perfect, remains of each "theme".

Marko Vuokola's art is at once grand – addressing the major basic issues of life – and restrained. It is demanding and enduring, similar only to itself. Since 1989, Marko Vuokola's work has been in dozens of exhibitions in Finland, Scandinavia, other European countries, and in the United States, Australia and Asia. He held his first solo exhibition at Galerie Anhava in 1992.

Mannerheiminaukio 3
00100 Helsinki, 
Finland

http://www.anhava.com/

MICHAEL KENNA AT CAMERA OBSCURA IN PARIS

Until November 28, 2009

MICHAEL KENNA: NEW YORK AND NEW WORKS

Galerie Camera Obscura

“Getting photographs is not the most important thing. For me, it’s the act of photographing. It’s enlightening, therapeutic and satisfying, because the very process forces me to connect with the world. When you make four-hour exposures in the middle of the night, you inevitably slow down and begin to observe and appreciate more what’s going on around you. In our fast-paced, modern world, it’s a luxury to be able to watch stars move across the sky"

Michael Kenna is widely considered the foremost landscape photographer of his generation. With a career spanning thirty years and exhibitions worldwide, Kenna continues his quest to capture beauty in his work. Rather than banal documents of everyday life, he offers us an alternative view: a combination of peace, harmony and balance. In our increasingly turbulent times, this is a welcome respite, offering us a more poetic reality, suggesting a slower pace and a more meditative approach to the world around us.

Often working at dawn or during the night, Kenna is best known as an artist who explores and illuminates the effect that human civilisation has on the natural world, recording the sculptural evidence and traces that man leaves behind. Here we see for the first time in many years his unique expression of some of the great cities of the developed world. Even here he has managed to find peace, tranquility and beauty amongst the hustle and bustle of daily life, giving us the unusual experience of a city such as New York with mere traces of human presence.

“Considered together, his images leave a striking impression that vastly different locations have been rendered as if they were all empty theatrical sets. Kenna transforms a place into a stage, on which all the drama of human life can be imagined”(Mark Johnstone).

Michael Kenna was born in 1953 in Widnes, Lancashire, in the industrial northwest of England, giving him an empathy for industry and the working environment which he returned to in his later photographic works. He studied at the Banbury School of Art and the London College of Printing, graduating with distinction in 1976. It was in this year that he first encountered Bill Brandt, who became one of his major influences; Kenna also cites as influences the European masters Atget, Emerson, Giacomelli and Sudek as well as the Americans Callahan, Sheeler and Steiglitz. All these photographers have clearly informed and inspired his vision.

In London, Michael undertook advertising photography while pursuing his personal work - photographing the landscape. In 1977, he moved to San Francisco. There he met Ruth Bernhard and became her assistant and photographic printmaker for eight years. Since then, Kenna has photographed in Europe, Asia, Russia, and through the Americas from Brazil to Canada, often returning to the same locations and revisiting recurring themes: an indeterminate time of day or night, a visual structure which emphasises harmonious or contrasting forms, and an enveloping aura of suffuse light or atmospheric mist.

The subject of over 20 books and hundreds of solo exhibitions worldwide, Kenna’s exquisitely crafted prints are also included in museum collections at The National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Biblioteque Nationale, Paris; Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona, ; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Maison Europeenne de la Photographie, Paris; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, Tokyo; The Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague; and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London to name but a few. In 2001, Michael Kenna was made a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters by the Ministry of Culture in France.

Greenhouse, Study 1, Rubeshibe, Hokkaido, Japan, 2004
Brooklyn Bridge, Study 4, New York City, USA, 2000

Paolo's Beeswax Dog, 1995

268 Bvd Raspail, Paris

http://www.galeriecameraobscura.fr/#

PARIS PHOTO 2009 NOVEMBER 19 - 22, 2009

PARIS PHOTO 2009

89 galleries and 13 publishers from 23 countries I 31 first-time exhibitors I 7 new countries will be represented (Iran, Lebanon, Morocco, Portugal, Russia, Tunisia , UAE) I 75% of the participants are non French I 38,000 visitors expected I 500 international photographers

SELECTION COMMITTEE

Guido Costa, Turin I Howard Greenberg, New York I Edwynn Houk, New York I Tim Jefferies, Hamiltons, London I Priska Pasquer, Cologne I Françoise Paviot, Paris I Timothy Persons, Taik Gallery, Helsinki I Renos Xippas, Paris/Athens

PARTICIPATING GALLERIES AND PUBLISHERS

798 Photo Gallery I Antiquariaat L. van Paddenburgh I Aperture I Assar Art Gallery I B21 Gallery I Base Gallery I baudoin lebon I Bernard Quaritch I Bernheimer Fine Art Photography I Bonni Benrubi Gallery I bookshop M I Brancolini Grimaldi I Bruce Silverstein Gallery I Camera Obscura I Caprice Horn I Cokkie Snoei I Daniel Blau Photography I Denis Ozanne I DNA I Dominique Fiat I Edwynn Houk I Eric Franck Fine Art I Esther Woerdehoff I Fifty One Fine Art Photography I Filigranes Editions I Flatland I FOIL GALLERY I Forma Galleria I Françoise Paviot I G/P I Galeria Fúcares I Galeria Toni Tàpies I Galerie 127 I Galerie Anhavagalerie du jour agnès b. I Galerie El Marsa I Galerie m Bochum I galerie michèle chomette I Galerie RX I Galerie van Kranendonk I Galleri Bo Bjerggaard I Goodman Gallery I Guido Costa Projects I Hamiltons I Hans P. Kraus, Jr., Inc. I Harper's Books I Hatje Cantz I Howard Greenberg I Johannes FaberJuana de Aizpuru I Keumsan Gallery I Kuckei + Kuckei I Kudlek van der Grinten I La B.A.N.K I La Fábrica Galería I Laurence Miller I Le RéverbèreLes filles du calvaire I Librairie 213 I Lumière des Roses I Magnum Gallery I Martin Asbæk Gallery I Max Estrella I MEM I Michael Hoppen Gallery I Michael Stevenson I Motive Gallery I Nusser & Baumgart I Obsis I Patricia Dorfmann I Pente 10 I Phaidon Press Limited I Pobeda Gallery I Polaris I Priska Pasquer I Purdy Hicks I Robert Hershkowitz Ltd I Robert Klein Gallery I Robert Koch Gallery I Robert Mann I Robert Morat I Schaden.com I Selma Feriani Gallery I Serge Plantureux I Sfeir-Semler I Silk Road I Steidl I TaiK I Tanit I TARO NASU I The Empty Quarter Gallery I The Photographers' Gallery I Thessa Herold I Tissato Nakahara I Toluca I TORCH Gallery I Van Zoetendaal I Vintage Gallery I Vu' la Galerie I Woodfinch Rare Books I Xippas I Yancey Richardson

Arab and Iranian Photography
In 2009, Paris Photo turns the spotlight on photographic work from the Arab countries and Iran in what is an unprecedented exploration of the practice in this part of the world. While photography arrived in the region in the 19th Century, it is at the turn of the present century that it became the preferred mode of expression on what is today a rich, diverse and autonomous contemporary art scene.

The project is curated by Catherine David who was responsible for Documenta X in Kassel in 1997 as well as numerous exhibitions and publications on Middle Eastern artistic expression.

CONFERENCE

6:30pm - 8pm
Thursday, November 19, 2009

”Spotlight on the Arab and Iranian scene “ round-table discussion, as part of the IMA’s “Jeudi de l’IMA” conference programme. Catherine David, guest curator for Paris Photo 2009, will lead a discussion with invited artists from the Middle East on the major characteristics of the contemporary Arab and Iranian scene.

Invited guests are: Yasser Alwan (photographer, Cairo), Yto Barrada (photographer, Tangier), Bahman Jalali (photographer, Iran), Walid Raad (Lebanese artist, teacher at Cooper Union NY, member of the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut), Maria Golia, author of Cairo, City of Sand (2004) and Photography and Egypt (to be published on January 2010).

Institut du Monde Arabe, 1 rue des Fossés Saint-Bernard, Place Mohamed V – 75005 Paris

12 noon - 1pm
Friday, November 20, 2009

Mirjam Brusius (University of Cambridge, The British Library): Persia, Photography and Prestige. Nasser Al-Din Shah (r. 1848-1896) and the early advancement of a new medium in the Middle East.

Why did photography arrive in Iran only a few years after it was invented? How did photography prove useful to the Shah and how did it help him to gain internal and international prestige? Why did many Europeans come to Persia in the 19th century to take photographs? The talk will explore some of the earliest examples of Iranian photography from the Golestan Palace, Tehran.

Project Room

6 pm - 7 pm
Friday, November 20, 2009

Image Foundation: Presentation of the Arab Image Foundation's limited edition portfolio no.1 in the presence of Martin Parr and the members of the AIF.

Central Exhibition Space

4pm - 6pm
Saturday, November 21, 2009

Talk with photographer Roger Ballen

Project Room

4pm - 5:30pm
Sunday, November 22, 2009

Bamako Encounters 2009: Presentation of the 8th African Photography Biennal by Art Directors Michket Krifa and Laura SErani as well as Sophie Renaud, Director of the Department for artistic exchange and cooperation of Culturesfrance.

Project Room

Paris Photo was created in 1997 by Rik Gadella, a Dutch publisher and soon became the world’s first photography fair. In 2002, Paris Photo was taken over by Reed Expositions France which owns and organises the event.

Since 2001, Paris Photo highlights a specific foreign scene:

2009: Arab and Iranian Photography I Catherine David, curator
2008: Japan I Mariko Takeuchi, curator

2007: Italy I Walter Guadagnini, curator

2006: The Nordic Countries I Andrea Holzer, curator

2005: Spain I Rosa Olivares, curator
2004: Switzerland I Nicolas Trembley, curator

2003: Mexico I Olivier Debroise, curator

2002: The Netherlands

2001: Germany

2000: Corporate Collections

1999: Fashion and Photography

IMAGES

Holly Andres
The Red Purse, 2008 from the series: Sparrow Lane. Robert Mann Gallery, New York

Reza Aramesh
Action 51: Kerem Shalom, Israel - February 17, 2008. Palestinian prisoners sit blindfolded on the ground after they were captured by Israeli soldiers. B21 Gallery, Dubai

Jessica Backhaus
What Still Remains "Marlon Brando", circa 2006. Robert Morat Galerie, Hamburg

http://www.parisphoto.fr/

PETER BREG: HOSTAGE: THE 1979 CRISIS IN IRAN AT IX GALLERY UNTIL NOVEMBER 28TH

November 4 – 28, 2009

PETER BREGG
HOSTAGE: THE 1979 CRISIS IN IRAN

Images were taken by CP Photojournalist Peter Bregg during the 444 days that 52 United States Embassy staff were held hostage in Iran. This exhibit marks the 30th anniversary of the crisis that started it.

11 Davies Ave. # 303

www.ixgallery.ca

IT WILL ALL BE DIFFERENT: MING WONG AND JIN-ME YOON AT TRINITY SQUARE VIDEO

November 12 - December 12, 2009

IT WILL ALL BE DIFFERENT: MING WONG AND JIN-ME YOON AT TRINITY SQUARE VIDEO

Reel Asian and TSV are pleased to present the work of two renowned artists, Berlin/Singapore-based Ming Wong and Vancouver’s Jin-me Yoon. Central to the works of both Wong and Yoon is the conflict between body and place—a conflict that is represented by the exchange between the artists’ bodies and the transitional spaces into which they insert themselves.

In Angst Essen / Eat Fear, Ming Wong plays all the characters in a densely layered restaging of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen Seele auf), Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s seminal film about love between cultural outsiders. Using green-screen compositing, Wong is able to appear on screen as both Ali, a young Moroccan immigrant worker, and Emmi, a German cleaning woman – as well as all the secondary characters.

In a pivotal moment from the original film, Emmi and Ali are refused service at an outdoor café. The couple imagines a “somewhere”— a place of reprieve that, when visited together, will alter the reality at hand. “When we get back,” Emmi says, “it will all be different.” With his recreation of this scene, Wong suffers the same indignation: the alienation is echoed as his own race and gender are inserted into the narrative. His redoubled return to this material assures difference.

Jin-me Yoon’s performance-based video series, As It Is Becoming (Beppu, Japan), features the artist, clad in black, crawling on the streets of Japan like an alien creature or a wounded soldier. These rigorous actions evoke scenes of evasion or survival combat techniques. Her body moves through Kannawa District’s urban renewal, through a former U.S. army base converted into a park, and across an atomic treatment centre. Yoon’s odd physical feats do not fit here. The contrast of her clothing against the landscape makes it seem as though she was composited atop the scene, hovering about its surface. Exploring the conflict between her body and these places is twinned with her identity as a Korean-Canadian foreign to Japan. Yoon’s haunting work creates a new, uneasy space for us to consider ideas of identity and nationalism.

Ming Wong lives and works in Berlin and Singapore. He represented Singapore at the 2009 Venice Biennale where he received a Special Mention for his solo exhibition, “Life of Imitation.”

Jin-Me Yoon lives and works in Vancouver and teaches at the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. She has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally and was shortlisted for the 2009 Grange Prize. She is represented by the Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver.

Reel Asian thanks the Japan Foundation for its support.

401 Richmond Street West, Suite 376, Toronto

www.trinitysquarevideo.com

Jennifer Montgomery: Canadian Premiere of Deliver in Toronto

The Images Festival presents a special double feature!

Deliver by Jennifer Montgomery (Canadian Premiere!)
Deliverance by John Boorman (35mm archival print!)

One night only!
Thursday December 3, 2009, 7 & 9 PM

Innis Town Hall, University of Toronto

2 Sussex Avenue (St. George Station)

Advance tickets: 10$, 15$ for both // Day of tickets: 12$, 20$ for both

Deliver by Jennifer Montgomery takes John Boorman’s classic 1972 film Deliverance and remakes it with an all-female cast. Shooting in the Catskills of New York rather than Appalachian Georgia, the film includes experimental filmmakers and academics (Peggy Ahwesh, Jacqueline Goss, Meredith Root, Dani Levanthal, Su Friedrich and Montgomery herself) playing mirages of themselves—urban artists looking to unplug in the unspoiled wilderness. Montgomery follows John Boorman's original movie and James Dickey's original book closely, as the gender inversion complicates hegemonic notions of nature, power and sexual violence, all on a stretch of river coincidentally called The Beaverkill.

For Deliver’s Canadian premiere, the Images Festival is presenting Montgomery’s film in a special double feature with Boorman’s original screening from a rare 35mm archival print!

7 PM: Deliver (Jennifer Montgomery, 2008, HD video, 98 minutes)
9 PM: Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972, 35mm Cinemascope, 110 minutes)

Advance tickets available NOW at the following locations:
Online at http://www.imagesfestival.com/store (PayPal or credit cards NO service charges!)

Queen Video, 480 Bloor Street West, east of Bathurst (Cash, Credit, Debit)

Toronto Women’s Bookstore, 73 Harbord @ Spadina (Cash, Credit, Debit)

Jennifer Montgomery's films include Notes on the Death of Kodachrome (2006), Along the Highway (2005), Threads of Belonging (2004), Transitional Objects (2000), Troika (1998), Art For Teachers of Children (1995), I, a Lamb (1992), Age 12: Love With a Little L (1990), and Home Avenue (1989). These films range from experimental essays to experimental features and are distributed by Zeitgeist Films, Women Make Movies and Video Data Bank.

Montgomery's works have shown at many international festivals, as well as venues including the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Film Forum (NYC), the Gene Siskel Film Center (Chicago), the ICA (London), the Walker Arts Center (Minneapolis), and the Whitney Museum (NYC). She has been the recipient of grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Mary Nohl Established Artist Fellowship, the Jerome Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and Art Matters. She was twice nominated for the IFPÂ’s Independent Spirit Award.

She lives in Chicago and is an Assistant Professor in the Moving Image area at University of Illinois at Chicago's School of Art & Design.

"Like a generation of viewers, I was profoundly affected by Deliverance. But I have always been troubled by the hegemonic structures of gender proposed by Boorman and Dickey. Hence, my version is played by women: myself, Peggy Ahwesh, Jackie Goss, Su Friedrich, and Meredith Root, all experimental filmmakers who work as academics. While faithful to our respective male characters, we also play ourselves. Provocative questions arise through these filters of similarity and difference. My film's title, Deliver, refers to the re-birthing experience of surviving extreme physical challenges, the product-obsessed nature of the film industry, and, of course, the fact that it is only women who can, biologically, truly deliver. The lines between bathos and pathos become dangerously blurred. It is the aim of this film to pose critical questions about the gendering of nature, homosocial sexual violence, and the act of filmmaking itself." - J.M.

The Images Festival is the largest festival in North America for experimental and independent moving image culture, showcasing the innovative edge of international contemporary media art both on and off the screen. From Super-8 and hand-tinted celluloid to the latest video art, Images has presented thousands of films and media based projects since 1988. Images is committed to an expanded concept of film and video practice: alongside film and video screenings, the festival presents groundbreaking live performances, media art installations in galleries across the GTA and new media projects by many renowned Canadian and international artists. We go out of our way and over the edge to provide Toronto with an annual extravaganza of image making. Attended by more than 30,000 people each year, Toronto's 2nd oldest film festival is a critical forum for the independent media arts in Canada and around the world and provides artists with a supportive and professional forum in which to present their projects.

http://www.imagesfestival.com/

Trent Parke: Please Step Quietly Everyone Can Hear You in Paddington, Australia

TRENT PARKE
PLEASE STEP QUIETLY EVERYONE CAN HEAR YOU

October 28 - November 28, 2009 at Stills Gallery

This year Magnum photographer Trent Parke, one of Australia's best-known and most original photographers, was commissioned by Sydney Opera House, as an artist in residence, to shoot behind the scenes. With his characteristic originality and imagination Parke takes us with him backstage. Working amidst the darkness, with strictly choreographed logistics, bizarre props and long hours, he captures, with frankness and affection a side of Sydney Opera House few of us have ever seen. The images that have resulted from this exciting collaboration will be on show in complementary exhibitions at Sydney Opera House and at Stills Gallery.

Whilst it is an architectural masterpiece and Australian icon, it is easy to forget that for some, Sydney Opera House is also a workplace. Behind the architectural statement, the grand operas and the thousands of tourists, there are electricians setting up lights, stage-hands moving props, opera singers eating lunch in the greenroom and people waiting to let the final curtain fall.

Parke's eye is drawn to the many details that may, ordinarily, be overlooked. The electric blues and oranges, kilometres of cabling, lines of tape and graphic arrows present a beautiful, if baffling (for the uninitiated) picture. We see wigs without actors, blood-stained props from tragedies, walls grafittied over years of waiting and the intestinal ducts of air conditioning. His wonderfully observant images capture layers of life and time that have accumulated over the years.

All those who visit Sydney Opera House will be able to view the free outdoor exhibition on the Forecourt from 22 October until February 2010. It will be a great opportunity for visitors to see both the inside and the outside of the house at the same time.

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Trent Parke, the first Australian to become a Full Member of the renowned photographers' cooperative Magnum Photo Agency, is considered one of the most innovative and challenging young photographers of his generation. Whilst working as a press photojournalist during the first years of his career, he received numerous national and international awards, including five Gold Lenses from the International Olympic Committee, World Press Photo Awards in 1999, 2000 and in 2005.

His latest and much-anticipated body of work - The Christmas Tree Bucket, is humour of the blackest hue. In a dazzling display of virtuoso storytelling Parke snaps the family ritual of Christmas with the in-laws and builds a gritty gothic tale of a nightmare lurking in the suburban shadows. Operatic in its vision and darkly satirical in its style, The Bucket is a photographic masterpiece destined for cult status. In 2008, The Christmas Tree Bucket was launched at The Australian Centre for Photography and was also premiered at ParisPhoto by Stills Gallery.

Welcome to Nowhere, which was included in Magnum's 60th Anniversary show New Blood, and exhibited at Stills Gallery in 2007, firmly establishes his ability to work with spectacular results in colour as well as his signature powerful black and white. Following the series Coming Soon, an exploration of urban spaces in colour, Welcome to Nowhere focuses on Australian backwaters, shot on medium format film to maintain fine detail even when printed large-scale. With Welcome To Nowhere Parke continues to create arresting tableaus that are magical in the stories they tell. Often absent of human presence the strong colours and formal composition, convey a stillness with surreal affect. Conversely, the humorous Man Vomiting testifies to Parke's ability to capture unforeseen moments of human behaviour, or in the case of the iconic Sharkbay WA, it is a bizarre gang of emus who seem to think they own the town.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, acquired a selection of works from Welcome To Nowhere in 2007. This is a wonderful addition to the institutions he is held in, which include the National Gallery of Victoria, Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Art Gallery of NSW, and the National Gallery of Australia.

In 2003 Parke was awarded the prestigious international W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his series Minutes to Midnight. Parke documented his journey around Australia over a two-year period, examining 'the current and changing state of the Australian nation'. Capturing the mood of a still young and emerging nation, Parke examined the disjuncture between the perception of the Australian 'way of life', with its nostalgia and romanticism, and the more complex reality. Minutes to Midnight was exhibited for the first time at the Australian Centre for Photography as part of the Sydney Arts Festival in 2005. Works from the series were also included in the 2005 Noorderlicht Traces and Omens Photo Festival in the Netherlands and were featured by Magnum at Paris Photo in November 2005. In 2006 The National Gallery acquired Parke's thirty-piece suite of Minutes to Midnight. The suite was included in the Australian Art Gallery's exhibition Shoot: Five Australian Photographers in Focus and more recently (2009), was part of the Children's Gallery at the NGA.

Parke's Dream/Life & Beyond, exhibited in 2001 at Stills Gallery, presented a city seemingly peopled with spirits and shrouded in the mythical. The play of light and shade, individuals and crowds, reality and dream, elevates his works beyond the documentary. His book, Dream/Life, was awarded second place in the 2000 American Picture of the Year awards for photography books.

During 2000, Parke collaborated with Narelle Autio to exhibit The Seventh Wave at Stills Gallery. Their powerful and lyrical images of bathers captured the drama and otherworldliness that lies beneath the surface of the water.

The Seventh Wave and Dream/Life were exhibited in 2004 at Ariel Meyerowitz Gallery in New York, and at Foto Freo in Western Australia. In 2003, works from The Seventh Wave were selected to be part of the Summer Life exhibition at Alice Austin House Museum in Long Island, New York.

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STILLS is a leading Australian gallery with a focus on contemporary photography and multimedia art. The gallery, established in 1991, is housed in a converted warehouse with a large exhibition and printroom space in Paddington, Sydney's main gallery precinct. STILLS represents both emerging and established artists, and has a long history of fostering artists who work at the forefront of contemporary photo media practice. The gallery's annual program consists of nine exhibitions, and an extensive collection of works held in the stockroom can be viewed by appointment. STILLS also organises artist talks throughout the year to promote discussion and understanding of the exhibited work.

36 Gosbell Street, Paddington, Australia

http://www.stillsgallery.com.au/

Me-Take: Christian Thompson, Dianne Jones and Tony Albert at Perth Centre for Photography in Perth, Australia

ME-TAKE: CHRISTIAN THOMPSON, DIANNE JONES AND TONY ALBERT
October 31 – December 13, 2009 at Perth Centre for Photography

Curated by Eva Fernandez

Bringing together the work of Christian Thompson, Dianne Jones and Tony Albert, this exhibition focuses on self-representation which examines, challenges and subverts notions of Indigenous representations.

Christian Thompson, 'untitled' 'Black Gum-2'

PCP’s focus is on promoting all forms of photo media in Western Australia, particularly new photography and emerging talent. The program features over 15 exhibitions a year, with solo or group shows from emerging and established artists as well as touring shows from interstates and overseas. For photographers interested in developing their skills, PCP offers workshops focusing on basic camera techniques and digital programs.

PCP organises discussions about photography and has created the IRIS Award, a national prize for contemporary portraiture and the CLIP Award, a national prize for contemporary landscape photography. PCP has established strong links with Universities and TAFE Colleges offering students a chance to broaden their view of Australia-wide and international photography.

Perth Centre for Photography
91 Brisbane St. Perth, Australia

http://pcp.org.au/

SIMRYN GILL: INLAND AT CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY IN AUSTRALIA

SIMRYN GILL: INLAND
October 10 - December 13, 2009

Simryn Gill: Inland is a survey of photography and takes place in a photography gallery. It is important to declare at the outset, that while photography forms a significant and wondrous part of her practice, Simryn Gill does not consider herself a photographer; “For me, the taking of photographs is another tool in my bag of strategies, in that awkward pursuit of coherence we sometimes call art”.1 Simryn Gill: Inland embraces this conundrum as an entry point for considering Gill’s photography, and how photography might function more broadly as a way of engaging with the world.

Seven major series wind almost chronologically through the gallery—in this first survey of Gill’s photography—following a path, quite literally, from outside to inside, from found in nature to found in culture and back. Commencing with three series located outdoors, Forest (1996–1998), Rampant (1999) and Vegetation (1999), the survey moves to Gill’s sweeping interior series Dalam (2001). On the cusp of outside and inside is Power station (2004), which makes a curious and visceral analogy between the interior of her childhood home in Port Dickson, Malaysia and the interior of an adjacent power station. Like a medieval Book of Hours, the hand-sized concertina work Distance (2003–2009) is an attempt by Gill to convey the interior of her home in Marrickville, Sydney to someone residing outside Australia.

Gill’s most recent work Inland (2009), commissioned for this survey and photographed during a road trip from northern New South Wales to South Australia and across the bight to Western Australia, is at the heart of the exhibition. Gill’s only moving image work, Vessel (2004), commissioned for SBS Television, closes the exhibition’s journey with the almost imperceptible passage of a small fishing vessel across the horizon. To ground the exhibition, or perhaps to oversee our journey, one image is selected from Gill’s highly regarded series, A small town at the turn of the century (1999–2000).

Seeking an understanding of the politics of place informs her recent series. Inland confounds what is normally expected from photographs of Australia’s interior and eschews decorous landscapes, vast horizons or smiling rugged people, for modest interiors of homes. Indeed there are no people present, only the houses they have inhabited as evidence of their subjectivity.

Inland consists in piles of small jewel-like Cibachrome and black and white prints sitting on a table for viewers to peruse, heightening the provisional nature of its description, leaving open-ended the question of what can be known through photographic representation.

Presented by Centre for Contemporary Photography and Melbourne International Arts Festival, Simryn Gill: Inland is curated by Naomi Cass. Selections from Simryn Gill: Inland will tour to five regional Victorian venues in 2010 and 2011 with NETS Victoria and support from Melbourne International Arts Festival.

Centre for Contemporary Photography
404 George St, Fitzroy

Victoria 3065, Australia

http://www.ccp.org.au/

EXHIBITIONS FOR HIRE: THE AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR PHOTOGRAPHY

I would like to see these exhibitions in Toronto. One of the bonuses of writing a blog is finding other artists that interest me. I admit I am selective; I don't post about every show that I have come across. The following exhibitions display the uncanny and humorous side of life. The exhibitions are available for touring. Information is available online.

The Australian Centre for Photography always has one or two exhibitions that interests me. I highly recommend visiting the site. I have provided information below about the centre.

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PIETER HUGO: NOLLYWOOD

The Nigerian film industry is the third largest film industry in the world, releasing between 500 and 1000 movies every year. Low budget, violent and excessive, most Nollywood productions take just 10 days to make, yet they are wildly popular in the lucrative African VCD market - an average film sells 50,000 copies. Nollywood movies now outsell Hollywood films in Nigeria and many other African countries.

For this series of portraits, Pieter Hugo collaborated with Nollywood actors to recreate the stereotypical scenarios that characterise their productions. His assortment of characters includes mummies, satanic demons and decomposing corpses, casually posing in the backlots of Enugu. With an eye for the absurd, he pays tribute to a unique industry that has stood up to the giants of the entertainment industry and come out on top.

Accompanying this exhibition will be a selection of Nollywood movie trailers in Gallery 2.

Images courtesy of Michael Stevenson, Cape Town and Yossi Milo, New York

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THE CHRISTMAS TREE BUCKET: TRENT PARKE'S FAMILY ALBUM

"It was there - while staring into that bright red bucket, vomiting every hour on the hour for fifteen hours straight - that I started to think how strange families, suburbia, life, vomit and, in particular, Christmas really was..." Trent Parke

So began Trent Parke's latest and much-anticipated new body of work. The Christmas Tree Bucket is humour of the blackest hue. In a dazzling display of virtuoso storytelling Parke snaps the family rituals of Christmas with the in-laws and builds a gritty gothic tale of a nightmare lurking in the suburban shadows. Operatic in its vision and darkly satirical in its style, The Christmas Tree Bucket is a photographic masterpiece destined for cult status. World premiere.

Trent Parke is represented by Magnum Photos, London, and Stills Gallery, Sydney

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GLENN SLOGGETT: CHEAPER AND DEEPER

There is a dark and off-colour humour at work in Glenn Sloggett's photographs of suburban Australia. Devoid of people, we read the signs and traces of suburban life in his images of dereliction, failed aspiration and abject domesticity. However, these are not pictures of disgust, but a sort of affection. He articulates that quintessential Australian trait, the ability to find the last glimmer of optimism in the midst of inevitable failure.

Glenn Sloggett's offbeat humour and uniquely Australian take on life are sure to be a hit with audiences across the country.

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The Australian Centre for Photography (ACP) is the country's leading arts centre for the exhibition and publication of, and education in photo-based practice. It is also the longest running contemporary art space in Australia, with over 35 years of exhibiting experience.

ACP exhibitions have played an important role in identifying and promoting the major artists of Australian photography as well as supporting new practitioners who have, over time, become mainstream national figures. The ACP initiated the first major retrospectives of work by photographers such as Max Dupain, Olive Cotton and Merv Bishop, and organised the early public displays of photographs by Bill Henson, Tracey Moffatt, William Yang and Trent Parke. The Centre has also presented works by international photo-artists such as Bernd & Hilla Becher, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Larry Clark, Joan Fontcuberta, Nan Goldin, Roni Horn, George Platt Lynes, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Duane Michals, Pierre Molinier, Erwin Olaf, Martin Parr, Man Ray, Cindy Sherman, Wolfgang Tillmans and William Wegman.

Increasingly new media have become another focus for the centre. These technologies have not only transformed the commercial photographic industry, but have contributed to a total redefinition of 'the photographic' and the relationship of art and popular culture. The ACP sees its role as facilitating the development of a vocabulary to understand the impact and potential of these technological and cultural changes and to engage the public through both exhibition and education programs.

The ACP is committed to showing Australian photomedia art alongside international work. It also promotes Australian photography overseas through exhibition and artist exchanges, publication and advocacy of Australian work to foreign curators. Touring exhibitions generated by the ACP have travelled to North America, Europe and South and East Asia. The bulk of the Centre's touring exhibitions, however, are shown in regional art galleries, contemporary art spaces, libraries and community venues all over Australia and in New Zealand.

In 1983 the Australian Centre for Photography launched Photofile - Australia's first publicly funded journal of photography. The publication is a vehicle for national debate and new writing around photography. Photofile has developed into a significant Australian magazine with both national and international content. It remains Australia's leading photomedia art magazine. Photofile is published three times a year. It provides representation, promotion and analysis of current practices in Australian photomedia art, ranging from documentary through to new digital technologies and including non-narrative film, video and computer-based work. Coverage is structured around provocative articles, portfolios of artists' work, short opinion pieces and reviews. Photofile is committed to critical writing that is historically and theoretically informed, presented in a stimulating and accessible way.

The Australian Centre for Photography also publishes catalogues and guides for many of its exhibitions. In 2002 it published Photographica Australis, a catalogue surveying the work of 18 Australian photomedia artists to accompany an exhibition of the same name shown at Sala de Exposiciones del Canal de Isabel II, Madrid for ARCO and subsequently touring. In 2003 the book was reformatted for an Asian market to accompany a revised version of the exhibition which, over the next two years, toured to the National Gallery of Thailand, Singapore Art Museum, 11th Asian Art Biennale, Bangladesh and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum.

The ACP is a not-for-profit organisation, funded jointly by the Australia Council, the Federal Government's arts funding and advisory body, and Arts New South Wales. Since 2004 it has also been in receipt of a major new grant under the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy (a joint Federal, State and Territory initiative) recognising its leading role and international reputation. The ACP earns half of its own revenue from non-government sources.

257 Oxford Street, Paddington NSW 2021

http://www.acp.org.au/

JAN PEACOCK: PLAY/BYPLAY AT QUEEN SPECIFIC IN TORONTO

Jan Peacock: Play/Byplay
November 2 – December 8, 2009

QueenSpecific
next to Dufflet Pastries at 787 Queen St. West, Toronto)

Play/Byplay is two screens, two views, two actions – one observed, the other performed. The observed action is two magpies at play in a tree, passing a twig back and forth to one another. The performed action, the “byplay” carried on beside the main action, is an animation of the artist’s hands recorded on a scanner, enacting this observed dance, calculating distance and orientation to mimic the motion of the birds.

Jan Peacock works primarily in video and installation, and has exhibited widely throughout Canada, the U.S., Europe and Japan. Her work is found in international public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Ludwig Museum in Köln. She has worked under numerous Canada Council grants and her work has received awards at the Atlantic Film & Video Festival, the Chicago International Film & Video Festival, and the Atlanta Film & Video Festival.

Jan Peacock is a recipient of the Bell Canada Award and the Canada Council Medal for her contribution to the field of video. She lives in Halifax, where she teaches at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

CAMERA AND STEPHEN BULGER GALLERY: FREE SATURDAY AFTERNOON SCREENINGS

Lieux Mêmes

3:00PM - OCTOBER 31

CHEMIN DE CENDRES
Dir. Bertrand Carrière (Canada: 2009) 9 min. 40 sec.

PASSCHENDAELE
Dir. Paul Gross (Canada: 2008) 114 min.

3PM - NOVEMBER 7

CHEMIN DE CENDRES
Dir. Bertrand Carrière (Canada: 2009) 9 min. 40 sec.

THE BLUE MAX
Dir. John Guillermin (UK: 1966) 156 min.

3PM - NOVEMBER 14

CHEMIN DE CENDRES
Dir. Bertrand Carrière (Canada: 2009) 9 min. 40 sec.

A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT
Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet (France: 2004) 133 min.

3PM - NOVEMBER 21

CHEMIN DE CENDRES
Dir. Bertrand Carrière (Canada: 2009) 9 min. 40 sec.

GALLIPOLI
Dir. Peter Weir (Australia: 1981) 110 min.

www.stephenbulgergallery.com

ALISON S.M. KOBAYASHI: THE SEVEN INCH FALL AT BLACKWOOD GALLERY

Alison S.M. Kobayashi: The Seven Inch Fall (2009)
BLACKWOOD GALLERY PRESENTS THE BILLBOARD COMMISSION 2009

Until May 1, 2010
South Building Bernie Miller Billboard/Lightbox, UTM campus

Every Fall the Blackwood Gallery commissions an artist to produce a work for the Bernie Miller Lightbox, a billboard sized (268.0 cm x 176.5 cm, 108" x 72") venue installed on the outside of the South Building. The commissioned work stays throughout the school year. In the summer, the Lightbox displays the original work by Bernie Miller, 5-Minute Mirror (2001), which inaugurated the site.

Alison S.M. Kobayashi is an identity contortionist. In her work, Kobayashi incarnates a panoply of personas that are both studiously and playfully rendered. She strides a tense line between portraiture and caricature which presents a palpable commentary on the strictures our identities are continually subjected to. In each performance (usually made specifically for video), she synthesizes both the nuances as well as the stereotypes of each of the characters she embodies. Back and forth from finesse to crudity.

In The Seven Inch Fall, commissioned by the Blackwood Gallery in connection with its Fall 2009 exhibitions exploring notions of gravity, Kobayashi draws from the experience of her own recent graduation from the Art & Art History Program at UTM. To compose the image the artist references specific components of three films: Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality, Disney's Alice in Wonderland, Powell and Pressburger's 1948 classic The Red Shoes. The latter is particularly germane as a latent theme of the film is the fraught relation between apprentice and mentor, novice and veteran, teacher and student. Kobayashi is also playfully addressing the recurring scenario found in romantic comedies where, in her words, “a character turns heads with confidence and sex appeal in her stride, but suddenly, heels wobble, balance is lost, and she comes tumbling down from the film's pedestal of feminine perfection.”

The provocative image stages a fall which derails the reception of her diploma. The diploma is held in suspense by an anonymous man, an abstracted personification of authority. The final act of graduation is put on hold. Will she ever graduate? Does she actually want to? Perhaps the answer to those questions lies in the incongruous elements of the image—the movement of the face versus the rigid pose of the legs. The paradox of a still fall. The perplexing red shoes with their implausible angles further heighten the tone of ambiguity pervading the work. In other words, the image does not provide an answer, rather it poses a critical set of questions. Prominent amongst them is the specter of failure that is brought to the fore within an institution whose maxim espouses success. While accomplishments are undeniably laudable, the artist seems to unabashedly embrace an alternate scenario to the one where a diploma is the end goal. What could be the fallout from such a dissident position? - Christof Migone, Director/Curator

Alison S. M. Kobayashi is a visual artist working in video, performance, installation and drawing. She was born and raised in Mississauga and is currently working in Toronto. Her interest in found narratives resulted in two video works, From Alex To Alex and Dan Carter. Finding a lost letter in the first case, and a discarded answering machine tape in the second, Kobayashi imagines identities for each person mentioned in the narrative and then performs all the roles herself. In 2006 she won the TSV Artistic Vision Award for Best Local Short Film at the Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival and in 2007 was awarded the Mississauga Arts Award for Best Emerging Artist. Her films have been shown in Canada, the U.S. and Hong Kong.

For more information, including the artist statement please visit:

http://www.blackwoodgallery.ca/Blackwood_billboardcommissionTheSevenInchFall.html

ART FOR COMMUTERS

Art for Commuters calls for Proposals or Expressions of Interest for CONTACT 2010

DEADLINE - DECEMBER 1, 2009

Art for Commuters exhibits slideshows on the network of over 270 Onestop LCD screens on TTC subway platforms to an audience of over 1 million daily commuters. This unique project venue will be an official public installation for the CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival to present site-specific work that explores the thematic focus of the 2010 festival Pervasive Influence.

In this era of instant information the widespread dissemination of images is stimulating sweeping, unprecedented change in the ways we communicate. Art for Commuters seeks proposals or expressions of Interest from artists and photographers whose work examines connections between mass media, advertising, art and photography. This includes images that utilize the codes of advertising, the language of consumerism, the stylization of marketing campaigns or the force of propaganda to reflect the emotional and political impact of photographic images and their effect on society and culture.

Project details: Images will be broadcast on subway platforms from May 1-31, 2010. Slideshows 30 or 60 seconds in durations will screen once every 10 minutes all day. The content of the slideshows can change either once or twice a day for up to 1 week. You can propose the number of related, or sequential, slideshows that your project requires. These would then play out over a number of days (up to one week), depending on the project’s needs.

The artist/photographer’s name and the title of their work will be displayed beside the slideshow whenever it is aired. All slideshows will also be presented on the website, and will be made available online from the day they screen on the TTC. The project will be prominently featured as a Public Installation within the festival.

Submissions must include: 5-10 sample images; image information sheet; bio or CV including contact information; artist statement that includes either a specific project proposal or a more general expression of interest that explains how your work addresses the theme Pervasive Influence.

Email your submission by December 1, 2009 to Sharon Switzer: contact@art4commuters.com

Produced by Art for Commuters, Onestop Media Group in partnership with the CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival. For more information on Contacting Toronto and details on CONTACT 2010 please visit our websites:

www.contactingtoronto.ca
www.contactphoto.com

BETRAND CARRIERE: LIEUX MEMES AT STEPHEN BULGER GALLERY

Bertrand Carrière: Lieux Mêmes
October 31 - November 21, 2009

The gallery is pleased to announce its fifth exhibition of work by Bertrand Carrière. In “Lieux Mêmes”, Carrière retraces the footsteps of an unknown World War I photographer introduced to him through a photo album he discovered by chance.

In 2005, Bertrand Carrière (b. Ottawa, Canada, 1957) and historian Guth Desprez started to investigate the deeper history surrounding the found photo album. They travelled to Europe, with the photo album as their guide, in order to retrace the path of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. By photographing the locations in the soldier’s images, Carrière explores the themes of memory and history through the changing landscape. They visited the long list of places marked by the horrendous battles of The Great War: the Somme in Picardy, Artois in the North Pas-de-Calais and up to the vast fields of Flanders in Belgium. Carrière’s photographs document the sites which appear in the soldier’s album along with others on the Western Front, offering a contemporary view approximately 90 years after the infamous events, which continue to stigmatize these locations to this very day. The incredible light of the regions of northern France and the flatness of the land helps Carrière build a sens e of mystery. The photographs initiate dialogue about how the landscape was affected and the ways in which it has recovered. It is not only what is there or the evidence that remains, but also what is not there and the evidence of what no longer exists.

Carrière actively exhibits and publishes his work across Canada and in Europe. He has published four photographic books, which include Témoin de l’ombre (1995); Voyage à domicile (1997); Signes de jour (2002) and Dieppe, Landscapes and installations (2006) with Les 400 Coups. He also teaches photography at André-Laurendeau College in Montréal. Carrière’s work can be found in many prominent collections, including the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, Paris; Cinémathèque Québécoise, Montréal; Canadian Centre of Architecture, Montréal; Canadian War Museum, Ottawa; Collection du Prêt d’œuvres d’art, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Québec; Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa; Encontros da Imagem, Braga, Portugal; Pôle Image de Haute-Normandie, Rouen, France; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; Canadian Council Art Bank, Ottawa; amongst many others.

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