Alive & Well, our 350 ft long message painted on the city-owned parking lot for the 2011 AGW Biennial and recently captured by Google Maps, is in the process of being torn up to make way for an Aquatic Centre.
We’ll be actively looking for a new parking lot, field, or rooftop to do another large-scale work. If anyone has one to offer, let us know.
This one goes out to Josh.
Heartbreaking, a kinetic sculpture by Lois Andison, is a device that gradually works its way through every possible word that can be spelled with the letters H,E,A,R,T,B,R,E,A,K,I,N,G (in that order). Terrence Dick over at Akimbo called it, “the closest thing I’ve seen that’s come to a perfect marriage of word and art.”
Lois Andison was born in Smiths Falls, Ontario. She currently lives and works in Toronto, Ontario. Her kinetic sculptures/installations investigate the intersection of technology, nature and the body. Using movement to initiate an exchange with the viewer, Andison’s work poetically explores social and technological concerns through the construction of the hybrid art object.
She has a number of other interesting data-driven types of works available to view on Olga Korper Gallery.
Hi, 5 (5 Questions) is a web-only interview series which presents five questions to artists, activists, and creative thinkers alike. The project acts as an educational device which allows us to gain insight into the narratives that define successful individuals. We are interested in the motivations behind ambitious ideas and how these individuals chart personal change in relation to their surroundings.
David Spriggs explores the representation and strategies of power, the symbolic meanings of colour, and the thresholds of form and perception. His installation based work lies in a space between the 2 and 3 dimensions. In many installations he uses a technique he developed in 1999 using multiple painted layered images in space to create unique ephemeral like forms. The subjects depicted in his work relate to the breakdown and recreation of form and volume – as seen through his interest in cyclones, explosions, and forces.
David Spriggs is currently based in Montreal. He was born in 1978 in Manchester, England, and immigrated to Canada in 1992. He received his Master of Fine Arts from Concordia University, Montreal, and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University in Vancouver.
February 19/2012
If you had to describe your current self to a 16-year-old you, what would you say?
I am a contemporary artist working primarily on installation based work.
Could you describe an evolution in your work or way of thinking?
I have been through many different styles in my life as an artist. I tried everything to find out what works and what doesn’t. My thinking has lead from concept to another. 12 years ago I started thinking about transparency, then about 8 years ago concepts around the immaterial and perception, and more recently on concepts of power and the symbolic notions of colour.
Are there any people who have been instrumental in the development of your way of thinking and viewing the world?
The theories of the Futurists and Cubists have been interesting to me. I have been perhaps most inspired by writers such as Baudrillard, Virilio, and Foucault.
How do your political beliefs inform or fuel your work as an artist?
I would say that it is not so much political beliefs as much as being informed about the world, the general news, and advancements in science and theory.
What do you feel a city should be or do for its inhabitants?
A city is a changing organism that keeps it’s community alive. I would like to think culturally that a city provides its citizens a network in which the arts can flourish.
This is part of an ongoing set of one-question emails sent to people we know, or would like to get to know, about things that interest us and inform our collective practice. They’ll be featured on the site weekly, usually on Fridays. These questions are more about unfolding ideas than about the people we’re asking, but we do ask those kinds of questions too.
We’re pleased to continue this project with a question for SRSI and Homework alumnus and one half of the Department of Unusual Certainties, a Toronto-based research and design collective, Simon Rabyniuk.
There is no division between practice and life. My first reading of this question situates it as something about the experience of the individual, and because of the context I’m receiving it in, something about the experience of the individual artist. Although I think it becomes a more interesting question dealt with in broader terms.
What is practice? For an individual a practice is a personal commitment to an action (i.e. the practice of active listening). I would propose that a fundamental quality of a practice is a conscious intent expressed through the process of trial, reflection, and learning; while routine may be part of one’s practice, intent keeps it from becoming route behaviour. For an artist I would propose that commitment be understood as a lifestyle of exploration in the production of material or embodied relationships. I would also propose that there is a distinction between the singular and plural use of the term. An individual can have many personal practices, while they have a professional practice.
What is real life? Life is form changing through time. Enacted on a sensing being, this change in form becomes a sequence of experiences. Organized as memories these sequences form a narrative and a sense of identity. This definition fails to articulate the social character of a human’ life. Somehow ‘real life’ is different then that. Real life is nested in the colloquial, the work/leisure/boredom cycle, desire, and responsibilities. A day in one’s real life is bisected into what you sell, and what you keep for yourself.
Real life somehow refers to artists having jobs beyond their practice as an artist. The question “Where does practice end and real life begin?” perhaps asks if when an artist’s time is not going towards making things do their practice and real life become separate things within them? Again, I would propose they do not. There are many prominent examples of artists who use their art practice to reflect on and respond to the experience of their present situation. Two examples that may represent a spectrum of approaches are Michelle Allard and Adrian Piper. Allard explores the formal constructive properties of the office supplies she uses in her day job. Piper explores the reaction raced/classed bodies produce in social spaces. One’s experience, including their real life, becomes a source to parse through in ones practice as an artist.
Simon Rabyniuk is a Toronto-based visual artist and member of Department of Unusual Certainties. His work often draws upon performance, video, drawing, and sculpture to explore cities and their systems.
He has presented work across Canada including as part of Hammering Away, Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (Hamilton), Meet us on the Commons, Art Gallery of Mississauga, 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art (Toronto), the Harbourfront Centre’s Hatch Emerging Performance Series, at Ryerson University’s Modernity Unbound Symposium, and as part of Broken City Labs’ Storefront Residency for Social Innovation(Windsor). In 2011 he recieved support from the Ontario Arts Council through their Emerging Artist Grant .
Cara Spooner has been involved in performance related projects as a dancer, choreographer, designer and curator. She has presented work at Toronto’s Nuit Blanche, XPACE Cultural Centre, The Harbourfront Centre’s HATCH Emerging Performance Project, Pleasure Dome, The Mississauga Art Gallery, The Festival of New Dance, Badass Dance Fun and Stromereien 11. caraspooner.com
Just little reminder if you’re in the Hamilton area…
Développé de la recherche amassée des archives et de questionnaires présentés aux habitants de Hamilton, l’atelier Les Fables d’une Chronologie engagera ces participants à créer collectivement une histoire vaste du passé, présent et future en pensant aux statuts économique, industriel, social, culturel et politique de cette ville. Cette histoire fera partie de la publication pour Deux Contes d’une Ville, qui sera disponible à la fin de l’exposition.
L’atelier prendra place le Vendredi 9 mars 2012, à 3:30pm, dans la cuisine communautaire, au Marché Fermier d’Hamilton (35 boul. York, Hamilton). L’ouverture officielle de l’exposition aura lieu plus tard le même soir de 6:30 à 8:00pm à Hamilton Artists Inc. (155 rue James N. Hamilton).
Envoyez votre réservation à irene@hamiltonartistsinc.on.ca pour cet atelier.
Drawing from a range of archival research and post-it note surveys with residents of Hamilton, The Tales of a Timeline workshop will ask participants to collectively write a sprawling story of Hamilton’s past, present, and future through economic, industrial, social, cultural, and political lenses. This story will then be featured in the forthcoming publication as part of the Two Tales of a City project.
Join us for the workshop starting at 3:30pm at the Community Kitchen of the Hamilton Farmer’s Market (35 York Boulevard, Hamilton) on Friday, March 9th, 2012. RSVP to irene@hamiltonartistsinc.on.ca for the workshop.
Join us for the official opening of Two Tales of a City, later on that evening, from 6:30-8pm at Hamilton Artists Inc. (155 James St. N., Hamilton).
The next instalment of Daragh Sankey’s documentary on SRSI, In Store: From Scratch.
Via angryrobot.ca:
We’re going to start things off with this film that gives a little background. We follow Broken City Lab as they take possession of the storefronts, get them ready for the residencies, and discuss the location and the ideas behind the project. Plus, demon toilet and exploding painting!
So here we go. Next week: disco balls. The week after that: Detroit
Keep your eyes here: http://angryrobot.ca/instore/
It’s been a long time coming, but I’m getting a lot closer to completing a mobile app. I’ve abandoned objective-c and native app development in favour of what I actually know how to do — namely php, html, css, and a bit of javascript.
Access to phone hardware to make this app do what it needs to do will be accomplished through phonegap.
I’m aiming to try to wrap up a working version of this in the next 10 days or so, baring any major issues I could very likely run into. I’m anxious to share this!!!
As we wrap up production on our upcoming installation, Two Tales of a City, at Hamilton Artists Inc., our Friday night meeting was shifted to Lebel where we set out to coat the bunting with some scotch guard and just started laying everything out.
Rosina braved the quick spray
The rest of the crew helped moved things around — the bunting is all connected and somewhere around 100 feet long.
Touch ups on the reverse side of the bunting.
Some details of some of the transfers. Michelle was at Jodi’s helping to do some of the few remaining cut-outs for the letters that we’ll be placing over the fabric square.s
Josh being detail-oriented.
The bunting are 18″ long.
Some of the pile.
More details. We’ll be shooting photographs of these today before boxing them up.
And the crew trying to get some perspective on the work.
We also spent some time pulling together some installation instructions and doing a preliminary collection of possible texts that will rotate throughout the run of the installation on the fabric banner. We’re really excited to see this go up in Hamilton next week. If you’re in town, come by our workshop on March 9th!
