At the Jonathan Syme opening at Monte's last week, Francesca, Khan and I drifted into the rear production area where sometimes work is up (a nice Jeremy Hof painting, another Syme). I noticed Khan staring at the table, so I wandered over and asked "What do you see, Khan?" and he said that the way the table and its storage underneath is set up, it looks like it's paintings that go on the turntable, not records.
I thought I'd go down to Catriona's, to see Ron's show. I knew if I went I should see the show at Wil Abale's around the corner, and whatever else is in the area. Monte has an opening. Artspeak still has its summer show up, but Or opened its fall show the night before, so that's four shows. Almost too much.
Ron's show is largely black paintings (text "in" flat finish, "framed" by gloss). The texts are from the American reactionary "right" and their source pictures can be taken away in a limited edition newsprint magazine, or witnessed as a ceiling-high grid on the gallery wall. The grid pictures are easy to photograph, but you have to tilt your phone just right to capture the paintings in full.
Francesca and Khan were there, so we left as a mob for Wil's, what turned out to be the last day of Lise Lemieux's paintings. Wil came out to give us a quick and thoughtful presentation of Lise's work.
From there, we walked west on Hastings, stopping at 881 for a show of Hank Bull's painted boxes, as photographed with very long exposures by Robert Keziere, who at 86 is still taking pictures. But these are Hank's artworks, not Robert's, and as such Hank is responsible for the question: What's to be gained from presenting his painted sculptures as photographic models, apart from entertaining the question?
Jonathan Syme's's paintings at Monte Clark's were a joy. Such daring use of colour, with many kinds of painting going on in each of them.
A varied day of painting, completed by the KWÍKWI exhibition at Or, where the paintings are portraits and the frames depart from their edges to suggest masks, but also work in concert with what those faces are and are not saying. This is Jenn Jackson's first show as director-curator of Or and she has done her part to make this exhibition a memorable one.
On Thursday I visited the Belkin's The Willful Plot exhibition. Nice. The art, the artists, its "relevance" (as the kids say), its thematic, its installation ... Highlights? There are many. Five, in fact. Lots of work from the collection, so you know it didn't break the bank.
On Friday I stopped by Catriona Jeffries Gallery for Rebecca Brewer's new paintings (14) and fabric drapery (1). Brewer's marks give/leave the impression that they touched down all at once, covering all corners, whimsically, diffidently. Refractory Period (2023, below) is a History painting -- a history of formalism discovered a year from now on a laptop. It is the story of the fold and how it succumbed to the orifice.
It's been a few days now since the passing of Michael Morris. Curious to see if the art press has posted anything, I went looking and, near the bottom of the bowl, found mention of the Palomar exhibition Michael did at the now-defunct Satellite Gallery.
Palomar was a show organized by Presentation House Gallery and mounted in conjunction with the Belkin Art Gallery's Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry exhibition. Pictured above is one of the Palomar sculptures, as photographed by Stella Hsu. Amidst it, yours truly.
I am fortunate to have met most of the original Western Front founders. I was close to Kate Craig (1947-2002) in the years before her passing, and some of her plants continue to thrive in my garden. This morning I received news that Michael Morris passed away. He was 80.
This writing will not be an attempt at a remembrance or an obituary but an announcement of a day to be spent with Michael, someone I was happy to know, learn from and work with; someone who devoted his life to art, its concerns and relations.
The picture up top is a relatively small ink and gouache work I found on the Heffel site. The work is dated 1965 (likely done while Michael was at the Slade, UK) and is untitled.
Of the three sections, it is the middle passage that is closer to a style Michael would become known for, particularly his The Problem of Nothing (1966), an acrylic on canvas painting that Ray Johnson saw reproduced (in black-and-white) in Artforum. Johnson collaged the reproduction and sent it to Michael (c/o the VAG?) under the auspices of the New York Correspondence School. Michael replied, and the rest is art history.
The Equinox Gallery is on my trapline and sometimes while walking I devise a reason to pop in to see a show everyone knows I'm seeing for the fourth time. Fortunately the staff are well-trained, and for my neediness and the guilt that comes with it, punishment comes once indulged.
"What's up after Devon's show?" I ask, and Sophie tells me it's Khan Lee. "Great!" I follow her around the corner where Khan has installed an outsized wall bracket that turns the second floor of the gallery into a shelf, the gallery into a cupboard, and us -- into silverfish?
"There," Sophie points, and I see that instead of large screws fastening the bracket to the wall (and ceiling?) it is an expressive mess of "normal-sized" screws that returns us to the scale we've grown accustomed to.
Like most of the world, I learned yesterday of the passing of the artist Rodney Graham after a relatively brief illness. Relatively brief compared to the rest of his life, thankfully, though 73 is too young for someone as youthful and curious as Rodney.
I first met Rodney in the late-1980s, when I busked with Hard Rock Miners on Robson Street and he worked around the corner at the Alberni Street liquor store. The designer Dean Allen lived above a shop on Robson, and it was at one of Dean's parties that I was formally introduced to Rodney and Shannon Oksanen. I arrived after an evening of busking, and Rodney, who often walked past us lost in thought, asked me about the Miner's repertoire -- questions that implied he was listening and indeed knew more about jug band music than we did. So my first introduction to Rodney was as a teacher of sorts.
As my writing life came to replace my musical life, I began to spend more time looking at visual art and, when not writing poetry and fiction, accepted invitations to write catalogue essays and exhibition reviews. It was through artists like Stan Douglas, Mina Totino, Judy Radul and Ken Lum that I came to know Rodney and the local art scene that linked them, a supportive scene that valued the ways in which an artwork is conceived and realized more than the commercial success by which "success" is often measured. At that time Rodney was a critical success -- an artist's artist whose work was as thoughtful as it was fun. It wasn't until the late-1990s that he achieved success at both levels.
During the oughts and early-teens I would see Rodney almost every Wednesday night at a South Granville salon hosted by artists Neil Wedman and David Wisdom at a now-defunct New Orleans themed bistro called Ouisi. Even if you weren't interested in obscure psychedelic bands, early Popeye lore or anything made by Roger Corman's American International Pictures, these sessions were magical, and the breadth of Rodney's wit and insight was often on display (to say nothing of his generosity, for on many occasions he quietly picked up the tab). Along with artists and writers, the salon was equally populated by those from other walks, many of whom came and went. One semi-regular was the hypnotherapist Sarah Lightbody, whose VHS copy of Seasons in the Sun (1987) was passed on to me by Rodney, with the promise that I return it to Sarah after I'm done with it. So Sarah, if you're reading this ...
I have many fond memories of Rodney, both the person and his remarkable body of work (from the early films, sculptures and writings to the later Walter Mitty works and abstract paintings), but I'll sign off with a memory that, in a way, bookends my busking days on Robson, when I'd see Rodney walk past us. It was at a downtown restaurant, during the restaurant explosion of the early-2000s. Judy and I were being led to our table by the maitre'd, and as we turned a corner, there was Rodney reading a paperback and poking at something in a bowl. We waved but he didn't see us, and we turned another corner and let it be. An hour later, after our server cleared our dinner plates, another server arrived with two magnificent tiramisus. "Nice! But we didn't order dessert." At which point the maitre'd swooped in and whispered, "Compliments of Mr. Graham."
photo: Alex Waterhouse-Hayward
