Column

Writer

Strata

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Criticism

Myth

Women

In this article, Susannah Worth traces the origin of the term “ficto-criticism.” Including text from a series of email exchanges with Jeanne Randolph, the article discusses how Randolph’s work challenges the authority of art criticism and destabilizes dominant ways of thinking about and categorizing visual art.

Digging for Ficto-Criticism

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Technology

Science

Mapping

In this Inventory compiled by artist Rebecca Travis, works by Kelly Richardson and Andrea Zittel are discussed, as well as NASA’s SoundCloud account, UrtheCast and the _Border Cultures_ program at the Art Gallery of Windsor.

Inventory: Strata

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Performance

Painting

In this Artefact column, Alex Bowron discusses an artwork by Alexandra Beriault and Shannon Lea Doyle presented at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The two artists perform the image of a woman on a diving board that recurs in the work of the late Canadian painter Alex Colville. Bowron describes this re-enactment as a way of returning agency to the subject of Colville’s original paintings.

Women on Diving Board

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Smith Foundation

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Editorial

Shortly before this issue went to press, _C Magazine_ welcomed winter by holding what was, to my knowledge, Toronto’s only clothing-optional public art event in 2014\. On the same day as the first snowfall of the year, artists and experienced sauna practitioners led programmed sessions as part of the _Sauna Symposium_, held in a traditional Finnish log sauna at the University of Toronto’s Hart House Farm. Throughout the day, participants alternately steamed on the wooden benches, listened to talks and participated in performances inside the sauna, and then cooled off by plunging into the nearby pond, where stone had been quarried to build the city of Toronto a century before. Led by artist-naturalists, they also walked through the surrounding forest and fields, studying and tasting the wild edible plants that that could still be found in the late fall, and drank tea made from burdock and mint harvested there the week before.

The idea for the symposium arose, in part, as a model for exploring how artists and others with specialized practices or local knowledge might activate particular sites, such as this rural landscape just outside of Toronto. It also asked how might they enhance our sensitivity to our surroundings and what new experiences might we create together? Moreover, the symposium was a way to invite others to participate in artist-run culture – the sprawling context of experimentation, exploration and sociality – which is one of the most interesting and dynamic dimensions of contemporary art.

For one of the sessions, about 25 of us gathered in the sauna at dusk for _Steam Spell_, a performance based on a sauna ritual of the Radical Faeries, led by Jamie Ross, an artist and witch from Montreal. In this performance, which was in part about acknowledging queer ancestors – invoking the bathhouse raids of the 1980’s and other queer histories – there was a sense of having been invited to participate in an intimate ritual, inherited and enacted by those who had come to the event. The stark contrast between the heat and conviviality of the sauna and the wintry darkness of the surrounding forest outside made the day’s activities seem that much more intimate and elemental. The performance also highlighted the embedded queerness of artist-run culture itself, its impulse to continually discover and celebrate the strange and the magical and its embrace of pleasure and intellectual curiosity as an integral part of its politics and community.

After _Steam Spell_, I walked back to the farmhouse through the forest, ascending the Niagara escarpment – the edge of an inland sea that submerged much of Southern Ontario more than 400 million years ago. In the dark, from the hillside above the sauna, I could see through the leafless trees, across the blackness of the forest to the lights of the city that was built upon this ancient seabed. For this particular issue of _C_, the geological strata that make up the escarpment provides an apt metaphor for this issue’s theme, insofar as an awareness of the layering and repetition of physical forms can heighten or shift one’s sense of how they are located in both space and time, opening up critical new vantage points onto familiar spaces.

Throughout this issue, contributors reveal and activate new dimensions of the spaces, images and objects around us, addressing physical as well as social stratification. In the artist project for this issue, Forms _FTP_, British artist Dan Holdsworth depicts the landscape of Washington State’s Mount St. Helens with a series of photographic relief inversions that alter the viewer’s ability to accurately interpret the volcano’s ever-changing topography, literally making it impossible to tell what is up from what is down. In our cover story, Yaniya Lee and Bill Burns discuss how Burns’ recent artworks draw attention to the often paradoxical hierarchies of the art world, and consider how it reflects the larger conditions and workings of late-industrial capitalism. Also related to the issue’s theme, other contributors invoke the sedimentation of cultural knowledge and material objects as a way of deepening and transforming our sense of the present. In Kimberly Phillips’ essay about _Deadhead_, Cedric, Nathan and Jim Bomford’s elaborate floating sculptural installation that references the myriad countercultural histories of Canada’s West Coast, the past literally comes floating back to the waterways around Vancouver through this artwork. And, in her essay on Del Hillier’s _Trading Post_, where an abandoned log cabin has been restored for use as a place to exchange objects that are no longer needed, Peta Rake describes a model of hospitable exchange between past and present, where host and guest are never in the same place at the same time. In describing an artwork presented at the Art Gallery of Ontario for our Artefact column, Alex Bowron discusses the repetition and layering of images that results when two artists perform the image of a woman on a diving board that recurs in the work of the late Canadian painter Alex Colville. Bowron describes this re-enactment as a way of returning agency to the subject of Colville’s original paintings. And, in her article on Mi’kmaw artist Ursula Johnson, Jane Affleck considers how Johnson’s work confronts prejudice and stereotypes as a way of “righting historical wrongs.”

As a way of framing the feature essays and projects in this issue, I like to think that the artists and writers are conjuring, repeating and reframing already existent ideas and forms. Such an approach eschews the continual production of newness, and avoids seeking out new geographical or intellectual frontiers in favour of a process of critical reactivation and ritual reinvention. With the ongoing emergence of new generations of artists and new audiences, important ideas need to be repeated, not only as a way of understanding the past, but also as a means of enriching and transforming the present.

Amish Morrell is Assistant Professor at OCAD University, where he teaches Criticism & Curatorial Practice, and Visual and Critical Studies.

Editor

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History

Social

Environment

In this editorial Amish Morrell provides a brief description of the feature articles in Issue 124, centering these articles on a consideration of stratification, layering and repetition. He also discusses the Sauna Symposium held at the University of Toronto’s Hart House Farm in 2014 and its relevance to the issue’s theme of strata.

Editorial: Strata

Feature

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Location

Participation

In this essay, Peta Rake discusses Del Hillier’s participatory project _The Trading Post_, where an abandoned log cabin has been restored for use as a place to exchange objects that are no longer needed. Using the framework of a Duchampian pun, Rake describes a model of hospitable exchange between past and present, where host and guest are never in the same place at the same time.

Trading Hosts: Del Hillier's The Trading Post

Kimberly Phillips is a Vancouver-based writer and curator. She holds a PhD in art history from the University of British Columbia and regularly teaches courses on contemporary visual art and curatorial practices at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She is Director/Curator of _Access Gallery_, an artist-run centre committed to supporting the work of emergent artists and experimental practices.

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Canadian

Site-specific

This essay by Kimberly Phillips discusses _Deadhead_, Cedric, Nathan and Jim Bomford’s elaborate floating sculptural installation that references the myriad countercultural histories of Canada’s West Coast. Phillips describes how the past literally comes floating back to the waterways around Vancouver through this artwork.

On Bathtub Rings and Other Irritants: Cedric, Nathan and Jim Bomford’s Deadhead

Jane Affleck is a PhD candidate in the Cultural Studies program at Trent University, a part-time instructor at NSCAD University and a freelance writer.

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Identity

Indigenous

In this article on Mi’kmaw artist Ursula Johnson, Jane Affleck considers how Johnson’s performance and sculptural installation work confronts prejudice and stereotypes as a way of “righting historical wrongs.” Past performances and a recent solo exhibition in Halifax are discussed in detail, describing Johnson’s investigations into Aboriginal identity and spectator-participant engagement.

Wrongs Can Make It Right: The Performance and Sculptural Installation Work of Ursula Johnson

Interview

Yaniya Lee is an arts writer based in Toronto.

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Money

Economy

In this interview, Yaniya Lee and Bill Burns discuss how Burns’ recent artworks draw attention to the often paradoxical hierarchies of the art world, and consider how it reflects the larger conditions and workings of late-industrial capitalism.

Directions to the Land of Milk and Honey: An Interview with Bill Burns

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Designer

Publisher

Artist Project

Artist

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Photography

Landscape

In this Artist Project, Dan Holdsworth depicts the landscape of Washington State’s Mount St. Helens with a series of photographic relief inversions that alter the viewer’s ability to accurately interpret the volcano’s ever-changing topography. A text by Rebecca Travis accompanies the project.

Forms FTP 

A text by Rebecca Travis accompanies the Artist Project by Dan Holdsworth, which depicts the landscape of Washington State’s Mount St. Helens with a series of photographic relief inversions that alter the viewer’s ability to accurately interpret the volcano’s ever-changing topography. 

Forms FTP by Dan Holdsworth: Text

Review

**Sydney Hart** is a settler artist, cultural critic and Cultural Studies PhD student at Queen’s University, ON.

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Health

Psychology

This article presents a review of the exhibition _Where Does it Hurt?_, curated by Jonah Gray and held at Artspeak in Vancouver from June 7 – July 26, 2014\. Artists discussed include David MacWilliam, Rachelle Sawatsky, Cathy Busby, and Krista Belle Stewart.

Where Does it Hurt?

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Drawing

Installation

This article presents a review of Adrian Norvid’s exhibition _Mr. Fizz’s Knocking Shop_, held at ODD Gallery in Dawson City from March 13 – April 12, 2014.

Adrian Norvid: Mr. Fizz’s Knocking Shop

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This article presents a review of the exhibition _Sympathetic Magic_, curated by Troy Gronsdahl and held at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon from June 27 – September 14, 2014\. Participating artists include Raymond Boisjoly, Adad Hannah, Ken Lum and Kevin Schmidt.

Sympathetic Magic

Jacob Korczynski is an independent curator.

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Gender

Body

This article presents a review of the exhibition _Incident Light: Gendered Artifacts and Traces Illuminated in the Archives_, curated by Leila Pourtavaf and held at the Blackwood Gallery in Mississauga, Ontario from May 25 – July 27, 2014. The article discusses the work of Tejal Shah and The Otolith Group, as well as commissioned projects by Tara Najd Ahmadi and Hannah Darabiand and Ala Dehghan.

Incident Light: Gendered Artifacts and Traces Illuminated in the Archives

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Collaboration

This article presents a review of the exhibition _Getting Rid of Ourselves_, curated by Helena Reckitt and held at Onsite \[at\] OCAD U in Toronto from July 16 – October 11, 2014\. Artists discussed include Jesse Darling, Heath Bunting, Janez Janša, Janez Janša and Janez Janša, Kajsa Dahlberg, KERNEL, Claire Fontaine, and Adrian Blackwell.

Getting Rid of Ourselves

L. Sasha Gora is a cultural historian and writer with a focus on food and contemporary art. Based in Munich, she is a lecturer at Ludwig Maximilian University and is currently working on her first book, _Culinary Claims: A History of Indigenous Restaurants in Canada_.

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This article presents a review of the exhibition _Mise en scène_, featuring the work of Stan Douglas. The exhibition was held at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany from June 20 – October 12, 2014.

Stan Douglas: Mise en scène

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Exhibitions

This article presents a review of the exhibition _beyond earth art: contemporary artists and the environment_, curated by Andrea Inselmann and held at the Johnson Museum of Art in Ithaca, New York from January 25 – June 8, 2014\. Artists discussed include Brandon Ballengée, Matthew Brandt, Mark Dion, Patricia Johanson, Maya Lin, Dennis Oppenheim, and Lucy and Jorge Orta.

beyond earth art: contemporary artists and the environment

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Feminism

This article presents a comparative review of the exhibitions Amy Sillman: _one lump or two_ and Anne Collier held at the Hessel Museum of Art and Center for Curatorial Studies Bard Galleries in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, from June 28 – September 21, 2014.

Amy Sillman: one lump or two and Anne Collier

Veronica Simmonds is a writer, radio producer and media artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Rural artist residencies are often marked by their isolation. Escaping the speed and mundanity of life, artists are able to slow down and reconnect with themselves, their practice and the natural world. The Pictou Island Portage residency defined itself by similar ideas of productive isolation and pastoral enlightenment. Taking place on a secluded island, it was observed by few people; however, its physicality and aesthetic beauty made it a performance of sorts, raising questions about audience and its role in situations of process.

Pictou Island sits in the Northumberland Strait, four nautical miles off the north shore of Nova Scotia. The island’s small community relies on a little passenger ferry for transportation and supplies; larger shipments arrive by plane. There is only one road, which also doubles as a landing strip for planes. There is no commerce on the island, just a community centre, a one-room school, and for one week only, an “ambulatory artist residency” that walked the road.

Pictou Island Portage is the fourth manifestation of Eryn Foster’s New Canadian Pilgrimages – where Foster and her collaborators leave the studio and enter the situation of walking. In Foster’s pilgrimages, process is paramount. Throughout the Portage, six artists formed a procession that walked the length of Pictou Island each day, returning to their starting point to do the same route again the following day.

Unlike Foster’s previous Pilgrimages, which involved linear long-distance walks, Pictou Island demanded a different approach. The island is less than 10 km in length, so she decided to work with the idea of a portage. Each artist was invited to consider what they would carry (portage being rooted in the French word _apporter_, which means “to carry”). For some, this involved producing the work before stepping foot on the island.

Michael Waterman, for example, built a solar–powered Mobile Pirate Radio MPR station at his home in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Aimée Henny Brown built a wearable lighthouse library in Vancouver and Barbara Lounder crafted a yoke that she would carry during the portage, long before her arrival. For these artists, the activity of walking completed the project. It needed to be walked out, performed.

The other three artists created their projects on site. Sheilah Wilson wore photo–paper on the bottom of her shoes, so that each step impacted the resulting image; she also dragged a large stick with a piece of chalk in it, marking her path as she walked. Whenever she paused, she sprinkled a circle of chalk around her resting place as an ephemeral memorial to her walk. Ursula Johnson offered chopper’s bread (a sort of bannock) and Cape Breton Tea (an Orange Pekoe) to the walkers arriving at the beach after walking the length of the island. This gesture engaged with the Mi’kmaw tradition of Ke Pite’m (translated as “please give them tea”). Johnson’s walk was more of a practical one. She walked to find and harvest sweetgrass, which took her off the linear path that others were walking. And Douglas Smarch, Jr. carried no accoutrements on his walks, simply making trails by offering his help to islanders to re–walk old trails on their land.

Each of these artists was working through his or her own processes, alone and together at the same time. They were walking their own paths as they worked through this situation of movement. Foster explained that the end goal of the project was not the walk itself but what these artists would do with the thoughts and experiences of this portage once they left the island.

The project was not meant to be a performance, but a process, yet the movement involved and the actions undertaken were so aesthetically beautiful they seemed to demand an audience. Imagine these artists walking, carrying their pieces down this long, dusty road through a lush coastal landscape.

Some local islanders took notice and made requests to the mobile radio station but there was little official audience except the artists themselves and we few observers. When I asked Foster about the performative aspect of the project and its lack of an audience, she explained that the project was primarily a residency. She had invited artists to come and work together; if there was an audience, it was unintentional.

Foster mused that, if anything, the island itself could be considered the audience. The ground was receiving the chalk and registering the artists’ footsteps, and the island’s residents were hearing the radio. This notion resonates particularly strongly when one considers Douglas Smarch Jr’s paths. As he walked the woods alone, the only witness was the landscape around him. This reworking of what constitutes an audience is appealing: some experiences do not need to be witnessed in conventional ways, or by other human subjects to be complete. Perhaps these witnesses can be places or even objects.

The power of this project lay in its isolation and the ways it eluded documentation. While there were efforts to make the residency accessible to those who couldn’t attend by employing a resident photographer (Katherine Knight) and a resident illustrator (Sarah Burwash) in addition to Foster regularly sharing photos on Facebook, the residency was defined by its very inaccessibility, making the attempt to share the experience in these ways somehow unfitting. Process–based activities, such as those undertaken during a residency, cannot be adequately captured in a photograph or engaged by someone scrolling their Facebook feed, no matter how visually stimulating some of the images might be.

But process does not always need to be documented. As beautiful as they might be, photographs and illustrations don’t capture the essence of this project: it would have been enough if the island alone was its only witness.

Although Foster said the landscape might be thought of as a kind of audience, the movement of the walkers would be best viewed from above. Think of the trails deepening with repetition, the walkers bearing their strange weights and Patsy Cline radiating from the radio station up and out into the sky. Imagine it and let that be enough.

_The artists who participated in Pictou Island Portage were Aimée Henny Brown, Ursula Johnson, Barbara Lounder, Douglas Raymond Smarch, Jr., Michael Waterman and Sheilah Wilson. Veronica Simmonds is a writer, radio producer and media artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia._

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Walking

Residencies

This article discusses the Pictou Island Portage Residency in Nova Scotia, the fourth iteration of Eryn Foster’s walking-based project, New Canadian Pilgrimages. Participating artists include Aimée Henny Brown, Ursula Johnson, Barbara Lounder, Douglas Raymond Smarch, Jr., Michael Waterman and Sheilah Wilson.

Pictou Island Portage: An Artist Residency

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Artists Books

Film

This article presents a review of the exhibition _Robert Frank: Books, Films, 1947–2014_, held at the Anna Leonowens Gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia from September 5–12, 2014.

Robert Frank: Books, Films, 1947–2014

Mark Clintberg is an artist who works in art history and curates exhibitions. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at Concordia University, Montreal. His doctoral research project compared the contemporary phenomenon of artists’ restaurants with the historical genre of still life. He completed a portion of this project while at the University of Oxford (St Peter’s College) under the host supervision of Hanneke Grootenboer. In 2013, he was shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award. His 2015 project at Centre Space (Toronto) investigates a key pictorial element connected to still life: the vitrine.

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Colonialism

Collections

Museums

This exhibition review considers curator Brian Dillon’s exploration of _wunderkammer_, or cabinets of curiosities. The author argues that while Dillon successfully replicates the cabinets’ display strategies, there is little critical attention given to the more problematic aspects of their history. Artists discussed include Rudolf and Leopold Blaschka, Nina Katchadourian, Jeremy Millar, and Toril Johannessen. 

Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing

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International

Multi-disciplinary

This article presents a review of _ART Fahrenheit 451: Sailing into the sea of oblivion_, the fifth edition of the Yokohama Triennale in Japan. The role of Artistic Director Yasumasa Morimura is discussed, as well as an installation by Temporary Foundation and _Moe Nai Ko To Ba_, a book bound exclusively for the exhibition.

Yokohama Triennale 2014

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This article presents a review of the book _I Could See Everything_ by Margaux Williamson (Coach House Press, 2014).

I Could See Everything by Margaux Williamson

Saelan Twerdy is a writer, editor, and cultural worker based in  
Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. He is the Managing Editor of RACAR, the  
official journal of the Universities Art Association of Canada, and currently works as a Student Librarian at Concordia University Webster Library.

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Management

Work

Relational art

This article presents a book review of Lane Relyea’s _Your Everyday Art World_ (MIT Press, 2013). The author discusses Relyea’s engaged exploration of the convergence between contemporary art practices and business discourses.

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