Art Adventures in Toronto Land With Fitzgerald
Toronto the magical land of smog–and art, hidden and not so hidden.
Our adventure began at The Power Plant with Beauty Plus Pity by Emily vey Duke and Cooper Battersby. The exhibit was at first really jarring to walk into a small cramped room with taxidermy animals that are nearly touching you as soon as you’re in the room. Then you take a step back and their cute, and i kind of wanted to cuddle one–i’m very aware thats creepy. Anyway, on the back wall of the exhibit once you get past the ridiculously adorned and dressed kind of cute stuffed animals there’s a video with a lovely log bench to sit on. Unfortunately we only got to see a segment of the video but that was way more ominous and creepy that the animals ever could be.
Let me just point out the phyiscal animals were much less creepy than the animals on the screen. There is just something about the voices that Duke and Battersby gave them and in the video at one point thier setting seems to be an underground plot to over throw God, infact in the video i think the otter (who was my favoritely dressed but unfortunately I wasn’t able to steal a photo of it that wasn’t an animation) say that the spirit guides are pissed off and are going to get their revenge. what’s creepier than that? well…the hunter in the video killing animals so he can touch them. may i say ew a bit of beasiality necrophelia in there. The video makes a good point though, if killing an animal for a positive reason is still killing it, but it is it still bad? apparently we’ve all pissed off the spirit guides and need to make them happy–there’s even a song that the little cartoon spirit guides sing to tell us this….it makes me fear them immensely.
There are other Parts of the 14 minute video loop that ontain footage of baby animals and small children(sepately) with a voice over from the hunter.
When i read the blurb about it in the Power Plant Pamphlet i found out that part of what is being recited on the video is a Philip Larkin poem “This be the verse” about parental dysfuntion. This exhibit is incredibly deep even if you’re attempting to look at it at a surface view…i still want to pet the ridiculously dressed up animals.
then our adventure in Toronto Land lead us (well more like the tour guide) to If We Can’t Get It Together: Artists rethinking the (mal) function of communities. A collective work commenting on social formations (thank you again to the powerplant pamphlet for that phrase).
pictured below (from left to right) luis jacob Shining, Hassan khan Host, Haegue Yang Domestics of Community, Hadley and Maxwell Gloomy Sunday, Emily Roydon Strategic Form, Egle Budvytyte Secta, Shaina Anad KhirkeeYaan
Some of he peices in the exhibit lack resinance for me such as Host for the soul purpose that there aren’t shows that have the hosts undress for people to win money. On the other hand peices like Secta are just universally absurd and i think everyone can relate to that in some manner, whether its “oh i would never do anything like that” or “thats awesome i should try it.”
Secta being a mocumentary on how people find each other and create a Utopian society by doing incredibly absurd things in public. this Utopian society is reinforced by the actions they perform such as licking fruit at a market then putting the fruit back or doing chin ups in a tree.
Domestics of Community was very overpowering if only for the sent of poo, I didn’t get a good look at the peice but the smell was increidbly overpowering. The artist used alot of things that could be found at a hardware store, such as blinds and a fan and other found objects.
Another peice i didn’t get a good look at was Strategic Form but it consisted of photographs that seems to be peices of people in a human pyramid.
Gloomy sunday is about student protests in the 1970’s at Kent State, the use of the song Gloomy Sunday, which ended up getting banned at the time it was made because people got so depressed by said song they would commit suicide (the source for this is my grandmother who loves this song who mentions this story whenever she gets the chance ) is used as a audio aide along with its visual of reflected images on plexiglass which blocks the image out on the projected screen in reflection of this violence. The books that hold up the plexiglass cutouts are a refference to learning and university.
KhirkeeYaan uses cheap survalence technology and flips it on itself. the survalence equipment is used as an open curcuit network for a neighborhood in New Delhi.
Finally I get to Shining the taxidermic swan, made to show how art can be made on it’s own or by the artists self in separation from other things–Plus its just a cool swan anyway.
All the Works in this exhibition curated by Nina Montmann are connected in someway, mainly in the technological framework in someway or another, the exhibit gives the view pretty much what the title says: Aritsts rethinking the (mal)function of communities. All the works show this in very different ways but still connect. A comment on how technology is being used whether it is at a university, a small town or a Television show.
We then travelled onto Headless; a slightly more complicated ehibit. this exhibit by Goldin and Senneby includes the notion of collaberation, the two artists produced the work but much of what is being produced if done by other people, the other people are artisans. They are looking for headless, my understanding of the exhibit is not very good but when i read the expilnation in the Power Plant Pamphlet i found out that my understanding was not what it was about at all. Headless is a research coorperation made by them that is registered as an offshore buisness in the bahamas. this is an incarnation of ‘Acephale’ a secret society created by Georges Bataille in the 1930s. there are three installments of a documentary that goes along with headless, we just happened to be there on the day the second installment started. included in the exhibition is a fictional novel Looking for Headless. now that i read the expilation my understanding that this exhibition is that of looking for what headless is…i think.
next adventure: Galleries around King and Tecumseth!
–Emma Tiffin
