Clik here to view.
Fight for Beauty at the Fairmont Pacific Rim
As the dialogue around the housing crisis continues to mount in Vancouver, real estate developer Ian Gillespie of Westbank Corporation decided it would be a good time to mount an exhibition to showcase...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dana Holst at Christopher Cutts Gallery
“Girls! Girls! Girls!” exclaims the sign outside the burlesque show. “Girls! Girls! Girls!” sings Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe. “Girls! Girls! Girls!” says the Elvis Presley movie poster. Each time it’s a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Jade Yumang at TRUCK Contemporary Art in Calgary
Creatures hang off the wall or lie on the grey concrete. Soft, colourful presences manifest as many-tentacled mop-headed organisms, deflated bagpipes, and curiously feathered wings. Jade Yumang’s Thumb...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mark Lewis at Daniel Faria Gallery
The extra-dimensional realm where evil lies in the Netflix series Stranger Things is called the Upside Down. It’s not actually upside down and its bad reputation is predominantly due to the resident...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Shards at Gallery 1C03
The archive as display takes historical material that is often hidden in stasis or completely forgotten, and makes it actively present. Shards, the group exhibition currently on view at Gallery 1CO3,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Xiaojing Yan at the Varley Art Gallery
When I hear people scoff at abstraction in art, I ask them to consider the fascination we have with bonfires or the movement of clouds. We get lost in these natural forms, sometimes resorting to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ingrid Bachmann at Art Mur
Haunted objects, images, and sounds are held together by the theme of anger in one of the exhibitions currently on display at Art Mûr. Ingrid Bachmann’s works run the gamut from kinetic sculptures to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Welcome to your gallery at The Margin of Eras Gallery
Local arts patron and long-time rich guy Jim Fleck was on CBC morning radio this week answering questions about his donation of Andy Warhol’s first Campbell Soup screenprint series to the AGO. He spoke...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sensing Salon at Artspeak
Sensing Salon, a collaborative work by Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva at Artspeak, is presented as an index of materials that reference the array of subjects excavated in a program of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The More I Look At These Images at 8-11 Gallery
From landscapes to still lives, nature might be the most common subject for art. That’s nature in its uncomplicated sense: flowers, minerals, animals, wilderness. Nothing tainted by human hands....
View ArticleClik here to view.
2017 Critic's Picks
Amie Siegel’s Quarry opened at the Audain Gallery in January and one of my nagging regrets was missing the opportunity to generate a review or lengthier engagement with this work. Siegel’s film follows...
View ArticleClik here to view.
2017 Critic's Picks
Bronze bronco-bucking-cowboys and chubby-upset-businessmen sculptures pass by as the gaping division between Calgary’s colonial corporate arts and its actual arts becomes glaringly evident. Fraudulent...
View ArticleClik here to view.
2017 Critic's Picks
In a year of women’s marches, solar eclipses, fake news, “celebrations” of Canada’s 150th anniversary of settler colonialism, Documenta, Venice, Skulptur Projekte, and other cultural spectacles, I was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
2017 Critic's Picks
Instead of offering up a commentary on our times, this year’s exhibitions provided escape in the form of nostalgia. For example, Saskatchewan spent 2017 reliving its glory days as a hotbed of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
2017 Critic's Picks
The past twelve months saw speakers, performers, and curators shine lights on the many barriers built into the mainstream arts and force a focus on the brilliant work that has been taking place beyond...
View ArticleClik here to view.
2017 Critic's Picks
The New York Times’s most-read stories of 2017 are, in descending order: the Las Vegas shooting, the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight, and Hurricane Irma. The Mirror’s list of famous 2017 deaths includes...
View ArticleClik here to view.
2017 Critic's Picks
Tumultuous might be too gentle a descriptor for this past year. It began with soul searching about the American election and ended with a lesson for my daughter about how power corrupts. She is reading...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Picturing the Northwest & Niitsitapiisinni at Glenbow Museum
With over one million objects, documents, photographs, and artworks in its collection, Glenbow Museum has the opportunity to be a transcultural, inter-chronological, institutional beacon for Wichispa...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dave Dyment at MKG127
Having spent an inordinate amount of time over the holidays watching Netflix, I find that Dave Dyment’s exhibition at MKG127 makes a lot of sense to me. His diverse range of media – including a video,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything at the Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal
I kept an eye out for Leonard Cohen near his Plateau-Mont-Royal home when I first moved to the neighborhood over ten years ago. At first, I just saw traces. A little brunch spot called Bagel Etc....
View Article