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A SPAO National Gallery Visit

So we're a week in at SPAO now, and for our first Projects and Presentations class with all 23 first- and second-year students, we made a big class trip to the National Gallery of Canada.

The Gallery was a great experience; we were able to see the Angela Grauerholz exhibition as well as the infamous Pop Life: Art in a Material World exhibition.

Angela Grauerholz's work is the main exhibition situated in the contemporary section of the NAG; we headed to it first to witness her various works. The first room is several groups of large scale photographs, all in black and white, some sepia-toned. The largest wall, and the one you see first when you enter the room, is occupied by a large group of portraits by Grauerholz. In the next room there is a number of multimedia work, including a huge projected sixteen-minute video by Grauerholz; there are also a number of books on display. The third room combines aspects from both previous rooms. Featured in the third room is one of Grauerholz's Sententia works, as well as a number of other photographs and her scan-o-gram work with burned books. The reaction to Grauerholz's work was mixed, and I am sure it will be the feature of many discussions in and out of class at SPAO this week.

Pop Life: Art in a Material World has definitely been the most hyped-up art exhibition of this past summer, and it lives up to expectations with a multitude of artists exhibited, different kinds of works, and the extent of work and dates it covers. The first room is an Andy Warhol room, full of his various works over years; it is a great introduction to the idea of Pop Art as Warhol is definitely the most well-known pop artist. Other artists featured in the exhibition include Keith Haring, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, and Takashi Murakami. This exhibition is huge and covers a lot of art; it's is definitely worth a look if you haven't already made it out, especially since it will be moving on after September 19.

This past Friday was definitely a great start to the year and I look forward to future Fridays.

Vincent Meurin: Artist in Residence

Over the past couple of weeks, SPAO has had the unique opportunity to host Vincent Meurin, a French photographer based in Montreal who is participating in Festival X, Ottawa’s biannual photography festival. An artist in residence, he completes his short term in Ottawa on Saturday, but will be back in September to attend Festival X and do a talk on the work he shot here in Ottawa, which will be exhibited at the Alliance Française.

Meurin became affiliated with SPAO after completing a photography program in Montreal in 2008, and being part of a group exhibition with Gabor Szilasi. The Ottawa Alliance Française contacted Meurin after seeing the group exhibition and viewing his website, and asked if he would be interested in doing some work in Ottawa, at SPAO, for Festival X. This is the first time the artist-in-residence program has been done at SPAO and Meurin said working as a SPAO artist in residence was great, because you didn’t need to worry about anything and that everyone was very helpful.

Meurin’s project is a body of work on veterans of World War II. The project is called Resistance, a play on the double meaning of the word: resistance in a conflict and the resistance of starving or being away from a family, and the resistance of the body through the years. The final work is “about body and memory” said Meurin. He plans to have a talk on the work during Festival X; some of the veterans he photographed may be a part of this talk. The opening of his show will take place on September 24th at the Alliance Française.

Michael Tardioli and Vincent Meurin at SPAO

Festival X Website

Vincent Meurin's Website and Blog

SPAO News and Events

Exposure Gallery's recent SPAO exhibition of graduates of SPAO has been reviewed by Peter Simpson on his blog, The Big Beat. Sarai Strikefoot and Greg Zehna, graduates, are discussed by Simpson.

The article can be found here.

Guerilla Magazine's latest article features the work of Erin Molly Fitzpatrick, another SPAO grad.

Her work and the accompanying article can be found here.

Out of Site, Out of Mind: Reflections

The opening of the Out of Site, Out of Mind exhibition at St. Brigid's Centre for the Arts on June 21st was extremely interesting. The exhibition itself had great work; Laurence Butet-Roch and Magida El-Kassis, both SPAO grads of the 2009-2010 school year, had work up on the wall. However, the focus of the exhibition was a question of portraiture: while the site of the Canada Portrait Gallery is now non-existent because of certain political decisions, portraiture in Canada still exists, and will continue to exist and thrive. The exhibition itself proves this, with its exceptional showing of youth portraiture; with an excellent mix of painting and photography.

The discussion panel that occurred on the day of the vernissage featured Lily Koltun, the former director of the Portrait Gallery of Canada, and Michael Schreier, an artist and former director of the University of Ottawa visual arts program, as well as current teacher at SPAO. Penny Cousineau-Levine, current chair of visual arts at the University of Ottawa, moderated the discussion and added some points of her own. The panel discussion was very interesting; a discussion mainly on the state of portrait galleries and the future of Canadian portraiture as well as a kind of reassurance for future Canadian portrait artists; while portraiture may have been rejected by politicians, it is still very much at the forefront of the artistic world, and a portrait gallery has not been lost from the minds of Canadians.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010
5:00pm - 10:00pm
Saint Brigid's Centre for the Arts
310 St Patrick at Cumberland

Out of Site, Out of Mind:
a meditation on the state of contemporary canadian portraiture

Out of Site, Out of Mind is an exhibition comprised of Canadian portraits that will open on June 21st in downtown Ottawa. University of Ottawa student curators will explore Canadian identity and the vitality of Ottawa’s artistic community through an exhibition of local portraiture.

OPEN HOURS
June 21st - June 23rd
11:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

VERNISSAGE
JUNE 23rd, 2010
Free admission / Cash bar

DISCUSSION PANEL
@ 5:30pm - 7:00 p.m.
Join Lilly Koltun, former director of the PGC, Michael Schreier, artist, and Penny Cousineau-Levine, chair of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa as they discuss the future of Canadian portraiture and the tumultuous existence of the Portrait Gallery of Canada.

RECEPTION and artist performance by Theo Pelmus
@ 7:00 p.m. - 10 p.m.

A catalogue accompanies the exhibition Out of Site, Out of Mind, including reproductions of the art work and essays by Jason Neil, Alix Sutton-Lalani and Clare Brebner. Paperback $20.

FOR MORE INFO:
outofsiteoutofmind2010.blogspot.com
outofsiteoutofmind@live.com
Confirmed Guests

Secret Garden

Secret Garden by Angelina McCormick is, on the surface, a collection of flower photographs spanning 5 years of obsessive imaging of dying and artificial flora. Assembled for the first time in the Red Wall Gallery, the resulting array of images is much more than a botanical collection.

This exhibition reveals how McCormick’s practice has evolved over time. The formal elements of her photographs have changed with each collection; passing through several film formats, camera types and production approaches to the most recent iconic 8” X 10” shot, large, clean images.

More significantly, the expressive content of her work has also evolved. Each successive grouping, although always of either real or artificial flora, conveys a different aspect of the artist’s search for self.

Early work tackles aging, sickness and also death as transformation. Images of this ultimate of changes from life to death are made by someone who describes herself as “ruined and living in both worlds”, and pose important questions about our perceptions of both states of being. McCormick’s Holga series is playful and made with deliberate misdirection. These photos of fake flowers cloak gallows humour in a seductive surface of candy colours and soft edges. The most recent works become larger and more iconic. Crisp and bright, they induce awe sometimes at odds with their unpretentious look at human relationships, personalities and archetypes.

Vernissage: Friday June 18th, 2010, 17:00 - 20:00

On View: June 18th – August 28th, 2010

Mon - Fri 10:00 -18:00, Sat 10:00-15:00