Amy Fung writes in this week’s Vue Weekly:
Just as the recent National Portrait Gallery show did wonders for how we can view a traditional format such as portraiture, this show begins to open up what we can justifiably call Canadian landscapes.
She discusses both Not Another Fucking Landscape and Gore, Quebec and their place in documentary and landscape traditions. Take a look.
In this week’s Vue Weekly, Amy Fung writes about our Summer Members’ Series and the experience of seeing works-in-progress:
The more opportunities for visual artists to show their works-in-progress, the better, as communication in and around the art world can only approve. Studio critiques appear to be a regular exercise when in art school, forcing students to verbally enunciate a word or two about their work, or God forbid, defend their work to questions. One translation of that has surfaced as of late: Latitude 53 recently began showing a members’ series that lasts for a few days at a time, and the one I’ve caught so far, by Marc Seigner, appears to be quite different from his known body of work in printmaking, and it was positive to see a space for experiments and works in progress.
Tonight on the patio—as well as our regular Thursday-night party hosted by the board of directors—we have the opening party for the third entry in the series, Gerry Dotto’s Crooked Numbers, and next week we’ll be finishing the series with an installation by Elaine Wannechko. We hope to see you!
Along with Elizabeth Withey’s enthusiasm for Trevor Anderson’s video in the Edmonton Journal, a few other publications have pointed to the National Portrait Gallery as a highlight in the broad program of The Works. [SEE Magazine’s Mrs. Abraxas writes]: “Latitude 53 has the masterfully curated “National Portrait Gallery,” bringing together an eclectic brood of artists to explore ironic and iconic Pan-Canadian subjects.” And over on the Akimbo.ca Akimblog, Edmonton’s Amy Fung has this to say:
“Featuring artists ranging from local organizers Kristy Trinier, Fish Griwkowsky, Norm Omar, et al, to regional and national names like Terence Houle, Josh Holinaty, Kirsten McCrea, Jonathan Kaiser, and even writer Douglas Coupland, the exhibition is an exercise in standardizing a DIY initiative, and it looks to travel across the country picking up more contemporary portraiture along the way.”
Make sure you get a chance to see the show. After it comes down after July 17, we’ll be plowing into some exciting new summer programming, starting with the return of our famous summer event, Draw, this year bigger than ever. But you’ll hear more about that soon!
The official Portrait of Gallery does not show me. It does not show me anyone I know. Fortunately, there is this ulterior exhibition of a Portrait Gallery project as organized by a humble group of Edmonton-based artists collectively legitimizing the voice of a Canadian art culture. Appropriately enough the intention may have brewed from rejection, exclusion, and a burning desire to stake a claim, as naturally the misfits of society have convened here in one way shape or form. In its first reincarnation, The National Portrait Gallery project features Canadian artists exploring who we are, who we think we are, our communities comprised of friends, strangers, and icons in states of real and imaginary being. As a growing collection of works that will hopefully tour across this country and beyond, this National Portrait Gallery does show me individuals I know, and in so doing prompts the necessary myth making and subsequent archiving of stories and identities that will carry this country along.
Read Amy Fung’s monograph essay on the National Portrait Gallery over at Prairie Artsters—or come by the gallery for a visit and pick it up in a booklet with another essay by Todd Babiak and a comic by Mike Winters.
In this week’s Vue Weekly, Amy Fung takes on Jody MacDonald’s Will The Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up?, on display in the Main Gallery until 29 May.
Oddball humorous and morbidly crafty, MacDonald riffs off everything from twisting jargon like “Fishing For Compliments” to Jungian archetypes of self formation. Most of the individual pieces reveal this grappling of ideas and theory with the straightforward use of text demarcating which identity they are expressing. Working as a whole, their messaging carries more resonance as each character exists in relation to each other, with some alienated by or away from each other.
Read the rest.
In the Summer issue of Galleries West, Amy Fung writes about Brenda Draney’s recent show at Latitude 53. Read it on their site.
Amy Fung reviews Gabriel Coutu-Dumont’s show for Canadian Art.
