tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64696212012-01-20T15:51:24.943-05:00Catherine Osborne contact info: 61 Seaton Street. Toronto ON Canada M5A 2T2 / cosborne@sympatico.caCatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.comBlogger401100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1095466132922899982004-09-17T19:56:00.000-04:002004-09-17T20:08:52.923-04:00

Well, it looks like inertia has finally set in with this blog. Didn't mean for that to happen, but I am no longer writing for the Post. I have a new job at a magazine. It's full time, which is why this blog is over, for now. I'm leaving it up for archival purposes and maybe so I can start it up again another day. Thanks for reading and see you 'round. Catherine

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com144tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1090263805002243792004-07-19T15:01:00.000-04:002004-07-19T15:04:25.410-04:00

Another culture crisis that needs your attention .... Dear ARCCO Members and Friends, On behalf of Artspace, ARCCO requests your help! Due the flood and sewage backup in downtown Peterborough, Artspace, which had recently relocated to a basement space in the downtown area, is currently a disaster zone. If you have anything that you can donate such as office supplies, energy/expertise or can

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1090263673986043762004-07-19T14:55:00.000-04:002004-07-19T15:01:13.986-04:00

Carin terriers are known for their firm little legs and butts, their spunky personalities and tenacious habit for digging trenches in front lawns. Occasionally, they are also known for being natural acrobats at catching balls. Angus, a 10-year-old Carin terrier who lives on Toronto Island with owner and artist Michael Davey, is definitely a ball catcher. He can leap three feet in the air and snag

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1090080944555200802004-07-17T12:10:00.000-04:002004-07-17T12:18:15.770-04:00

Here's a take-action follow-up to the Coach House Press crisis I posted last week.... As many of you know, Coach House has been fighting to save its home. Our landlord, Campus Co-op Residence Inc., plans to expand its own property, and this development directly threatens the buildings that Coach House has occupied for forty years. However, we have just received word that we're on the list for

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1089663161563323482004-07-12T16:10:00.000-04:002004-07-12T16:12:41.563-04:00

I love this show. Blue Republic’s para-conceptual work is about life, art and economic and political imbalances around the globe, but you wouldn’t know it at first glance. At first glance you get a room full of jokey sculptures with smart, zippy titles, like a stepladder covered in Legos that’s titled "Beautiful Infections." But then there are works like "Cambodia," where a pair of flipflops

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1089662988929729992004-07-12T16:07:00.000-04:002004-07-12T16:09:48.930-04:00

Sandy Plotnikoff doesn’t know how many clothing snaps he’s made into art over the past few years, but I would venture it must be in the millions by now. It all started as a project of microscopic proportions, when Plotnikoff, an artist of extreme subtleties, bought himself a snap machine. At first he would go around town discreetly snapping a colourful snap onto people’s undone snap-up coats

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com45tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1089662578505531832004-07-12T15:58:00.000-04:002004-07-12T16:04:29.556-04:00

Max Dean’s latest operatic-scale video projection at the Susan Hobbs Gallery has the usual top-grade technological production value and virtual awesomeness we’ve come to expect from the man who has been building mechanical-type art since the 1970s. Two years ago, Dean filled the same gallery with a video-installation called Mist, which projected the mighty Niagara Falls onto a giant curving

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1089662126948193822004-07-12T15:54:00.000-04:002004-07-12T15:55:26.946-04:00

Lisa Neighbour’s School of Knots is a real shot of visual spectacle, a sublime and obsessively crafted series of light-bulb wall sculptures held together by reams of electrical wires that have been strung together by the long forgotten art of macrame. Neighbour has been working with bulbs and braided electrical cords since the early 1990s to varying degrees of masterful success. This rich dazzler

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1089661869606047972004-07-12T15:46:00.000-04:002004-07-12T15:51:09.606-04:00

Taking its namesake from the big, messy and age-old picnic now sprawled across the CNE grounds this weekend, Double CHIN Picnic is another type of family event -- an exhibition of four gay and lesbian friends who are old hats at turning Value Village junk culture into crafty works of art. Sad but funny photographs titled "Am I Becoming My Father?" show local writer-artist-poet R.M. Vaughan

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1089040719701372622004-07-05T11:07:00.000-04:002004-07-05T11:19:04.813-04:00

This is SCARY! No no, it's sick. Coach House Press is about to be knocked down to make way for another U of T residency. Here's John Barber's excellent article in Saturday's Globe and Mail. Time to call Mayor Miller!

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1088602961995966662004-06-30T09:34:00.000-04:002004-06-30T09:45:20.570-04:00

Critical Art Ensemble artist Steve Kurtz has been charged with "mail fraud" by US courts, not with bioterrorism as many of us who have been watching this story unfold over the past weeks had thought was going to happen. Here's what wired.com says and the CAE Defense Fund.

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1088463355748322732004-06-28T18:52:00.000-04:002004-06-28T18:55:55.746-04:00

Not everyone knows that Douglas Coupland, the Vancouver-based novelist and city guide book writer, is also an artist. In fact, he was an artist before he became a writer. It’s just that when his first novel, Generation X, became the literary beacon of a whole swathe of disenfranchised youth back in 1991, his art just wasn’t as conspicuously public. Once in a while his brightly coloured sculptures

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1087836149344715742004-06-21T12:38:00.000-04:002004-06-21T12:42:29.343-04:00

Considering that: a) computer games have been around ever since A. S. Douglas invented a monitor version of Tic-Tac-Toe in 1952; and b) gaming is played almost religiously by millions for hours on end, you’d think the medium would have crept its way into a front-row position in contemporary art by now. Weirdly, it hasn’t. In fact, art that is based on computer gaming has barely morphed beyond

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1087835873617424812004-06-21T12:34:00.000-04:002004-06-21T12:37:53.616-04:00

The meticulously fabricated tree in full bloom inside Christopher Cutts Gallery is by the ever-theatrical sculptor David Acheson who never skimps on craftsmanship or sardonic punch. Some may remember his earlier works have included a near perfect sculpture of a bear-shaped honey jar made to the scale of an actual baby cub, and gigantic ten-foot tall toddlers constructed out of bonemeal, epoxy and

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1087228856074332482004-06-14T11:55:00.000-04:002004-06-14T17:54:00.046-04:00

A shorter version of this ran in the Post on Saturday. They cut the Halifax stuff for space reasons. But also because they are two separate stories anyway .... The email buzz in recent weeks among artists and curators around the globe is the bizarre FBI investigation of University of Buffalo’s art professor Stephen Kurtz. Last month, Kurtz, 46, called paramedics when he found is wife had died

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1087228499508582552004-06-14T11:46:00.000-04:002004-06-14T13:03:27.013-04:00

Due to my mother's 70th (!) birthday party on Saturday, I was unable to see this. Love to know how it turned out... If you happen to be strolling along University Avenue this afternoon you may find yourself standing among a crowd watching a man drip gallons of manicure wax over a statuesque woman. Or you might spot a Mr. Right with a giant bouquet of roses chasing after a svelte blonde in a

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1086800932380516222004-06-09T13:07:00.000-04:002004-06-09T13:09:43.570-04:00

Jessica Stockholder, famous for her massive and messy installations that tend to look a bit like cleanup sites after a tornado has ripped through Wal-mart, doesn't always work super-size. The seven sculptural works at Sable-Castelli Gallery this month, are less-than-big, at least in terms of Stockholder who normally requires museum-size spaces to orchestrate her unruly environments. The smallest

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1086102055015630332004-06-01T10:55:00.000-04:002004-06-01T11:04:54.213-04:00

A bit of a newsy story this week... Who would have thought a ferris wheel could be so complicated to install in summer? Apparently, it’s not as easy as it used to be pre-9/11. Or at least unusual ferris wheels, like Dutch artist John Kormelling’s specially outfitted mobile of fun, which lifts cars as well as people, are no longer that appealing to insurance companies. The ever-squeezing grip of

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1085488698781753782004-05-25T08:27:00.000-04:002004-05-25T22:37:45.366-04:00

Just as video becomes a technological has-been, in comes a group of young artists putting a whole new spin on the dying medium. 640 480 is a local collective that prides itself in being video-based, but always with a twist in finding new ways of expanding on the little black box’s physical limitations. In other words, they cook up weird ways of making art objects out of video. Their past

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1085487776911793162004-05-25T08:20:00.000-04:002004-05-25T22:38:36.086-04:00

Girls, it seems, just want to drive fast cars. And smash them up in a blaze of smoke and fire. Kristine Moran, whose disaster paintings depict flying cars spinning out of control, or careening into the windows of skyscrapers or exploding into turbo fireballs, have been popping up over the past year along with the Queen West strip and with lots of whispered approval. Trip Wire at Angell Gallery is

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1085333118036070752004-05-23T13:11:00.000-04:002004-05-23T13:49:21.886-04:00

I'm putting this out there: I've been thinking about the term "slacker art" for quite a while, because it gets used a lot but doesn't really seem to have any specific definition. Recently I read an article on the Armoury Show and the writer refered to "slacker art of the 1990s." Does that mean slacker art is over? I've emailed a few people (Robert Atkins of Artspeak, Jerry Saltz of the VV, and

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1085108939476435932004-05-20T22:40:00.000-04:002004-05-20T23:08:59.476-04:00

Hi, Repeat visitors can see, I'm overhauling this blog and it's taking waaaaay longer than I thought. I should have everything running smoothly by the weekend. catherine

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1084824057434785272004-05-17T15:56:00.000-04:002004-05-20T14:36:33.150-04:00

Ever wonder why Canadian contemporary art never turns up at auction? No one has given me a very good reason why not, other than to say there are not enough collectors, and dealers think if the art they sell hammers down at a lower price, the delicate, barely-there art bubble we now live in will suddenly burst and die. Sounds paranoid to me, but still It's amazing how often I hear there isn't

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1084823548976309532004-05-17T15:48:00.000-04:002004-05-17T16:06:59.120-04:00

For the past two decades Jack Burman has been photographing human anatomical specimens found in medical schools from various parts of the world. He prefers to photograph severed heads, where the skin has been stripped away to reveal gristly strands of muscle and tissue. Or heads where the brain and cranium have been dislodged entirely, sliced from above the ears like pie wedges. It all sounds

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1083677806426221462004-05-04T09:26:00.000-04:002004-05-04T09:59:22.450-04:00

When does a private act become a performance? Is watering house plants or pretending to be a plant, a work of art? Ask Diane Borsato, an artist whose performances are so discreet they are rarely detected by anyone other than herself. Borsato's fame for making subtle art started in 2001 with a performance at the Montreal artist-run centre, Skol, where she created the world's longest paper-clip

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com57tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1083676485708737172004-05-04T09:02:00.000-04:002004-05-05T09:41:40.390-04:00

Art historian Penny Cousineau-Levine recently published an important book called Faking Death where she describes how and why Canadian photographers are obsessed with death. That idea is nothing new when you think how many times the same thing has been said about Canadian films and Can lit. Also considering our tedious habit for defining ourselves by what we are not (i.e. we're not Americans,

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1082864411384955142004-04-24T23:33:00.000-04:002004-04-24T23:48:02.030-04:00

Carly Butler is starting up her Above My Sofa Artart gallery again in a few weeks with drawings by Stephanie Beliveau, being shipped from Galerie Simon Blais in Montreal as I write this.

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1082863755969661532004-04-24T23:17:00.000-04:002004-04-24T23:33:49.340-04:00

For the sake of the installation crew who spent many hours lining up photographer Lisa Klapstock's large-scale series of self-portraits so that her fixed gaze is at the same height on the gallery walls, it was well worth the trouble. Not that anyone will stop to appreciate this minor detail, but you'd certainly notice it if they weren't hung so exactly. Klapstock is obsessive about micro-details

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1082862560567299762004-04-24T22:58:00.000-04:002004-04-24T23:13:58.123-04:00

Janet Werner's new paintings at Robert Birch Gallery have her usual panache for making things look dead simple. Since 1995 the Montreal artist has been painting portraits with a reductionist's habit of tempering facial features down to their trademark characteristics and setting her subjects up against solid flat backgrounds in various off-beat colour blends. It's an endlessly intriguing

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1082641803414702222004-04-22T09:42:00.000-04:002004-04-22T10:05:43.293-04:00

Nice article in today's National P. on Bill Burn's excellent Safety Gear for Small Animals exhibition at Saidye B, by fellow Post-er Samantha Grice.

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1082126163168254022004-04-16T10:12:00.000-04:002004-04-16T10:43:11.513-04:00

Heellloooo, I'm guessing you're here because of Sally at digital media tree. She's the only one who knows I've been working late on this blog. I'm still on a STEEP blog learning ladder, so for now here are some of my National Post art columns that have been in the Toronto section each Saturday since August/04. My articles don't appear on the paper's website so if you didn't read them in real life

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1081993253008278452004-04-14T21:21:00.000-04:002004-04-21T21:29:45.670-04:00

The most glaring change about this year's crop of 140-plus moving images that make up Images Festival 2004, is that the whole debate around film-versus-video-versus-digital, which believe it or not was a going concern in the 1990s, has pretty much been turfed. New art media types no longer distinguish the pros from the amateurs by what kind of camera is being used. Everybody is intermixing with

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1081991516557670492004-04-14T20:59:00.000-04:002004-04-22T10:47:33.560-04:00

Toronto has its fair share of galleries that are so small lots of people walk right by them without even noticing. There's Barr Gilmore's consistently excellent Solo Exhibition space, a window that is 18-inches wide and 96-inches high, and sandwhiched discreetly beside Dufflet's Pasteries at 787 Queen Street West. Currently on view is one of Paul P.'s paintings of a young man in pink. Titled Pink

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1081994054073100132004-04-05T21:48:00.000-04:002004-04-21T23:03:59.153-04:00

Artist Rodney Graham is seen dressed as a 17th-century dandy wearing a top hat, striped trousers and a riding coat. He strolls elegantly down a cobblestone lane, somewhere in France. In the next scene, he's dressed like a country yokel wearing baggy pants and a tattered old smock. A few minutes later the two selves cross paths and, in an unexpected Buster Keaton moment of collision, the city

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1081990504518253342004-03-13T20:44:00.000-05:002004-04-21T23:10:00.810-04:00

The new beautiful in painting these days is dazzlingly ugly. Everything that one could describe as soft on the eyes -- things like logical composition, depth of field, colour harmony -- are so out. I'm thinking of the very hot paintings of Jay Isaac's over at Greener Pastures that have been bewitching every artist I've met over the past few days who has been by the gallery to see the eight new

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1081988990360268732004-03-03T20:24:00.000-05:002004-04-21T23:15:22.310-04:00

On February 21, 2004 renowned Montreal abstract painter Guido Molinari died of pneumonia after cancer crept from his lungs and into his bones. He was 70. Unfortunately, you are not alone if his name doesn't immediately bring buckets of tears to your eyes and a sharp awareness that the art world has been temporarily leveled by the lose of such a giant legend. Molinari was to the Canadian art world

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1081978462884192592004-02-27T17:10:00.000-05:002004-04-21T23:20:33.450-04:00

Stephen James Kerr's abstract paintings carry a daunting sense of purpose, though you’d never know it just by looking at them. On the surface, they are slick, brushstroke-free canvases filled with geometric fun. The colour range is so Sugar Mountain sweet in most of the eight paintings that fill the front room of XEXE Gallery that I swear I detected a slight glow radiating off them and onto my

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1081983387457667482004-02-23T18:46:00.000-05:002004-04-21T23:28:15.340-04:00

It's becoming the thing to do in the art world. A big art or furniture design fair sets up at a sprawling and airless convention space, like this weekend's Interior Design Show (IDS) has done at the National Trade Centre, and in no time local upstarts spawn an alternative sideshow of emerging talents set up at a nearby hotel. In recent years there's been the low-budget, ultra-hip Scope art fair

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1081989489176323222004-02-14T20:31:00.000-05:002004-04-16T10:14:32.826-04:00

Wang Qingsong is like the Cindy Sherman of China. His massive and elaborately staged photographs aren’t self-portraits exactly, but they mirror his country’s inner state of mind and outward perception in the same way Sherman mined the social psychology of women in the 20th century. The Beijing superstar has fully embraced the most popular form of Western contemporary art—a hyper-real style of

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6469621.post-1081988460325341362004-02-04T19:58:00.000-05:002004-04-16T10:15:31.200-04:00

Queen Street West hasn’t stopped its bunny-farm behaviour as far as popping out galleries every couple of weeks. The latest set of doors to swing open is at SPIN Gallery, near Queen and Dovercourt. Art dealers Stewart Pollock and Juno Youn have renovated the second floor of a dusty brick building, transforming the old kitchen appliance warehouse into one of the largest galleries on the strip. It’

Catehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00246756020002697643noreply@blogger.com6