Clive Holden: Ken Dryden's Birthday, August 8

To celebrate Canadian Member of Parliament and hockey legend Ken Dryden's August 8th birthday, the Utopia Suite Project is publishing the entire version of 'Ken Dryden' on the web for the first time. So far, this computer generated art-cinema-web hybrid work has been projected in theatres (Toronto International Film Festival/Camera 2008 and Jhilava IDFF 2008), in galleries (WNDX/PLATFORM in Winnipeg and Thames Art Gallery in Chatham), and in a douglas fir box enclosure (AIPAD 2009 in NYC, and Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto this version is called 'Ken Dryden in the Box'). It will continue to travel the globe in different forms, and now via the internet.

Ken Dryden is one part of artist Clive Holden's multi-year project, Utopia Suite, that was launched in Toronto (Images Festival) and Amsterdam (Rotterdam/Holland Festival) in 2006. It's a work of 'dynamic cinema' made with a hybrid mix of found materials, crude cinema tools and web technology such as animated GIFs (simple web image sequences) and html. You'll never see and hear it the same way twice as the tiles are loaded randomly each time the work cycles. The images and soundtrack re-mix continuously, there's no beginning, middle, or end. It's just one of our attempts to add 'liveness' to cinema.

The Utopia Suite Project is also partly an experiment in 'conversation-based art' and we'd like to invite people to comment on and discuss this work on our new Ken Dryden Conversation page.


Links:

Ken Dryden: http://ken.utopiasuite.com
Ken Dryden Conversation Page: http://kenconversation.utopiasuite.com
Utopia Suite Project: http://utopiasuite.com
Utopia Suite Reviews & Writing: http://reviews.utopiasuite.com

FREE SATURDAY SCREENING

July 25th

3:00 PM

The General

Dirs. Clyde Bruckman and Buster (USA, 1926) 107 mins

Johnnie Gray has two loves in his life: his train ("The General") and his girl, Annabelle Lee. When the Civil War begins Johnnie is the first in line at the recruitment office. He is turned down for service because he is considered to be more valuable as an engineer. Union spies concoct a plan to steal The General. Not only do they steal The General while Johnnie and the passengers are off the train, but they kidnap Annabelle who is still on board. Johnnie sets out as the sole pursuer of the Unionists in an attempt to save The General and Annabelle.

London

I was recently in London, UK for the opening of an exhibition that we’ve consigned of André Kertész’s ‘On Reading’ series, portions of which were shown here in January. Stefanie Braun of The Photographers’ Gallery has done a splendid job with her selection and installation, so if in London sometime before October 4th, you should definitely check it out.


I took the red eye flight on Monday July 13th and stayed up all day Tuesday to see a play called ‘War Horse’ at the National Theatre. Although I was very impressed with the staging, I found it hard to respond to the actors but happy that I saw this new perspective on WWI.

The next day I visited with Michael Wilson to see a portion of his outstanding collection. Although primarily known for his 19th Century expertise, his collection of 20th Century and contemporary works shows him to have an astute eye for all aspects of photography. I was able to quickly visit ATLAS Gallery, who are planning an interesting exhibition of Polaroids for the fall. The TPG Director’s preview that evening was packed with people, I can only hope that their upcoming renovation affords them the space to accommodate their legions of supporters.

Thursday morning I visited the Victoria and Albert Museum to see their recent hangs of new acquisitions as well as a small restaging of their first exhibition. The Museum began acquiring photographs in 1852, and its collection is now one of the largest and most important in the world. Curator Marta Weiss was very kind in helping isolate some historical Canadian material which I was able to view in their Prints & Drawings Study Room. Of particular interest was the collection of photographs taken by the Royal Engineers of the 49th Parallel in 1860 as well as a terrific album entitled CANADA 1875.

From there I visited with Marcus Bury of HackelBury Fine Arts and was very happy to have seen their current exhibition of Malick Sidibé. My next stop was Michael Hoppen Gallery where Michael sold me a terrific print of a frozen Niagara Falls circa 1911. That evening there was a second preview of the Kertész exhibition for the Members of TPG which was even more crowded than the first! I was very happy to see people spending so much time with this fine exhibition.

I left the next morning for home, exhausted. Very happy to have bumped into Shelagh and Mike McGowan who were on the same flight, having enjoyed a short vacation after having completed a promotional tour for his latest film One Week. Shelagh and I went to the same grade school (OLPH); while Mike and I were at the same highschool (St. Mike’s). Small world indeed.

Sarah Anne Johnson: House on Fire at the AGO

To read Murray Whyte's review of the provocative exhibition "House on Fire" by Winnipeg artist, Sarah Anne Johnson, click on the link below:

http://thestar.blogs.com

Murray Whyte covers visual arts for the Star. He's also a feature writer for the Saturday and Sunday Star. He has written about art for the New York Times, Canadian Art magazine, the National Post and many others.

Chicago Architecture Foundation. Robert Burley, O'Hare Project.

The Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing public interest and education in architecture and design. CAF presents a comprehensive program of tours, exhibitions, lectures, special events, and adult and youth education activities, all designed to enhance the public’s awareness and appreciation of Chicago’s outstanding architectural legacy.

Visit the Program Archive to download podcasts and slideshows including Robert Burley's Airport as Landscape

As a graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Robert Burley spent four years (1984–89) investigating the uncharted urban landscape of O’Hare airport with a large format camera. Burley gives an illustrated lecture on his photographic work featured in CAF’s exhibition: ORD: Documenting the Definitive Modern Airport.


For more information please visit
http://www.architecture.org/programarchive.html

Bertrand Carrière & Serge Clément. "Chemin Faisant" at Galerie Simon Blais, Montreal

, See It

Bertrand Carrière & Serge Clément: Seeing, Doubled
Galerie Simon Blais, Montreal
June 10 - August 1, 2009

Two veteran photographers, two unique visions of the world. That's the premise behind "Chemin Faisant," an exhibition of works by Bertrand Carrière & Serge Clément at the Galerie Simon Blais, Montreal. It’s a reunion of sorts for the two Montreal artists, who last showed together at the gallery a decade ago, and while the pairing highlights differing approaches to image making—Carrière with a new colour video work and Clément with a signature suite of black and white photos—an underlying sense of movement ties all the images together.


Bertrand Carrière, Chemin de cendres, 2009 Installation view

Carrière debuts his video Chemin de cendres, a project that developed out of an ongoing photo series “Lieux Mêmes” which retraces images of the Western Front taken by an unknown Canadian photographer during the First World War. Projected on the gallery wall, the dual-frame display poignantly juxtaposes selections from the historical album—battlefields, rubble-strewn streets, soldier’s portraits—against Carrière’s current day images of the same sites and his related travels through France and Belgium. “I’ve tried to oppose stillness and movement,” he writes about the work, and the result is a journey of visual contrasts between fixed historical narratives and the malleability of modern memory.


Bertrand Carrière, Chemin de cendres, 2009 Video Still

Clément takes a more overtly poetic approach to moving imagery with his short film d'aurore showing alongside a grid of never-before-seen images culled from his world travels over the past seven years. There’s a kind of snapshot poetry to these sequences of random photos shot at dawn—an aged stone house photographed from a moving train, an Istanbul mosque before prayers, a pedestrian blur on a Mumbai street—that frames the fleeting nature of time passing. But Clément has also woven the subtle transition of shifting light and shadow through his progression of everyday images, adding a further, elemental dynamism to his observations of change. As he explains in an email, "It's an urban and human journey at dawn, from silence to the metallic chaos of cities, from the dark to the light...A quick look at different cultures, some stories never completely told."


Serge Clément Traverse - Istanbul, Turquie 2004

For more information please visit
http://www.canadianart.ca/online/see-it/2009/07/16/carriere-clement/
http://www.galeriesimonblais.com/en/expoView.php?id=178

FREE SATURDAY SCREENING

July 18^th, 2009

Pride Series

3:00 PM

THE BOYS IN THE BAND

Dir. William Friedkin (USA, 1970) 118 mins

Based on an off-Broadway play of the same title The Boys in the Band was one of the first Hollywood features to take a close look at queer culture A group of gay men have gathered at Michael’s apartment on New York City’s Upper East Side to celebrate their friend Harold’s birthday. When their straight friend Alan turns up tensions begin to mount. As the party progresses the men become drunker and the group dynamic changes for the worse.

Dawn Woolley. FAILURE/SUCCESS at TactileBOSCH.

Group Exhibition FAILURE/SUCCESS at TactileBOSCH, Cardiff
July 18th-August 15th, 2009

Dawn Woolley, from Substitute series, 2007

Ben Becker, Oana Camilleri, Natasha Caruana, Leonora Hamill, Thomas Haywood, Jessica Layton, Alastair Levy, Suzanne Ludwig, Roel Paredaens, Edith Pasquier, Patricia Pinsker, Anja Ronacher, Annalisa Sonzogni, Yan Tomaszewski, Dawn Woolley

Also featuring artwork by guest artist Nigel Rolfe

TactileBOSCH will welcome the 2008 Graduates from the Royal College of Art - Photography MA to restage their successful 2007 exhibition 'Failure/Success'. Orginally curated by Performance artist and RCA tutor Nigel Rolfe and staged in an ex-communist theatre in Nova Huta, Krakow as part of the Polish Photography Festival, Fotomonth. The exhibition presents new photography, film, performance and installation by the recent graduates.
With a bold title that could engage the audience to categorize the works, the artists aim to break out of the mould of gallery standard presentation and take risks with their artistic practices.
This time in a former Victorian Laundry in Cardiff.

For more information please visit
www.rcaphotography2008.com
www.dawnwoolley.com

FREE SATURDAY SCREENING

Pride Series

Saturday, July 11th, 2009

3PM PHILIDELPHIA
Dir. Jonathan Demme (USA, 1993) 125 mins

Robert Burley Lectures at the School of the Art Institue of Chicago

ERIC R. MULTHAUF LUNCHTIME LECTURE
February 18
Airport as Landscape
Robert Burley, Photographer

As a graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Robert Burley spent four years (1984–89) investigating the uncharted urban landscape of O’Hare airport with a large format camera. Burley gives an illustrated lecture on his photographic work featured in CAF’s exhibition: ORD: Documenting the Definitive Modern Airport.

http://www.architecture.org/programarchive.html

Sunil Gupta Featured in The Hindu

Sunil Gupta is featured in an article in The Hindu on the legalization of homosexuality in Delhi.
http://blogs.thehindu.com/delhi/?p=25343

Zeno’s Artistic Debut With Pierre Tremblay and the Stephen Bulger Gallery at Nuit Blanche, October 4, 2008

Pierre Tremblay, artist and faculty at Ryerson’s School of Image Arts, has created the first artistic installation for Zeno’s new medium for Nuit Blanche displayed at the Stephen Bulger Gallery. The new medium uses the basic principles of film, a sequence of still pictures moving at a certain speed causes the appearance of motion - except instead of the pictures moving through a movie projector, the pictures are stationary and the viewer is the projector as he or she walks by. Tremblay’s project “Proximity” explores his surroundings. Wanting to bring our attention to Lake Ontario his work was inspired by a photograph taken by his son of his daughter in Scarborough on the bluffs. For Nuit Blanche Tremblay adopted the Zeno technology to create a playful sequence, a sort of dance and interactive experience in which the viewer has to move to create the movement in the piece.

Opening of Zimbel Café!

Andrew Zimbel, son of photographer George S. Zimbel celebrates the opening of Zimbel Café, 410 Adelaide Street West, in the Lou Larry Building. Having been in business for over 20 years this is a new and very exciting expansion for Andrew.

Be sure to check out the exhibit on view at the Zimbel Café featuring a selection of works by George S. Zimbel from the Stephen Bulger Gallery.

Preview: Josef Hoflehner's "China."

"Josef Hoflehner's China monograph spans four years of intensive travel to the Middle Kingdom and is an amazing testament to the unique confluence of geography, history and commerce that has shaped this vast nation. Through an original and often startling juxtaposition of images, classical sites from antiquity mix with new urban skylines to form a collection that underscores the contrasts of modern Chinese life and the sweeping changes taking place." --from the Introduction by Scott Minick

September 2009 will see the release of Hoflehner's "China" monograph and "Jet Airliner" book.

For more information and to view the latest photographs by Josef Hoflehner visit his website at http://www.josefhoflehner.com/portfolios.html

Susan Meiselas wins the Krasna Kraus And/Or book award!

The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation has announced that the book Susan Meiselas: In History, edited by Associate Curator at ICP Kristen Lubben and published by ICP/Steidl, has won the 2009 And/Or Photography Book Award. The And/Or Awards are the United Kingdom's leading prizes for books published in the fields of photography and the moving image.

Susan Meiselas: In History is an in-depth look at Susan Meiselas' esteemed career in socially engaged documentary photography. An American photographer best known for her work covering the political upheavals in Central America in the 1970s and '80s, Meiselas's process has evolved in radical and challenging ways as she has grappled with pivotal questions about her relationship to her subjects, the use and circulation of her images in the media, and the relationship of images to history and memory. Her insistent engagement with these concerns has positioned her as a leading voice in the debate on contemporary documentary practice.

Jim Goldberg wins Fotofestival di Roma's International Gold Medal Book Prize!

Photo-Eye Book Division Manager Melanie McWhorter lead the jury of Benedetta Cestelli Guidi, Marta Daho, Erik Kessels, and Michele Smargiassi judging over 180 books in the second Italian and first International book award of Fotofestival di Roma. The International Gold Medal Award was given to Steidl's upcoming titled by Jim Goldberg Open See.

Delhi High Court Legalizes Homosexuality Today!

In a historic judgement, the Delhi High Court decriminalized homosexuality by reading down section 377 of the Indian Penal Code as it is a violation of fundamental rights.

Section 377 in the Indian Penal Code was created in 1861 by the British and outlaws what it calls any acts against the order of nature and the punishment violations can be up to 10 years along with a fine. Section 377 has widely been considered a completely outdated law and Activists claim it has been a powerful weapon in the hands of police as it is often used to harass the gay and lesbian community. A repeal of Section 377 will also mean changes in civil laws pertaining to inheritance, property and adoption.

For more information go to:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Homosexuality-no-crime-Delhi-High-Court/articleshow/4726608.cms
http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/will_homosexuality_become_legal.php
http://www.zeenews.com/video/showvideo2924.html