Vanessa Maltese | Crowd

 

Vanessa Maltese

Crowd

Dufftown, Scotland: Glenfiddich, 2023

8.5 cm diameter 

Edition size unknown

Last week I was in Toronto to host an event for the Glenfiddich Artist-in-Residence program, at the Gladstone Hotel. This was the first in-person event in three years as Covid caused the program to be cancelled for 2020, and the last two years were held over Zoom. 

Participants in the Zoom event were sent parcels in the mail that included whisky, Glenfiddich swag and and an artist multiple. The first year included an etched glass by Christof Migone & Marla Hlady, and a coaster by Dean Baldwin Lew. Last year was a second coaster project, by Lee Henderson. 

This year former-resident Vanessa Maltese was invited to produce the third coaster project. She returned to her 2018 project, which explored the subject of pareidolia - the phenomenon in which the human brain perceive familiar shapes in unfamiliar surroundings. Titled Crowd, the set of three coasters depict drink stains which suggest faces. 

The selected artist for the summer of 2023 was announced at the event: Derek Liddington. Derek's proposal was that he was going to hunt for giants in the Scottish landscape, a logical continuation from his current exhibition at Daniel Faria Gallery. 

Lee Henderson | To Conjure From Vapour

Lee Henderson
To Conjure From Vapour
Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2017
80pp., 13 x 8 x 3.5 cm., boxed
Edition of 125 numbered copies

Created while Henderson was the 2017 Canadian artist-in-residence* at the Glenfiddich Distillery in Dufftown, Scotland, To Conjure From Vapour is a tarot deck of metaphysical whisky tasting notes. The work conflates the "tasting note" used in whisky promotion with communion with the spirit world (spirit as alcohol, spirit as soul).

The new work in Henderson's solo exhibition An Abridged Sonic History of Global Conflict, which opens tomorrow, mines similar territory. Henderson presents rock music merchandize in the form of custom embroidered patches, all bearing band names which are borrowed from military operations and armed conflicts.

Joy Division, for example began life as Warsaw, but the band changed their name after the release of an album by the short-lived punk outfit Warsaw Pakt (who were themselves named after the Cold War pact The Warsaw Treaty, a collective defence agreement between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955). The name Joy Division refers to the brothels at Nazi Concentration Camps where inmates were forced to service officers and other prisoners. Despite the allegations of facism for this choice, when the band re-named themselves following the death of singer Ian Curtis, they selected the moniker New Order, with it's own Nazi connotations.

Megadeth is a misspelling of Megadeath, which refers to one million human deaths, usually caused by a nuclear explosion. The term was used by scientists strategizing likely outcomes of nuclear warfare. Gang of Four borrowed their name from the leftist political group, which came to prominence during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and were later charged with a series of treasonous crimes, including the death of 34,375 people.

Fugazi singer Ian MacKaye cites Mark Baker's book Nam as the origin of their band name. The term is an acronym for "Fucked Up, Got Ambushed, Zipped In", a not-uncommon plight for a soldier fighting in Vietnam.

The innocuous and twee-sounding band name The Cardigans comes from the 'hero of the Crimean War', James Thomas Brudenell, the seventh Earl of Cardigan (1797-1868) who went into battle wearing a buttoned knit jacket.

Other bands are named after military planes (the B52's, U2, Enola Gay, Foo Fighters, sort of)
sites of historic massacres (Nanking, Tienanmen Square Dance), chemical and biological warfare (Napalm Death, Anthrax), and historical figures (such as Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian Archduke whose assassination triggered the start of the first World War).

Henderson's designs for the patches emulate military aesthetics: flag-like stripes, military insignia chevrons, and other vexillographical criteria. They are arranged on banners consisting of army green, camouflage fabrics and are categorized by conflict. A pair of Cold War banners, for example, includes patches for Mutually Assured Destruction, Iron Curtain, CCCP, The UK Subs, Charm Offensive, The Subversives, and of course the Cold War Kids.

North America has been called a death-denying society, but much of Henderson's practice involves an investigation into the intermingling of death and popular culture, perhaps most effectively in his epic video collage Palliative Care, which edited the entire run of the NBC senior sitcom The Golden Girls to include only references to death (see post, here). These two projects continue that concern, with a particular focus on promotional language.

An Abridged Sonic History of Global Conflict opens Saturday February 8th, at Zalucky Contemporary in Toronto, and continues until March 7th. The opening reception is from 4 to 6 pm on Saturday. For more information, visit the gallery site, here.


* The 2020 artist-in-residence will be announced later this month.

Instagram

Hopefully daily posts will return in the new year, but in the interim, follow my instagram account, where about 80% of the content is art and about 80% of that content is artists' books and editions.

https://www.instagram.com/dave.dyment/

Lee Henderson | To Conjure From Vapour

Lee Henderson
To Conjure From Vapour
Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2017
80pp., 13 x 8 x 3.5 cm., boxed
Edition of 125 numbered copies.

The Nothing Else Press is very pleased to announce the publication of a new work by Toronto-based artist Lee Henderson. Henderson was artist-in-residence this summer at the Glenfiddich Distillery in Dufftown, Scotland, where he produced several works which examined the notion of "spirit" ranging from supernatural apparitions, to the ideal of camaraderie, to the sort we imbibe.

To Conjure From Vapour is a tarot deck of metaphysical whisky tasting notes:

"The "tasting note" is an increasingly common technique in the promotion of scotch whisky. Most immediately, it can be described as any (expert?) account of the flavours one can expect when tasting a whisky. But at its core is a paradox, or at the very least a riddle—it's a piece of scripted text that attempts to transform a direct, subjective, evanescent experience into a shared language. This should put it firmly into the demesne of poetry.

To Conjure From Vapour therefore considers the tasting note as a communion with the spirit world (spirit as alcohol, but also as breath, or soul, or ideal). It includes a card with a custom text for each of the 22 Major Arcana and the 56 Minor Arcana, with the implements of spiritcraft replacing the traditional suits (barrel staves for wands, clocks for coins, glasses for cups, and hammers for swords). The deck facilitates the divination of one's taste before even touching the spirit; a potomancer's companion." 

- Lee Henderson

Henderson's practice includes video, photography, installation, sculpture, performance, and text. His work moves in constant contemplation of death, in senses grand and minute, somewhere between the persistence of collective histories and the brevity of individual lives. 

A solo exhibition of the work he produced as part of the Glenfiddich, And the Voices Came From Nowhere, can currently be seen at Zalucky Gallery until November 11th. His work can also be seen at Open Studio as part of a two-person visiting artist residency exhibition, until November 18th. 

Lee Henderson selected as the Canadian winner of the 2017 Glenfiddich Residency Prize

Toronto artist Lee Henderson has been chosen by curator Andy Fairgrieve to be this year's 2017 Glenfiddich Artist in Residence. Henderson will travel to Dufftown Scotland in June of this year, where he will live for three months researching local ghost stories and reanimating them electronically. For me, the piece foregrounds the humour that has always been an important part of Henderson's investigations into mortality. And - remembering some of the town residents and Glenfiddich staff from when was there in 2008 - I can imagine them responding very well to this work.

Visit Henderson's site here, the site of his gallerist (Zalucky Contemporary) here, and the Glenfiddich site, here. The full press release is below.


"Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist Lee Henderson has today been announced as the winner of the 2017 Canadian Glenfiddich® Artists in Residence Prize. This summer he will travel to the Glenfiddich® Distillery in Dufftown, Scotland, where he will produce a work that will examine the multiple meanings of the word 'spirit' and "consider whisky as a vehicle for commemoration and an expedient to shared rituals of mourning".

Henderson works in a variety of media, including video, photography, installation, sculpture, and performance, producing elegant investigations into mortality. "But they're typically funny," he says, "…the way that King Lear is funny". During his three-month residency, he will explore past local legends and ghost stories, and then set about re-haunting the spaces electronically.

Henderson is one of only seven artists from around the world awarded the prize, which is one of the most coveted residency prizes in the arts. The selected artists will live and work at the Glenfiddich® distillery in Northern Scotland, near the historic Balvenie Castle.

Celebrating its sixteenth year, the Glenfiddich® Artists in Residence Prize includes travel and living expenses, as well as providing artists with a significant production budget to create and present a new work on-site. Valued at $20,000 per artist, the Residency Prize represents the Glenfiddich® commitment to the arts and the communities it serves.

Andy Fairgrieve, curator of the Glenfiddich® Artists in Residence Prize, shared the news from Dufftown, earlier today. "We are very proud that the Artists in Residence Prize appeals to so many of Canada's leading and emerging artists," he says, noting the high number of applicants this year. Following an Open Call process, a jury of seven Canadian artists and art professionals creates a short list of ten artists, from which Fairgrieve makes the final selection.

In relation to Lee Henderson's residency proposal Fairgrieve says, "Lee's ideas surrounding spirits is of course very apt at Glenfiddich, referencing not only our single malt whisky but the haunting beautiful and historic landscape surrounding the distillery itself. His proposal to create apparitional interventions around Glenfiddich is one I look forward seeing being brought into reality and I am sure will be enjoyed by the Glenfiddich workers and local residents of Dufftown.

Upon learning of his win, Henderson stated, "I'm totally thrilled and honoured, and can't wait to start the project." He will travel to Dufftown in early June. Fairgrieve will be in Toronto this week to meet Henderson in advance of the summer residency.

The Glenfiddich® Artists in Residence Prize has sponsored more than 100 artists since its inception since 2002. Canadian artists include Eleanor King (2016), Jon Sasaki (2015), Rhonda Weppler & Trevor Mahovsky (2014), Daniel Barrow (2013), Jillian Mcdonald (2012), Helen Cho (2011), Damian Moppett (2010), Arabella Campbell (2009), Dave Dyment (2008), Jonathon Kaiser (2007), Annie Pootoogook (2006) and Myfanwy Macleod (2005).

This year's distinguished jury panel included Dr. Sara Diamond, President of OCAD University; Crystal Mowry, Senior Curator at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery; Michelle Jacques, Chief Curator at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; Kristy Trinier, Director of Visual, Digital and Media Arts at the Banff Centre; Ivan Jurakic, Director of the University of Waterloo Art Gallery; Stefan Hancherow, independent curator and Director of the 2015 Feature Art Fair, and the Canadian 2008 Glenfiddich® Artists in Residence Prize recipient, Dave Dyment."

Lee Henderson | Palliative Care (1985-1992)

Lee Henderson
Palliative Care (1985-1992)
Toronto, Canada:  Zalucky Contemporary, 2016
SD DVD 25:00
Edition of 20

Henderson's video assemblage of every reference to death found in the sitcom The Golden Girls opens August 4th at Latitude 53 in Edmonton, Alberta.

Watch an excerpt here and listen to the brand new 'cover' of the theme song by St. Vincent - which she recorded as a 'dirge' no less - at Pitchfork, here.

Lauren Fournier & Lee Henderson | Paradox

Lauren Fournier & Lee Henderson
Paradox
Toronto, Canada: Self-published, 2016
9.6 x 8 x 12 cm.
Edition of 70 [+2 AP]

Paradox (we cannot afford to be productive/we can afford to not be productive) is a ceramic white classic-style mug with wrap-around black text in Marion font. They will be available (shortly) at Art Metropole, for $20.00 each.

"This work reflects a paradox that those with anti-capitalist leanings face when it comes to productivity and privilege. Tongue in cheek, the work acknowledges the limits of its own idealism while nonetheless maintaining the importance of capitalist critique."

- Lauren Fournier & Lee Henderson 

Henderson's exhibition Never Letting Us Take Breath opens this today at Zalucky Contemporary (3044 Dundas St. West, Toronto). For more information visit the gallery website, here.

Lee Henderson | Palliative Care (1985-1992)

Lee Henderson
Palliative Care (1985-1992)
Toronto, Canada:  Zalucky Contemporary, 2016
SD DVD 25:00
Edition of 20


Yesterday Zalucky Contemporary premiered Lee Henderson's fantastic new Palliative Care (1985-1992), a video assemblage of every reference to death found in the sitcom The Golden Girls.

The NBC series was created by Susan Harris and starred Beatrice Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty, as four older women who shared a home in Miami, Florida. The show was both a commercial and critical success, and spawned three spin-offs and eight international remakes (Chile, Greece, The Netherlands, The Philippines, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom).

Henderson has divided his episode-length work into seven sections (for the series' seven seasons) and presents the clips chronologically, by original air date. In a Q&A after the screening, it was revealed that only five (of the 180) episodes were omitted from the work, for lack of a clear verbal reference to death.

The editing is quick and concise, with the rhythm dictated by the original scripts. The references are often mid-sentence and tightly trimmed, with rapid-fire pacing. When the word (death, dying, eulogy, heart attack, murder, die, etc.) falls at the end of the sentence, the canned laughter follows, serving as a strange form of punctuation.

Most of the dialogue takes place in the main set of the shared home - with it's soft pastel 1980's decor.
Other sets include a funeral home, a dinner theatre, and a hospital room. The character of Rose Nylund, portrayed by Betty White is often seen in a hospital bed, surrounded by her visiting friends. Of the four actresses, only White (now 94) remains. The others died within a year of each other at the end of the last decade.

Like many of his best works, Henderson's video offers a compelling (and often very funny) meditation on mortality. Beautifully packaged in a wooden box, the video is also accompanied by a bookwork/folding scroll of a list of each of the words or phrases heard in the video, in alphabetical order.

Nuit Blanche Edmonton photos

Earlier in the fall, I curated the inaugural Nuit Blanche Edmonton. A few installation shots were posted here during the lead up to the event. Below are images of the final presentations, alongside the original promotional texts. 

THE HALF-LIT MOON

Yoko Ono once noted that the paradoxical litmus test to determine cynicism or optimism is inherently flawed. The glass is neither half-empty nor half-full, it is all full: fifty percent with water and fifty percent with air. The observation suggests hopefulness, but ultimately bypasses the dilemma entirely. It serves as a useful, loose, framework for the works in Edmonton’s inaugural Nuit Blanche. These projects include video, audio, sculpture, and installation, many with a performative or interactive element.

Martin Creed’s Half the Air of Any Given Space calculates the volume of a space and fills half with inflated balloons. Visitors are invited to walk through Edmonton’s Pedway network and experience childlike euphoria and mild claustrophobia in equal measure. The inflatable castles stacked in Jon Sasaki’s performance Bouncy Highrise represent a Sisyphean task, a seemingly futile gesture attempted anyway. Sasaki has said of his work that it intends to convey the belief that it is better to do most types of something, than most types of nothing.

Common expressions about ‘Nothing’ and ‘Something’ form the entire script of Kelly Mark’s ten-minute video work 108 Leyton Avenue, in which she argues with herself, in duplicate. Sasha Krieger’s Soliloquy is a collaged video comprised of scenes from movies where a lost or isolated character calls out, only to hear the returning echo of his or her own voice. Andrew Buszchak’s Beacon animates the existing lighting systems in downtown high-rises, using them to convey slow motion binary code messages which presumably fall on predominantly deaf ears.

vsvsvs is a seven-person collective equally interested in construction and destruction. The artists will build a hockey rink and operate a steam roller on it, driving over a variety of objects over the course of the evening. Ali Nickerson’s Blue Christmas presents a kitsch Christmas Wonderland workshop in September. Visitors submit wish-lists and Nickerson and her elves fashion makeshift gifts for them to collect later in the evening. 

Yoko Ono’s Wish Trees will represent the largest presentation to date of one of the artist’s signature works. A hundred-and-twenty-one trees will be temporarily installed in Winston Churchill Square, where Nuit Blanche volunteers will distribute pencils and tags. Visitors are asked to each write a wish and affix it to the branches of the trees until they are covered, looking like white flowers blossoming from afar. A banner reading Imagine Peace, pointedly displayed on the exterior of City Hall, reinforces Ono’s core belief in the personal and political power of wishful thinking.

(photo: Lee Henderson)

(photo: Fish Grikowsky)

Martin Creed

Half the Air In A Given Space

An artwork that has no weight, no permanent shape, and no certain outcome, Half The Air In A Given Space gives tangible form to the air around us. It is an interactive work that invites playful participation.

Creed’s instructions are as follows: "Calculate the volume of the space. Using air, blow up 12-inch balloons until they occupy half the volume of the space... As usual the space should be full of air, but half of it should be inside balloons. Extra balloons may be added over time to maintain the volume of the work, or else the balloons may be left to deflate naturally.”

Martin Creed is a celebrated British artist and musician, well-known for challenging definitions of art through mundane yet thoughtful and impactful gestures. He won Britain’s prestigious Turner Prize in 2001 for Work No. 227: The lights going on and off, in which the lights in an empty room turned on and off at five-second intervals. The year prior his large neon sign the whole world + the work = the whole world, was emblazoned on the façade of Tate Britain. He studied in London at the Slade School of Fine Art, graduating in 1990. He is represented by Hauser & Wirth, Gavin Brown's Enterprise and Galleria Lorcan O'Neill Roma galleries.

Creed states: “I think it’s all to do with wanting to communicate. I mean, I think I want to make things because I want to communicate with people, because I want to be loved.”

(photo: Jon Sasaki)

(photo: Fish Grikowsky)

Jon Sasaki 


Bouncy High-Rise

While ostensibly a comment on urban density and redevelopment (and perhaps a satirical poke at ‘utopian architecture’), Bouncy High-Rise ultimately becomes a Sisyphean challenge. The artist and a crew of installers (armed with a pair of scissor-lift trucks) will attempt to erect a fifty-foot monumental sculpture by stacking seven inflatable bouncy castles on top of one another. Audiences are invited to watch as the performers deal with the inevitable leaning, buckling, deflating and falling of the castles over the course of the evening. 

Jon Sasaki’s projects invariably risk and often court failure, with tragedy an inevitable by-product of a practice that is aspirational at its core. His multi-disciplinary practice borrows strategies from Conceptual Art, and invests them with humour, pathos, and an emotionally resonant core.

Sasaki's work has been exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions, including the Ottawa Art Gallery, (Ottawa); the Tom Thomson Art Gallery (Owen Sound); Dunlop Art Gallery (Regina), the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, (Lethbridge); and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Recent group exhibitions include Platform Art Spaces (Melbourne); Nihonbashi Institute of Contemporary Art (Tokyo); MoCCA(Toronto); The Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, (Toronto); Pace University Digital Gallery, (New York City); and Dazibao (Montréal). He was recently selected as a 2015 artist-in-residence at the Glenfiddich Distilleries in Dufftown, Scotland.

(photo: Kelly Mark)

Kelly Mark

108 Leyton Ave

Kelly Mark sits across the table from herself, drinking, smoking and arguing. The split-screen video projection features the artist masterfully mimicking her own gestures, while debating herself, using colloquial expressions relating to “nothing” and “everything”. The list of clichés are expertly woven into the script as contradictions, counter-arguments, counsel and complaint, building towards a poignant and surprisingly personal portrait of the artist.

Toronto-based Kelly Mark works in a variety of media including sculpture, video, installation, drawing, photography, sound, multiples, performance & public interventions. She received her BFA in 1994 at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design. Mark has exhibited widely across Canada, and internationally at venues including the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), The Power Plant (Toronto), Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Muse d'Art Contemporain (Montreal), Henry Art Gallery (Seattle), Bass Museum (Miami), Ikon Gallery (UK), Lisson Gallery (UK), and the Physics Room (NZ). Mark represented Canada at the Liverpool Biennale in 2006 and the Sydney Biennale in 1998.

(photo: Fish Grikowsky)

Sasha Krieger

Soliloquy

In cinema, the lone traveller, lost in the wilderness, will invariably come across an open space and call out, hearing nothing back but their own echo. This gesture, enacted in the hopes of making contact or just the satisfaction of hearing the reflection of one’s own voice, plays out dozens of times in Soliloquy, the trope collected and arranged as an endless monologue. Projected onto the side of a downtown building, Krieger’s collaged film inhabits the great outdoors, allowing the character’s voices to echo throughout the city. 

Sasha Krieger is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores issues surrounding originality and process in acts of creative production. She received her BFA in Photography from Emily Carr University in 2005 and her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2010. She has exhibited her work locally and internationally at venues such as, UBC AHVA Gallery, Vancouver, BC (2013), MacArthur B Arthur, Oakland, CA (2011), Sight School, Oakland, CA (2010), RVCA, San Francisco, CA (2010) and For-Site Foundation, Nevada City, CA (2010).

(photo: Andrew Buszchak)

Andrew Buszchak

Beacon


Engaging the existing automated interior lighting systems of various buildings in the downtown core, Beacon programs the lights to turn on and off, broadcasting a slow motion morse code. The message is ambiguous to even the skilled observer: it is unclear whether it is intended as a distress signal or a symbol of hope. 

Andrew Buszchak’s work explores systems of belief and exchange; he is interested in how these structures are entwined with the values and customs of contemporary North American society. By manipulating aspects of contemporary life, he seeks a perspective that will help to form new insights on objects and correlations that are often taken for granted.


Buszchak is an interdisciplinary artist working recently in video, print, and exchange. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from NSCAD University (Halifax NS). In 2014, he exhibited videos at Xpace Cultural Centre (Toronto ON), and produced a limited edition print to accompany the Society of Northern Alberta Printmakers’ spring edition of SNAPline. Other recent engagements with Edmonton’s arts community include his reader series Tuesday Night Book Talk held at Creative Practices Institute, and his collaboration with Émilienne Gervais, Custodial Walk, as part of Park(ing) Day hosted by The Drawing Room.

(photo: Fish Grikowsky)

(photo: KZ Photography)

Ali Nickerson

Blue Christmas

A towering green-and-red polka-dot wrapped present is at the centre of a Winter Wonderland, complete with snowmen, Santas, Christmas lights and candy canes lining the streets. It will serve as an all-night workshop, where the artist and her elves will work feverishly to hand-make gifts in response to visitors wish-lists. While awaiting their gift, participants can have their photograph taken with Woody the Christmas tree, a replica of a vintage small town shopping mall attraction.

Ali Nickerson’s practice spans a range of media, including sculpture, drawing, robotics, and craft. Fuelled by skewed narratives, violence, and dark humor, her work embraces the conflicts, uneasiness, and anxieties that shape human life. She received her BFA from NSCAD and her MFA from UAlberta. She has participated the AGA Biennial (2015), and The Biennial of Canadian Fiber Art in Ontario (2008). She has exhibited her work throughout Canada and was the 2014/15 Artist in Residence at Edmonton’s Harcourt House.

(photo: Fish Grikowsky)

Priscilla Monge

Soccer Pitch

Originally created for the 2006 Liverpool Biennial, Soccer Pitch features local teams competing on an irregular football field. The wildly uneven surface renders the rules of the game moot and proposes an alternative type of play.

Priscilla Monge was born in 1968, in San José, Costa Rica, where she still lives today. Her work employs humour, irony and provocation to question existing power structures.

Her work has been exhibited in numerous important international Biennials, including Venice (2001 and again in 2013), Habana (1997), Liverpool (2006) and São Paulo (2004). Other exhibitions include Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (2007) and Hotel Mexico at Luis Adelantado Gallery (2010). Her work is held in numerous public and private collections, including The Tate Britain, Mexico Vivo Foundation, Centro Andaluuz de Arte Contemporaneo in Spain and the Museo del Barrio in New York City.

(photos: Fish Grikowsky)

Gary James Joynes

Ouroboros

Using analog synthesizers and custom-made machines, Joynes creates striking visual representations of sound, both from pure tones and musical compositions. He has honed this method of drawing with sound, to develop a sophisticated vocabulary of mark-making. The intricate and elaborate patterns in the immersive sound and video installation Ouroboros are reminiscent of sacred geometric and decorative imagery from a variety of faiths and cultures. 

Gary James Joynes (who also performs under the name Clinker) is a sound and visual artist who has been active in the international live audio-visual and experimental music performance community for years. Recent performances include ELEKTRA16 (Montreal), CMKY (Boulder, USA), New Forms 14 (Vancouver), MUTEK_IMG (Montreal), SoundsLike, Koffler Centre (Toronto), Electric Fields (Ottawa), Roulette Mixology Festival (New York), Soundasaurus, and Mutek_10 (Montreal). Other festivals and events include Sublimated Landscape / Sonic Topology @ ICA London (London, UK), Tanzstartklar Festival 2008 (Graz, Austria), and Sprawl – Interplay_4 Festival 2007 (Amsterdam, Dublin, London, Bristol).

He has exhibited work at the Harcourt House (Edmonton), The Koffler Centre of the Arts (Toronto), Latitude 53 (Edmonton) and in two solo exhibitions for Edmonton’s dc3 Art Projects (Broken Sound, 2015, and Topographic Sound, 2013).

(photos: Lee Henderson)

Lee Henderson

The Known Effects of Lightning on the Body

A dark and quiet room features an exquisitely filmed video of a single matchstick lit and left to extinguish, projected onto copper screen. The screen dissolves and repeats, the video deceptively appearing to be a short loop, but several different matches are in fact employed, each bowing and bending uniquely. The installation offers a contemplative space, allowing a zen-like meditation of light and dark, life and death, and durational time.

Lee Henderson completed his BFA at the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2003 and his MFA at the University of Regina in 2005. His practice includes installation, video, photography, text and performance. Much of his work, often darkly humorous, contemplates the connection between mortality and photography.

Recent commissions and public projects include Fixing a Novel by Removing all the Adjectives, a single, mirror-polished brick in a cellar somewhere under Berlin; The Crypt of Marie Laveau, as Tintype (a dead medium on a dead medium); and De Mortuis, a recutting of Alfred Hitchcock’s voice to deliver a soliloquy on death and the mediated image. He has shown across Canada, and in Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, Naples, and Berlin.

(photo: Fish Grikowsky)

(photo: vsvsvs)

(photo: KZ Photography)

vsvsvs

Make It Flat

vsvsvs, a Toronto collective of seven artists, are known equally for their elaborate DIY constructions as for their playful acts of destruction. On a temporary purpose-built hockey rink, a steam roller replaces the Zamboni, which indiscriminately levels any object placed in its path. Items selected by the artists, ranging from ramps, ceramics, lightbulbs, yoga balls, air-mattresses, toothpaste tubes, bubble wrap etc., are continually arranged, destroyed and rearranged over the night. The project aims to use the act of destruction as a generative gesture and as an aesthetic spectacle.

Pronounced versus versus versus, the seven-person collective and artist-run centre based out of a warehouse in the Portlands of Toronto have been working together since 2010. Current members include Anthony Cooper, James Gardner, Laura Simon, Miles Stemp, Ryan Clayton, Stephen McLeod and Wallis Cheung. 

Their activities encompass collective art making, a residency program, a formal exhibition space, and individual studio practices. The group’s collective work focuses on the collaborative production of multiples, drawings, video works, sculpture, installations, and performance.

Recently their work has been shown at Katzman Contemporary, Niagara Artist’s Centre, Mercer Union (all 2015), The Power Plant (2014); and Cambridge Galleries (2013). Recent projects include; Coat Check, Platforms Project, Art Athina (2014); Nap Station, Art Toronto; Dunk Tank, ArtSpin; Temporary Monument, Art of the Danforth (all Toronto 2014) and 1-855 IS IT ART, for Toronto’s Nuit Blanche 2013.

(photo: Lee Henderson)

Yoko Ono

Wish Trees / Imagine Peace

"All my works are a form of wishing. Keep wishing while you participate." 

In this special installation of Wish Tree, Yoko Ono has envisioned the placement of 121 trees throughout Churchill Square. Event participants are invited to write a wish on special tags that will be provided, and tie it to a branch of the Wish Trees. After the event, the wishes will be collected and sent to the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER in Iceland, and the trees will be planted in communities throughout Edmonton.

One of Ono’s pioneering uses of advertising space for artworks was the War Is Over! If You Want It billboard campaign in a number of countries throughout the world in 1969 (produced in collaboration with John Lennon). She continues to take out full-page ads with works that combine art and activism.

The IMAGINE PEACE billboard will be hung adjacent to Edmonton’s City Hall on Churchill Square, providing a compelling message to the city, the country, and the world. 

Yoko Ono is a New York-based Artist.

Newspaper Project for Chester Newsstand

Dave Dyment
Born on A Train
Toronto, Canada: AN/CN, 2015
8 pp., 11 x 17", tabloid
Edition of 1000

Born on a Train (& other Stories about Subways, Cinema and the City) is the second subway project offshoot from a film I'm working on called Substitute City (a title Philip Monk graciously allowed me to steal). It will be a feature-length film comprised of clips from cinema and television where Toronto is the location but not the setting. A kind of answer to Thom Anderon's Los Angeles Plays Itself.

Excerpts from the narration were previously published as a poster by C Magazine called Cinema is Not the Station, which was distributed at Villa Toronto, at Union Station in January. This longer text (approaching 10, 000 words) is accompanied by film stills from American productions shot at Bay Lower platform, one of the city's two "ghost stations", and images taken of the rarely-seen platform by myself and Lee Henderson earlier this year.

The newspaper name, USA TODAY - Tomorrow the World, repurposes my all-time favourite graffiti, which I saw scrawled on a newspaper box years ago. Echoes of Leonard Cohen's "First We Take Manhattan (Then We Take Berlin)." But here it refers to Toronto's regular role as stand-in for American cities (New York, Chicago, Boston, Washington, Detroit), and international ones on occasion. Also, the logo helps suggest an actual newspaper, and USA Today is also the only paper mentioned in the text. Next to the American flag (and wire mesh trash cans for NYC), the USA Today newspaper box is perhaps the most common prop used to help Toronto appear as an unnamed American city.

The project was produced for Jess Dobkin's Artists' Newsstand (see tag for previous posts), where it will be distributed for free to commuters. I see it as a site-specific text. It attempts to tell the intertwined early history of cinema and the train, the portrayal of subways and stations, the use of Bay Lower for countless film productions, etc. etc. It can be read as individual articles, or as a continuous essay. It's somewhat timed that riders travelling west would be reading about Bay Lower as they cross above it.

The launch is set for November 19th, a week today, which will also be host to an event with New York collector Harley Spiller. More about that tomorrow.

Nuit Blanche Edmonton: Lee Henderson | The Known Effects of Lightning on the Body

Above: The Orient Travel Centre (at 9668-101a Ave) painted red for Lee Henderson's video installation The Known Effects of Lightning on the Body.


"A dark and quiet room features an exquisitely filmed video of a single matchstick lit and left to extinguish, projected onto copper screen. The screen dissolves and repeats, the video deceptively appearing to be a short loop, but several different matches are in fact employed, each bowing and bending uniquely. The installation offers a contemplative space, allowing a zen-like meditation of light and dark, life and death, and durational time.

Lee Henderson completed his BFA at the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2003 and his MFA at the University of Regina in 2005. His practice includes installation, video, photography, text and performance. Much of his work, often darkly humorous, contemplates the connection between mortality and photography.

Recent commissions and public projects include Fixing a Novel by Removing all the Adjectives, a single, mirror-polished brick in a cellar somewhere under Berlin; The Crypt of Marie Laveau, as Tintype (a dead medium on a dead medium); and De Mortuis, a recutting of Alfred Hitchcock’s voice to deliver a soliloquy on death and the mediated image. He has shown across Canada, and in Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, Naples, and Berlin."

Edmonton Nuit Blanche

I arrived yesterday in preparation for the inaugural Edmonton Nuit Blanche, which takes place this Saturday, September 26th, from 7pm to 4am.

I have curated eleven public projects for the event, mostly in the downtown core. These include sound works, video projections, performance, installations, interactive pieces, etc. etc. The participating artists are:

Andrew Buszchak
Martin Creed
Lee Henderson
Gary James Joynes
Sasha Krieger
Kelly Mark
Priscilla Monge
Ali Nickerson
Yoko Ono
Jon Sasaki
vsvsvs

The project is titled The Halfl-Lit Moon. I'll try to post updates about each work as I visit the various sites in the lead up to the event.

Other commissioned works and independent projects include Brandon Vickerd's Dance of the Cranes (choreographed construction cranes), the Gotta Minute Film Festival (a series of one-minute films) and Pothole Possibilities (artists' projects in potholes).

For full details, visit the Nuit Blanche website, here, and join the Facebook here.

Holiday Recommendations Guest Post #7: Lee Henderson

Masahisa Fukase
The Solitude of Ravens (or, commonly, "Ravens")
1986 (first edition; various other editions in circulation)

Masahisa Fukase's "Ravens" is utterly chilling. It drips with affect, sorrow, and that un-dead un-presence that undergirds even the most mundane photography and that is palpable in the best photography.

Fukase shot like an obsessive, and he advised his students to do the same--I once heard him quoted as having said that the only difference between a great photographer and a merely mediocre one is that the former understands just how many (many, so many) useless images they'll have to shoot before they get a good one. It should be little surprise, then, that Fukase's "Ravens" is the result of perpetual, compulsive photographic capture of the birds that fascinated him.

His subject is not known for playing nice, obviously, and clearly Fukase has placed his emphasis on punctum over studium--shots are over- or under-exposed, film grain enhanced, enlargements pushed to the point of image degradation. But there's a poverty of means echoing the Zen aesthetics of Japan's history; the work is both hard to parse and deeply seductive. It's a paean to noise and flurry and absence.

A fitting gift for a grieving friend, or just someone you love a whole lot.

(For those interested but not ready to take the $500+ plunge, Fukase-san wrote an excellent piece about shooting "Ravens", and other things, for the Aperture publication "Setting Sun: Writings by Japanese Photographers", which gives a glimpse into his character, though obviously with less of the visceral punch of his photographic opus.)

Jon Sasaki
In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning
Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2014
9 x 7 x 3 cm
Edition of 50 signed and numbered copies.

This work has been profiled on the blog elsewhere, but here’s what I especially love about it as a holiday gift:

1 - It requires upkeep and refuelling (with fresh potato corpses every once in a while), so it’s up front about its duality as a “Gift", which is to say as both a generous gesture and an obligation to future action on the part of the recipient.

2 - Given its temporal/consumptive nature, it can easily become a seasonal household tradition (“Hey, honey, it’s mid-December and you still haven’t put up the tree or gotten new potatoes for the Sasaki…”).

3 - It uses up said potatoes, leading to the corollary of the above (“Seriously, dear, it’s late-January and you still haven’t thrown out the tree or those dead potatoes…”).

4 - You can appease your inner dad by wrapping the potatoes in foil as stocking stuffers first... it helps if you’re prepared to make “lump of coal” jokes as your loved ones open said stockings.

5 - The mechanism spells out precisely what so many of us are thinking in the middle of familial obligations. Imagine how comforting it would be during Christmas dinner—while sandwiched between your overaffectionate Aunt Agnes and your uncle with the drinking problem, wondering how you’re going to gracefully get out of having to try the aspik salad—to just look over to the mantle and find some potato-powered sympathy in the form of a silent plea for “HELP.”




Lee Henderson is a contemporary artist in Toronto, Canada. Since completing his MFA in Intermedia (University of Regina, 2005), he has been furthering his time- and lens- based artistic practice while teaching conceptual photography and media art (currently at OCAD and Ryerson Universities in Toronto). Notable recent exhibitions and screening venues include The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Magenta Festival Boston, The Zero Film Festival (USA); The Dunlop Art Gallery, Mendel Art Gallery, The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, YYZ Artist-Run Centre, and gallerywest (Canada); Takt kunstprojektraum Berlin (Germany). He works in contemplation of mortality, between the persistence of collective histories and the brevity of individual lives.