Like Yussou N'Dour, Montreal artist Peter Flemming is shaking the tree in his kinetic art piece "Reject". Unlike N'Dour, Flemming's work "emphasizes the absurdity of the life cycle of an Xmas tree".

I think for many people who grew up enjoying Christmas, there's nothing quite as depressing as seeing a discarded pine or spruce tree, dying in a dirty January snow bank. The last sad shreds of tinsel clinging to the branches while reddened, dried needles pile below are all reminders of a post-holiday consumer hangover. It's been said the best way to avoid a hangover is to never sober up. Maybe instead, before the Christmas ads go into hyperdrive in a wild thrashing attempt to save our economy (like a drowning man), we could have a pre-holiday hangover. At the very least it will gird us against the painful crash to come.

With that in mind, it's only fitting that this piece which underscores our throw-away consumerism is being exhibited this November, merely weeks after the collapse of our credit-driven markets, and weeks before our annual orgy of spending.

Exhibition Details:
Harbourfront Centre,
235 Queens Quay West.

November 15 2008 to January 4 2009.

Labels: art, media, Montreal, technology

"Nothing Is Lost, Nothing Is Created, Everything Is Transformed" could be the title of my collected financial records but instead is the title of the upcoming Québec Triennial . I'm not sure what it means or how it relates to the work on exhibition at the Musée d’art contemporain in Montreal but I'm keen to find out. According to the Globe & Mail Quebec artists have been toiling quietly without notice – or at least unnoticed by Sarah Milroy. If you've felt as though you've been missing out, then take this opportunity to catch up. The Triennial runs from May 24 to September 7, 2008.

Labels: art, Montreal

Museé d'art de Joliette: 19,800 seconds, 2007
Code: DR1

For over two years now, Dave Ross, a good friend of ours, has been engaged in a futile task. He has been photographing darkness. Not just any darkness, but the darkness of artists' storage spaces. The surprising thing about darkness is just how much it reveals. The results of these long exposure photographs (and I do mean long — sometimes days in length) are often amazing and mesmerizing. The images are made by the almost imperceptible drips of light that, over time, eventually saturate the film and are not only a document of the unseen but of the passage of time it took for the image to be created. Looking at the photos you become increasingly aware of the emerging detail you begin to see, in much the same way your eyes adjust to diminished light in say, a dark room. The longer you absorb the blackness, the more your mind wonders what you are in fact seeing. You may even feel as though you are actually only looking at black and the details are more like the after image burned on your retina. Then, if you've been staring long enough, the image becomes an after image that you see even when you've looked away — as if your own eye is behaving exactly as the film did, slowly having the room interior burned into your rods and cones.

This summer, eight of the images will be exhibited at the Musée d'art Contemporain de Montréal as part of the Quebec Trienniale. Yet the cost of photographing, printing and framing these pictures is noteworthy. To offset these expenses the artist has made available two smaller scale prints for $125 each. To order prints contact Dave Ross before March 21st and indicate which of the images shown here you're interested in. Find out more about the project here.


Museé d'art de Joliette: 1,260 seconds, 2007
Code:DR2

Labels: art, Montreal