Reflections: Reviewers (Part Two)
Akimbo is celebrating its 25th Anniversary this year with a monthly series that draws on our rich archive of clients, critics, and contributors. For our summer installments, we checked in with a few of the more than fifty former Review writers who have covered the Canadian and international art scene for Akimblog since its inception in 2006. We asked everyone the same two questions:
- What are you up to now?
- What have you seen lately that you’ve loved?Â
Steffanie Ling
shenby, flash #19 from @leftaesthetic
1. In the fall I’m starting a PhD in Sociology at Simon Fraser University. I’m currently researching art worker identity (do artists consider themselves workers?) and cultural labour’s relationship to the reproduction of private property. I’m working on a few texts pertaining to my research interests, as well as co-editing a special issue on Harry Braverman’s Labour and Monopoly Capital for New Proposals: A Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry. I’m really enjoying teaching and being active in my union!
2. Recently I’ve found it more challenging than ever to appreciate art of the gallery variety because of 1) geopolitics and 2) class consciousness. To answer the question of what work of art I recently really loved, I had to think really hard (ha ha). To get there, I asked myself, what are the conditions in which I feel most present and where is art in those times and places. Based on that, I think I very thoroughly appreciated the free and repeatable flash sheets by shenby (@leftaesthetic). They regularly design and share posters with anti-imperialist messaging on their Instagram account, but they also occasionally release flash sheets featuring socialist and communist iconography combined with references to popular cultural figures like Adventure Time and Sanrio. I went to a protest back in the spring and I complimented one of the organizers for their Ghibli-inspired tattoo. They replied, “Do you know @leftaesthetic?” A few weeks later a group of people from my union got together to get tattoos and three people got that Ghibli tattoo. I think I really love art that resonates with working class militants.
Sandee Moore
Shinobu Akimoto, Meaning of Making Series: Natsu-mikan (summer orange) Marmalade, 2019, photograph printed on vinyl
1. I have been Curator of Exhibitions and Programming at the Art Gallery of Regina since fall 2019, and became Director/Curator in fall 2023. I am also an occasional sessional instructor in Visual Arts at the University of Regina. Sometimes I still find time to make and exhibit my artwork.
2. One artwork I’ve recently loved is Shinobu Akimoto’s The Meaning of Making Series: Natsu-Mikan (summer orange) Marmalade from 2019. In fact, I loved it so much that I contrived to include it in an exhibition called The Semiotics of Leisurethat I curated. Shinobu’s work is a series of limited edition handmade jars of marmalade made from a fruit tree at the family home she recently inherited. There’s such lovely humour to her deliberately Etsy-informed aesthetic and serious investigation of a twee hobby practice that reveals so much about the ways we value and devalue art, labour, mourning, and originality.
Another artwork I’ve recently loved is the swooping arcs of bear grease and smoke/ash used to coat the gallery walls in Audie Murray’s exhibition To Make Smoke. These billowing soft gray humps warm the institutional walls and envelope viewers in a sense of calm and protection. The sheer scale of the application suggests many meditative hours spent anointing the institution with materials that serve to reveal other worlds and states of being.
Rodney LaTourelle
Justina Los, Pizza Nikotina, 2024, glazed ceramic, cardboard
1. For better or worse, I continue to work on multiple fronts as an artist, designer, writer, and educator. I write reviews for publications such as Border Crossings and Art Review, and contribute to artist catalogues – most recently Eric Schumacher’s What Condition Our Condition Is In. In parallel, I am currently working with recycled concrete and earth-friendly cement to create sculptures and pavilion structures. I have worked together with my partner Louise Witthöft on art and design projects for many years, and we have also been busy recently, teaching the often-overlooked subject of exhibition design at various universities internationally. Looking ahead, we are especially excited for the upcoming opening of our public art project Light From Within installed at the Yonge & Eglinton metro station in Toronto!
2. Between 2007 and 2012, I reported for Akimblog from Berlin, where I still live. The city has definitely lost its radical energy since then, but it is somehow still a lively cultural centre where critical pockets of autonomy are nevertheless relentlessly etched out. I was reminded of this recently while visiting the last show at Spoiler before the former auto parts distributor cum local art “action-space” is demolished to make way for another banal speculative development. The exhibition presented a young generation of artists working in colourful, crafty, and comical ways, unrestricted in form and media. In this frame, Justina Los’ installation of leftover pizza and cigarette butts in glazed ceramic is wonderfully weird and uncomfortably familiar – an apt metaphor for the wider predicament of cultural exhaustion.
I also recently saw Selma Selman’s exhibition at Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, and her video Crossing the Blue Bridge, in which she narrates a harrowing scene from her childhood, was powerfully affective in a deeply lyrical way. Selman describes how her mother shielded her eyes as they crossed a bridge covered in recently massacred bodies during the Bosnian war. In the context of the overall exhibition, her words, spoken on the same bridge many years later, brought home the routinely forgotten human “terms and conditions” of both seeing and visibility, and art’s power to turn trauma into resistance.
Julia Dault
Jenni Crain, Cradle for Harry Bertoia’s Instruments (without instruments), 2019 / 2021, Baltic birch plywood (photo: LF Documentation)
1. I’m an artist. I still write press releases for shows and notes to refine my thoughts and the like, so nothing too public. I was in New York for nearly a decade and then returned to Canada in late 2016, bringing my American partner and child with me. I make paintings and sculptures, and recently have started working in the public realm as I’m increasingly interested in issues of access. In this vein, I started something called Hot Pizza in my spare time, to build a community and opportunities for creativity; to provide teaching opportunities for artists, as well as mentorship; and so that more people can find joy through art making. I also recently joined the Board of Directors at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto.
2. Gallery Director Madeleine Taurins organized a fabulous group show at Daniel Faria Gallery that’s just opened. It’s called In Concert and is a thoughtful look at collaboration. It’s not a new topic, but here feels deeply considered, at once poetic and playful, with a real interdisciplinary mix. Painstakingly made drawings are erased (Claire Greenshaw); pedestals are built for absconded sculptures (Jenni Crain); and carefully crafted and cured poisonous sap (and insect parts!) “paintings” hang in muted, soft tones (HaeAhn Paul Kwon Kajander). The show is well worth a long visit, since the video works (Katie Lyle and Shelby Wright, Robyn Brentano and Andrew Horn) are also great.
Sue Carter
Shary Boyle, Graeme Paterson, Steven Lambke, Sappyfest for Dummies: I’ll Be Your Mirror, 2024, detail
1. For the past few years I was juggling a few gigs (aren’t we all?) as deputy editor at Inuit Art Quarterly, freelance culture writer for the Toronto Star, and as a writing/editing instructor for Centennial College’s books and magazines program. In December 2023 I made a big leap, taking a position as Literary Officer at the Ontario Arts Council. I miss writing as frequently, but I love supporting writers and artists more, especially during such a precarious time in the culture sector. I joke that I want a sequined money gun, but the job itself is rewarding enough.
2. When I first started writing for Akimblog, I was living in Halifax and writing about the Atlantic art scene. Although it’s been a while, I still have dreams that I am living on the East Coast, and when I’m awake I try to keep up through friends and social media. Every August long weekend, I feel the pull toward Sappyfest in Sackville, NB, one of the best (and coolest) community-focused arts and music festivals in the country. The photos from this year’s Sappyfest for Dummies: I’ll Be Your Mirror gave me both pangs of nostalgia and a few laughs. Artists Shary Boyle and Graeme Paterson, along with musician Steven Lambke, organized this community project through which you could drop into screenings of video art and live performances at the Mount Allison Library Theatre sitting alongside an audience of dummies, scarecrows, or body doubles created by artists, musicians, and community members. In one photo I immediately recognized a doppelganger of interdisciplinary artist Rita McKeough who was kicking it at the fest with Felt Noise, an experimental sound and visual art collaboration.
It was entertaining seeing these homemade humans after a recent trip to London where I took in the performance of Abba Voyage, a “virtual concert residency” featuring digital avatars of the Swedish band as they appeared in 1979. So slick and so fun, and while it admittedly hit a nostalgic sweet spot, I would have loved to hang out with the quiet crowd at Sappyfest.
Tammer El-Sheikh
Zinnia Naqvi, On Being Included, 2024, inkjet print mounted on plywood, UV prints, plywood (photo: Toni Hafkenscheid)
1. It was a thrill writing for Akimblog for a couple of years while living in Montreal – needless to say, a choice beat for an art writer. The writing schedule was challenging while teaching at Concordia, but I found it to be a great excuse to get away from the office and the books, and into the city’s countless galleries. Since moving to Ottawa and taking a new position at York University in Toronto, I’ve been doing much less shoot-from the hip art criticism, more academic writing, and a lot of teaching. I value my fellow writers, and veterans from the Akimbo days. Terence Dick, Michael Davidge, and Luther Konadu have made appearances in my recent research and writing, and it’s been satisfying to see this community of writers grow together. Recently Luther reached out to invite me to be an editorial resident on his site Public Parking, along with Eunice Belador and Amy Fung. I appreciated the opportunity to revive my art writing practice in the residency during a sabbatical year that was mostly taken up with academic projects: conferences in Banff (UAAC) and Louisville (African Literatures Association), a guest edited issue of the journal Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (ADVA), a feature article for ESSE’s Tourism issue, a catalogue essay for Joyce Joumaa’s exhibition at Plein Sud, a book review, and an article for an upcoming issue of RACAR on Canadia’s National Parks.
2. My favourite work of late is one I’m thinking about for the RACAR article by Zinnia Naqvi called On Being Included, which showed at Susan Hobbs in Toronto this summer.
Susannah Wesley
Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden
1. In 2022 my artistic collaborator Meredith Carruthers and I started a precedent setting collaborative research creation PhD at Concordia University. This, together with several solo and group exhibitions, has been consuming most of my time. At the moment we’re on our way to Tartu, Estonia, to be part of a group exhibition featuring interactive artworks geared towards children. We tend to roll our life into our practice, and this often involves our experience as parents. The work we will be exhibiting is a series of prompts, drawings, and collages we made with our children during the first Covid shutdown. Children visiting the exhibition will be able to make their own versions of this work.
2. Before heading to Tartu, Meredith and I were lucky enough to visit the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden in St Ives, UK, as part of our research. Seeing her studio and the sculptures in her garden (that she designed collaboratively with her friend, composer Priaulx Rainier) was a special experience. You can touch, look through, and walk amongst her sculptures within the lush and abundant garden. She constantly discussed the intertwining of art and life and parenthood. Her garden brings this philosophy to the fore. It’s a space that can be experienced in a tactile, sensorial, and relaxed way.
Dick Averns
David Mach, The Oligarch’s Nightmare, 2023, installation (photo: Andrew Downes)
1. Since my time writing for Akimblog, I remain actively engaged with the visual arts, continuing my own practice, attaining the dizzying privilege of becoming an escaped post-secondary instructor, embarking on a new career as a curator… and still writing! I am curating Witness: Histories of Conflict in the War Art of Bill MacDonnell, which opens on October 3 at University of Calgary Founders’ Gallery. On the studio front, I embarked in the mid-late twenty-teens on a major social practice public art project addressing art and mental wellness that culminated in RECOGNITION… VALIDATION… REASSURANCE… The project is well articulated in a mini-doc produced by the City of Calgary, and it won the Mayor’s Award for Healing Through the Arts. In 2023 Lubos Cullen curated Illuminating Language, a 25-year survey exhibition of my work for the Vernon Public Art Gallery. My most recent major performance was in New York City at Donald Trump’s first arraignment in April 2023. Events outside the courthouse were truly remarkable and resulted in my latest performative video Ambivalence Blvd: Donald and the Stormy Arraignment.
2. Without a doubt David Mach’s The Oligarch’s Nightmare. Life is tenuous at the best of times, and in what seems like an increasingly conflicted world where “abuse of power comes as no surprise” (as Jenny Holzer would say), it’s refreshing to find a monumental sculpture that functions both as a counter-monument and speaks truth to power. The artist’s wit and smarts immediately invoke a continuum, probing whose truth is the purest or dirtiest. And as with many of his large-scale sculptures, Mach excels at executing a simple idea in a compelling and conceptually rich manner that is also accessible by a wide range of audiences.