MAC 2020-2021: Materiality of Language

La machine qui enseignait des airs aux oiseaux

34 local artists reflect upon the materiality of language

Virtual preview of the exabits available from December 17, 2020

Click on 3 images on this MAC webpage

The Montreal Museum of Contaporary Art (MAC) presents La machine qui enseignait des airs aux oiseaux. It showcases two curators Mark Lanctôt and Francois LeTourneux and their engagement with the local art scene, as well as the notion of language in all its permutations. These ideas evolved considerably over the course of the past two years, with visits to more than eighty local artists’ studios, conversations with a multitude of artists, writers, researchers, thinkers and diverse art practitioners, culminating in the current exhibition. 

 
“The artists and collectives selected for the show represent an extensive and richly diverse body of works around the theme of language, and how, beyond its spoken and written form, it can also be inscribed upon bodies, gestures and on the very material world around us,” explain the curators. “These works enable us to observe the transmission and translation of knowledge, memory and affects as these come toe to toe with the boundary between the body and technology”.                         

World events shape the narrative
 
Numerous questions were raised during the preparation of this show, which bringing forth new meanings especially in light of the current circumstances. “What is body language at a time when a world-wide health crisis literally force the confined separation of our bodies? How our focus, awareness of time, and our physical senses have been transformed? How can the tools we now rely on to communicate with others subjugate their just scrutiny?”

The show assembles a number of works that explore these issues and offer responses that are, according to the curators, “significant for their kaleidoscopic voices each of which fragment into a unique view of the world.” Every piece contains its own logic while concurrently weaving conversations with other pieces at the exhibition, inviting the visitor to discover and to interpret.

Artists:

• Vikky Alexander
• Trevor Baird
• Thomas Bégin
• Simon Belleau
• Scott Benesiinaabandan
• Sandeep Bhagwati
• Jacques Bilodeau
• Rosika Desnoyers
• Mara Eagle
• Surabhi Ghosh
• Carla Hemlock
• Kristan Horton
• Sheena Hoszko
• Isuma
• Kelly Jazvac
• Suzanne Kite
• Moridja Kitenge Banza
• Karen Kraven
• Marlon Kroll
• Nicolas Lachance
• Yen-Chao Lin
• Anne Low
• Luanne Martineau
• Manuel Mathieu
• N.E. Thing Co
• Jérôme Nadeau
• Isabelle Pauwels
• Guillaume Adjutor Provost
• Walter Scott
• Erin Shirreff
• Eve Tagny
• Samuel Walker
• Nico Williams
• Thea Yabut

Noteworthy: digital preview, film program, podcasts, catalogue

• A free digital preview acting as an introduction to the exhibition, the works and the artists will be available on the MAC’s website starting December 17th.
   
• Author, Ronald Rose-Antoinette, proposes as guest curator a film program entitled chorus, talk through life during the course of the exhibition with artists Denise F. da Silva & Arjuna Neuman, Esery Mondésir, Darlene Naponse, Jamilah Sabur, Kengné Téguia, and Suné Woods.
   
• Daisy Desrosiers, an independent curator, will host a series of podcast interviews with some of the artists of the exhibition.  Available soon on the MAC’s website.
   
• A catalogue accompanies the exhibition and includes an essay by Krista Lynes, several short texts written by Nicole Brossard, Marie-Andrée Gill, Rawi Hage, Symon Henry, Joana Joachim, Michael Nardone, Madeleine Thien, Maude Veilleux, Jacob Wren, as well as a number of extracts compiled by Raymond Boisjoly, by Maya Deren, Jeanne Favret-Saada, Branden Hookway, Alfred Jarry, Catherine Malabou, Ferdinand de Saussure and Michel Serres.

MAC is fully committed to supporting and encouraging the Québec art scene. 

 

McGill Library 2020: Greetings that Pop

SEASON'S GREETINGS THAT POP

The McGill University's Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC) has a fast number of books with cut out images inside them that pop out when you open the page. This season, the McGill Library's RBSC is bringing into focus three festive pop-up scenes from the Sheila R. Bourke Collection that consists of over 2000 items and is rich in the “golden age” of book illustrations from the 19th and to the mid-20th centuries like chapbooks, “toy books” as well as deluxe gift books. Watch the following video.

McGill rare pop up remix video

You can read about the McGill Pop-Up collection here.

The following two videos might also be of interest to you:

McGill rare wintry remix

A Rare Wintry Martlet Remix

 

McGill Library 2020: DIY rare holiday phenakistoscope

DO IT YOURSELF HERITAGE HOLIDAY PHENAKISTOSCOPE

With a slogan Trot away from 2020 with our DIY rare holiday phenakistoscope, the McGill University Library is offering to the public, especially to children and all those young at heart, a real treat of HOW TO make your own phenakistoscope. If you do not know what it is, do not worry. All you have to do is go to this library website and download a .PDF file with a cut out template. Than watch this YouTube video with the instructions how to make it.

Enjoy returning into the past discovering an ingenious invention from those past times.

Happy Holidays !!!

MMFA 2020: Virtual Exhibitions

MMFA MUSEUM'S GIFT OF THE HOLIDAYS:

THE MONTREAL MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS OFFERS ITS EXHIBITIONS VIRTUALLY

December 1,2020 - January 11, 2021

MMFA's  Gift of the Holidays has been extended until January 24, 2021.

To celebrate the holiday season despite the closure of cultural institutions, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is giving its large audience a present, it is inviting the public to explore its exhibitions in the comfort of their home. Go to mbam.qc.ca/en/museums-gift-of-the-holidays/ to access free 3D virtual tours of four exhibitions. After January 11, 2011 these virtual exhibitions will be reserved exclusively for Museum Members. It is a tremendous opportunity to experience these great exhibitions during the times when many of us are not with friends or family.

With great image quality, these virtual tours allow visitors to stroll through the exhibition space at their own pace, admiring each work, reading all the texts on the wall, and viewing the smallest details up close. There is no time limit on the tours, and visitors can return as often as they wish until January 11, 2021. The premature closure of Paris in the Days of Post-Impressionism in early October due to the pandemic disappointed members of the public, and this virtual version provides a last chance to visit it. The audio guide has been integrated into the tour, letting you stroll through the exhibition almost as if you were there.

The virtual tours on offer are:

Riopelle: The Call of Northern Landscapes and Indigenous Cultures
This major exhibition dedicated to Jean Paul Riopelle (1923-2002), a towering figure in Canadian, Quebec and international modern art, is based on original research. The exhibition explores the artist's interest in the North and Indigenous cultures, with nearly 160 works and more than 150 artefacts and archival documents. It sheds new light on the artist's work during the 1950s and 1970s by retracing the travels and influences that fed his fascination with northern regions and North American Indigenous communities.

Paris in the Days of Post-Impressionism: Signac and the Indépendants
Presented exclusively at the MMFA in the summer of 2020, this major exhibition invites visitors on a journey to the artistic effervescence of France at the turn of the 20th century. Through over 500 works from an outstanding private collection, the public will discover a magnificent body of paintings and graphic works by Signac and avant-garde artists: Impressionists, Fauves, Symbolists, Nabis, Cubists, Expressionists, and Neo‑Impressionists. (You can read more about this Impressionists exhibition in my blog here).

Yehouda Chaki: Mi Makir; A Search for the Missing
This exhibition pays tribute to the victims and survivors of the Shoah, on the 75th anniversary of the liberation from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. It immerses the visitor in a poignant installation composed of shadowy portraits of individuals executed in concentration camps, as well as a sculpture of books sadly reminiscent of the burnings of Jewish, liberal or leftist books declared non-German by groups of Nazi students.

In mid-December, one other virtual exhibitions will be added to the list:  

Manuel Mathieu: Survivance
The exhibition brings together some twenty paintings never before shown in Canada, as well as an installation created especially for the MMFA, in which the artist's roots and memories gradually reveal themselves, punctuating the vivid, striking compositions. This first solo exhibition of the artist in a North American museum reveals a fluid, expressive, quasi-Expressionist and sometimes even abstract painting style, revealing a world of contrasts and tensions.

Enjoy the MMFA's Virtual Exhibitions and have a very Happy Holidays!

mbam.qc.ca/en/museums-gift-of-the-holidays/ 

Acknowledgments

The immersive 3D virtual tours were created by Gaspésie Virtuelle,
 
Riopelle: The Call of Northern Landscapes and Indigenous Cultures
An exhibition presented by Hydro-Québec.
Major public partner: Government of Canada.
Major patron: Audain Foundation.
In collaboration with Hatch, the Jean Paul Riopelle Foundation, the Heffel Fine Art Auction House, Tourisme Montréal, RBC and the MMFA's Angel Circle.
 
Paris in the Days of Post-Impressionism 
The MMFA gratefully acknowledges the anonymous private collector for the very generous loan of his works for this exhibition.
Presented by Hydro-Québec
In collaboration with: XN Worldwide Insurance, Tourisme Montréal, MMFA's Angel Circle

Yehouda Chaki: Mi Makir; A Search for the Missing
Major Patron: Bensadoun family
In collaboration with: The Jewish Community Foundation of Montreal and the Azrieli Foundation
With the generous contribution of Roslyn Margles and the Jonathan and Susan Wener family
And support from the exhibition ambassadors: The Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Family Foundation, The Saryl and Stephen Gross Family Foundation, Riva and Thomas O. Hecht, Sari Hornstein, Amy Weinberg and Norbert Hornstein, Joel A. and Rhoda Pinsky, Julia and Stephen F. Reitman, Irwin and Sara Tauben and Viscofan Canada
 
Manuel Mathieu: Survivance
In collaboration with the MMFA's Young Philanthropists' Circle.

For more information about the Montreal Museum of Fine, visit the museum's website.

All images courtesy of @MMFA, 2020.

Click on images to enlarge them.

Hover over images for description and credits.

MMFA 2020: Post-Impressionism

Paris in the Days of Post-Impressionism:

Signac and the Indépendants

July 1 - November 15, 2020

This magnificent exhibition by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) reveals the exuberant artistic innovations and experimentations that took place in France at the turn of the 20th century. It features over 500 works from an outstanding private collection that were generously landed to MMFA by an anonymous collector.

Rare loans

In addition to the over 500 works from the private collection, two rare pieces have been loaned to the Museum from the archives of Paul Signac's descendants. One is the portrait Paul Signac as a Yachtsman (1896) by Theo Van Rysselberghe (1862-1926) - see image just below, and the other is a sketch for In the Time of Harmony (1893) by Paul Signac that will enable the public to learn more about this masterpiece, which cannot be transported owing to its size.

The visitors will discover a striking and significant  body of paintings and graphic works by Paul Signac and other avant-garde artists of that era: Impressionists (Degas, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro), Fauves (Dufy, Friesz, Marquet, Vlaminck), Symbolists (Gauguin, Redon), Nabis (Bonnard, Denis, Lacombe, Sérusier, Ranson, Vallotton), observers of life in Paris (Anquetin, Ibels, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec), Cubists (Picasso, Braque), Expressionists (Feininger, Heckel), as well as the Neo-Impressionists (Angrand, Cross, Hayet, Lemmen, Luce, Seurat, Van Rysselberghe).

The exhibition also brings into focus the social and pictorial issues of the era that prompted a group of artists led by Signac to create the Salon des Indépendants in 1884. What was so innovative and special about that Salon? It promoted the  ideal of a democratic exhibition with neither jury, nor award. Instead they believed that art should be accessible to all and could contribute to the common good. From its inauguration in 1884 to the First World War, the Salon des Indépendants served as a platform for major and historical art developments of the time, including: Neo-Impressionism, the Nabis movement, Symbolism, Fauvism and Cubism. The exhibition situates the Indépendants in the sociocultural and political context of Paris during the Belle Époque.

Paul Signac and the Salon des Indépendants, 1884-1914

Paris, 1900: a revolution was underway in the Belle Époque.

“Art for all!” declared artists who exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants under the motto “neither jury, nor reward.” Co-founder of the Salon des Indépendants, Paul Signac (1863-1935) made a name for himself as the theoretician of the so-called “postimpressionist scientists.” Inspired by the chromatic theories of Charles Henry, Ogden Rood and Michel-Eugène Chevreul, he applied pure colour to the canvas in tightly placed dots, such that the form would emerge from the optical blending in the viewer’s eye. With his “divisionist” technique, he sought to create total art somewhere between the paradise lost of the golden age and social utopia. Signac championed positivist painting, which promoted technical and political modernity. The new pointillist style of his “Neo” peers spread quickly from Paris to Brussels, glorifying the better days to come. According to the writings of such critics as Fénéon, Signac positioned himself as an engaged intellectual in the era of the Dreyfus affair.

“Justice in sociology, harmony in art: one and the same thing.” These words by Signac sum up the vision he applied to both politics and his quest for social justice and harmony. His nearly 80 works on display also attest to his pursuit of social and chromatic harmony. In addition, the exhibition also reveals other movements born of that turbulent era, including Symbolism, Nabism, Fauvism and Cubism.

Paris in the Days of Post-Impressionism is the first Canadian exhibition of this scale dedicated to Neo-Impressionism. It offers a unique opportunity to view these works together, many of which have never been exhibited before.

Do not miss this exhibition if you live in Montreal or can travel to Montreal during the next few weeks before the exhibition closes on November 15, 2020. The tickets have to be purchased online. Due to Covid-19, the number of people who can attend at the same time is strictly controlled. I found my visit and the spacing between the visitors very comfortable, and the works on display to be a real delight to my eye!

Click on images to enlarge them.

Hover over images for description and credits.

All images courtesy of @MMFA, 2020.

For more information about the Montreal Museum of Fine, visit the museum's website.

CATALOGUE: Scholarly publication

The exhibition is complemented by a 384-page catalogue, featuring over 550 illustrations and published in French and English by the MMFA’s Publishing Department in collaboration with Éditions Hazan, Paris. Edited by Gilles Genty and Mary-Dailey Desmarais,it presents research findings and scholarly essays by experts in Post-Impressionism. Contributors to the book include Mark Antliff, Nathalie Bondil, Charlotte Hellmann, Mary-Dailey Desmarais, Claire Denis, Phillip Dennis Cate, Marina Ferretti Bocquillon, Gilles Genty, Hilliard T. Goldfarb, Anne Grace, Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond, Patricia Leighten, Katia Poletti, Véronique Serrano, Nicole Tamburini, Belinda Thomson and Richard Thomson.

P.S.

Unfortunately, due to Covid, MMFA announced a temporary closure of the Museum until October 28, 2020. 

MOB

Centaur Theatre / 51th Season

MOB

English-language Premiere

Written by Catherine-Anne TOUPIN

Translation by Chris CAMPBELL

Directed by Andrew SHAVER

With: Susan BAIN | Matthew KABWE | Adrianne RICHARDS

March 3 – 29, 2020

This play was written by a Quebec TV and film star Catherine-Anne Toupin. The original French production of La meute (the French title of MOB) first played at Montreal's Théâtre La Licorne in January 2018. It enjoyed an immediate box office and critics' success and was re-staged at La Licorne in the summer 2018, and once again in the fall 2019. Catherine-Anne Toupin played the principal character Sophie in all French productions of this play. She is also admired by numerous fans for her roles in highly successful Quebec TV series Boomerang and Unité 9.

Sophie, the MOB's principal character, is a highly skilled professional with a 20 years experience in her field. She loses her job under nerve-racking, sinister circumstances. Disturbed and hurt, she drives out of town, eventually stopping at a B&B run by aging Louise and her engaging nephew Martin. Several booze-fortified evenings lead to more direct verbal exchanges between Martin and Sophie, resulting in an irksome scheming between the two. It is only at that point one becomes aware that the play is a clever psychological chiller with the most revealing ending.

The play deals with a wide-spread and even intensifying phenomenon which also might have touched others in the audience. Under stress, Sophie talks to herself as if in a split-personality type of state. Though this might only be a theatrical device to elucidate better her tragic reality, it is not unusual to experiences a crack, a split in one's psyche under psychological duress. In the world with the falling moral and ethical standards, when ethics and spirituality are being viewed by many as something useless and outdated, the round-about face changes in play's characters point to a much more disturbing phenomenon in the psychological make-up of our society.

Be prepared for explosive shouting and obscenities and other play's sinister and disturbing elements, thought many might also find funny elements in it. Catherine-Anne Toupin positions herself as a black humor comedian.

PRODUCTION TEAM

Set & Costume Designer: James LAVOIE

Lighting Designer: Martin SIROIS

Sound Designer: Jesse ASH

Stage Manager: Sarah-Marie LANGLOIS

Assistant Director: Sarah SEGAL-LAZAR

Apprentice Stage Manager: Trevor BARRETTE

Click on images to enlarge them.

Hover your mouse over images for description and credits.

For more information, visit the Centaur Theatre website.

McCord 2020: Robert Walker-Griffintown

GRIFFINTOWN
EVOLVING MONTREAL
Photos by Robert Walker

February 7 - August 9, 2020

This exhibition represents the first photography commission under the Evolving Montreal program, created by the McCord Museum to document the undergoing rapid transformation of Montreal's neighbourhoods. On displays are some 20 large-format photoprints, along with the projection of another approximately 100 images. Also included are photos from the McCord’s collection.

Robert Walker, a Montreal street photographer, presents a photografic tour of
Griffintown. With his colourful shots from 2018 and 2019, Walker prompts the audience to observe how this Montreal neighbourhood is being transformed by radical changes to its urban fabric. He shows frenzied and haphazard real estate development, and focuses on the loss of the old buildings. This brings into focus the need to preserve our architectural heritage and our common history.

Walker's photoprints are screens that capture the clash of the past and the present, expressing it with colours, shapes and patterns. His photos capture an awkward blend of the remains of the working-class, of the industrial district, and the new contemporary buildings that are replacing them and that are designed for the well-off. A recuring pattern in his photos is vericality of architectural and constraction objects. They contrast with the horizontality of the Grffuntown of the past as shown on the photos from the McCord Museum's collection. This is how the new face of Griffintown, one of Montreal’s oldest and most storied neighbourhoods, is emerging.

Robert Walker:

“I found Griffintown to be a beehive of colourful activity. Demolition shovels, construction cranes, pile drivers, cement mixers, dump trucks, all dramatically highlighted against the dramatic background of the Montreal cityscape. The Transformation of Griffintown turned out to be an exhilarating and challenging project”. 

EVOLVING MONTREAL – A NEW PROGRAM OF PHOTOGRAPHIC COMMISSIONS

To document Montreal’s ongoing urban transformation and promote documentary photography, over the next three years the McCord Museum will be commissioning some well-known local photographers to explore the changes occurring in a neighbourhood of their choice. This program has been made possible thanks in part to funding from the Conseil des arts de Montréal.

Rober Walker presenting his photo book.

Robet Wlker talking to journalists.

Click on images to enlarge them.
All photos in this article by Nadia Slejskova.

CULTURAL ACTIVITIES THAT ACCOMPANY THE EXHIBITION

Screening of the documentary film Horse Palace by Nadine Gomez
Wednesday, February 19, 6 p.m., free
Between the abandoned factories and decrepit buildings of Griffintown is Montreal’s oldest stable, the last remnant of a bygone era. Like an urban tale, this documentary invites us to reflect on the meaning and value of our cities’ intangible heritage.

Photobook Club: About Griffintown with Robert Walker
Wednesday, April 8, 6 p.m., free
The Photobook Club Montréal invites photography enthusiasts to join the discussion group that has the city as its photographic subject for this edition.

Dialogue with Robert Walker
Wednesday, May 5, 6 p.m., free
In conjunction with the exhibition Griffintown, Robert Walker will speak with Hélène Samson, Curator, Photography at the Musée, about his long photographic practice that has taken him from Montreal to Warsaw and New York.

City Talks – Special Edition
Griffintown – Evolving Montreal
Wednesday, June 3, 6 p.m., free
The McCord Museum and Héritage Montréal offer a discussion on the recent transformation of this neighbourhood.

For more information about current exhibitions and activities, visit the McCord Museum website.

McCord 2019 - 2020: Jean-Claude Poitras

JEAN-CLAUDE POITRAS
FASHION AND INSPIRATION

Ocober 24, 2019 - April 26, 2020

McCord Museum features works by a Montreal fashion designer Jean-Claude Poitras whose career span over three decades from the 1970s to 2000s and made a definitive mark on the ready-to-wear (prêt-à-porter) clothing industry in Montreal and the rest of Canada. He is considered to be an icon in the world of fashion and design.

Jean-Claude Poitras received the Order of Canada in 1995. In 1996 he was appointed a Knight of the Order of Quebec (Ordre national du Québec), and was promoted to Officer in 2012. On October 11, 2019 he received the Prix du Québec. His awards also include Fil D'Or de Monte-Carlo in 1989, and two Griffes D'Or in Quebec, in 1991.

This exhibition was jointly organized by the McCord Museum and the Museum of Civilization in Quebec City.

Click on images to enlarge them.
All photos in this article by Nadia Slejskova.

Read about Jean-Claude Poitras exibition at Centre d’art Diane-Dufresne in 2017 here.

For more information about current exhibitions, visit the McCord Museum website.