CONTACT 2009: Still Revolutionizing Photography

The theme of this year’s CONTACT photography festival, “Still Revolution,” functions as a double entendre: not only does it conjure photography’s capacity to arrest a revolutionary moment on paper, but it also points to the medium’s ongoing technical evolution.

Jon Sasaki: Positive Thinking

For Nuit Blanche 2008, Jon Sasaki set 26 mascots loose on a stadium field, certain that boredom would quickly set in. Instead, the mascots danced all night to the crowd’s delight. This lesson in positivity over pathos rings through Sasaki’s latest exhibition.

Raphaëlle de Groot: Object Lessons

Earth Day earlier this week encouraged Canadians to reuse and recycle consumer goods. It’s a strategy that’s sculpturally reworked—albeit with some emotional implications—in an ongoing collaboration project by Quebec artist Raphaëlle de Groot.

Steve McQueen: A Hunger for Art

UK-born artist Steve McQueen has received huge media coverage this spring for his prizewinning feature film Hunger. The Venice Biennale is next. In the meantime, a small but important exhibition of his work is on view at the Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff.

Tim Gardner/BGL: Hello, Again

Tim Gardner’s career has had a quiet yet meteoric rise in the last few years, with a solo show the National Gallery in London and group shows internationally. Now an exhibition puts him side-by-side with one of Canada’s more extroverted art darlings, BGL.

Charles Stankievech: Distant Early Warnings

Conjuring both Dr. Strangelove and Buckminster Fuller, Yukon artist Charles Stankievech plays with some of Canada’s chilliest Cold War memories in The DEW Project. This month, the results can be found on both (river) ice and the Internet.

Barry Allikas: Event Horizons

Montreal painter Barry Allikas combines the enigmatic with the sinister in his latest works. Alternately evoking rave parties, Motherwell paintings, and hard-edge traditions, Allikas creates meeting places between intent and action.

by Cameron Skene

Douglas Coupland: Mom and Dad

Douglas Coupland interweaves artistic and biological lineages in his latest exhibition in Vancouver. Working with mixtures of wigs and hair, the result is a mix of darker and brighter (or, perhaps, blonder) symbols and symmetries.

Garry Neill Kennedy: Not Down for the Count

The spectre of impending closure has long loomed over Halifax’s Khyber ICA. But with his latest installation, filling the windows of its building, art icon Garry Neill Kennedy suggests the centre may have a future yet.

Chiara Clemente Speaks at RAFF 2009

Listen in as filmmaker Katherine Knight speaks with Chiara Clemente, director of Our City Dreams.