June 07, 2001 - July 18, 2001
Bill Huffman is a public gallery director, curator and writer. He has worked with a number of key Canadian arts institutions including The Power Plant Contemporary, Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario Access Art Gallery, Canadian Art Magazine and A Space Gallery. Huffman is founding co-editor and publisher of the print and online cultural journal Metro: Chronicles in the First Person. He is currently the Director/Curator at the Art Gallery of Sudbury in Ontario.
7 June 2001: Campo Santa Marina, Venice (Italy) 18
July 2001: Absolut LA International Biennial Art Invitational,
Los Angeles (United States)
Curated by: Bill Huffman
Artists: Vera Frenkel (Canada)
-- Veli Granö (Finland ) -- Gunilla
Josephson (Sweden/Canada) -- Gwen MacGregor and
Lewis Nicholson (Canada) -- Darlene Naponse (Canada)
-- Tanja Ostojic (Belgrade/Ljubljana) -- Lori
Paradis (Canada) -- Paolo Ravalico Scerri (Italy)
-- Cheryl Rondeau and Heather Topp (Canada ) --
Carl Skelton (Canada/United States) -- Lisa
Steele and Kim Tomczak (Canada) -- Julie Voyce (Canada
) -- Jay Wilson (Canada)
Supported by:Nenad Andric, Art
Gallery of Sudbury, Michael Bellmore Consulting, Cambrian College, The
Canada Council for the Arts, Borut Krajnc, Christian Lacroix
(Paris), City of Greater Sudbury, Department of Foreign Affairs and
International Trade (Canada), Sylvie Ferre, Darlene McIntosh,
Metro Magazine, Ministry of Culture (Republic of Serbia), Ontario
Arts Council, PLANiT Design Inc., Matthew Rose, Cheryl
Rondeau, Comtesse Henri de Saint Pierre, Harald Szeemann, Karl
Skierszkan, Jeremy Stigter, Sudbury Community Development
Corporation, Venice Biennale of Visual Art
Head Frame Program Details and Artists' Biographical Information
This Is Your Messiah Speaking 1991
Vera Frenkel
9:50min running time, single channel version (Newcastle/London)
A key work in Vera Frenkel's Messiah cycle, and source for her
Piccadilly Circus Spectacolor Board animation (Messiah Speaking, Artangel
Trust, London ), this videotape traces the collusive bonds between
consumerism, fundamentalism and romance. Through distilled texts and
compelling images, several intertwining modes of narrative and representation,
from handwriting to American Sign Language, reveal the psychic engine of the
culture. This work is accessible to the deaf.
Vera Frenkel is one of Canada's leading multidisciplinary
artists, known for projects like Messiah Speaking, ... from the Transit Bar
(documenta IX) and Body Missing, that explore the forces at work in human
migration, the experience of displacement and deracination and the learning
and unlearning of cultural memory. Her work was last seen in Venice at the
Club Media of the 1997 Biennale. The Body Missing Project, a video-web-photo
installation first created at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Linz, has
subsequently toured Japan, Europe and North America, and is currently
installed at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris en route to the Sigmund
Freud Museum, London. She is currently working on The Institute: Or, What We
do for Love, a poly-serial video-web narrative on the travails of a large
cultural organization. http://www.yorku.ca/BodyMissing
The Path to the Quays House, 2000 - 2001
Veli Granö
10min running time, silent video
"Perhaps the incredible feeling inside me was caused by all the
disappointments, abandonment, pain and loss during my earthly life that my
belief in happiness was almost non-existent, not to mention love. But due to
my visits to Sirius I have found the inner peace and self-confidence, the
meaning for my life. My life has, indeed, become happier. And I have found my
true self, and was given little Mira as a gift from heaven. ... Despite all
the hardships I am grateful for everything I have experienced during my
earthly life, as well as to my earthly parents." I traveled a long way to this
moment. / The moment when I see myself / -as through a fragile film- / as a
bright reflection of something greater. / It is great to be even a speck of
dust / amidst the endless world of stars. / To come from there, and there to
return. -- PER ARDUA AD ASTRA (through difficulties into the stars) The Path
to the House of Quay is filmed journey to wise man Quays house at Sirus. The
film reel is 100ft long and duration of this walk is 10 minutes. This text and
the film are from Granös latest installation and film project (The
Stardweller, 2000-2001) that respects people's strangest desires. It tells the
story of a woman who dreams of going to Sirius where her lost child found her
home.
Veli Granö was born 1960 in Kajaani, Finland and graduated
with a BA in 1986 from the Lahti Design Institute. He works as a visual
artist, photographer and filmmaker in Helsinki and his work has been shown
extensively in Finland, Europe and the United States. vgrano@uiah.fi
PETIT MAL IN VENICE, 2001
Gunilla Josephson
approx 10min running time, stereo mix sound
Torpor Drifts Through
the Rooms of the Palazzio. Lost Moments of Consciousness and Languid Solitude.
Exquisite corpses in Decadence -- the Eye, the Face, the Mouth.
Gunilla Josephson is a Swedish-born artist with a BA in Social
Sciences from Stockholm University and an MFA from the College of Art and
Design in Stockholm. She lives in Toronto and exhibits extensively in Canada
and Europe. Josephson recently received the Festival Prize of the
International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany, for her video HELLO
INGMAR. In October 2001 she will exhibit her most recent video installation
HEDDAISMUS at Gallery Leena Kuumola in Helsinki, Finland. Josephson's work is
distributed through V tape in Toronto, Canada and she is represented by Leena
Kuumola in Helsinki. gunilla@sympatico.ca
7 pm (the trailer) 2000-2001
Gwen MacGregor and Lewis Nicholson
3min version (original running time 365min)
7 pm is a yearlong project (for now) that systematically documents
one minute of MacGregor’s and Nicholson’s life at 7pm. Every night five
minutes of video are shot of whatever they are doing. One continuous minute is
chosen as part of the final tape. Currently there is a 3-hour version (six
months) being exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Head Frame will feature
a three-minute trailer of 7 pm.
Lewis Nicholson is a graphic designer and artist who moved to
Toronto from London, England, seven years ago. Since then, apart from a brief
stint with Bruce Mau, he has been working as an independent designer for
mainly culturally based clients and recently, more specifically, for artists
and art institutions designing catalogues and support materials. He has
collaborated on several artworks including 7pm, currently on view at the Art
Galley of Ontario. lewgwen@interlog.com
Gwen MacGregor is a Toronto-based visual artist. She has made a
substantial body of site-specific installation work that is multi-disciplinary
in its approach, incorporating video, performance photography and sculptural
objects. She has exhibited her work extensively in Canada as well as London,
England, Prague, Czech Republic and Mexico City. She currently has a solo
exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario curated by Jessica Bradley. gwengwen@interlog.com
And Your Love Will Make it Better, 2001
Gwen MacGregor and Jay Wilson
approx 6min running time
And Your Love Will
Make it Better, 2001 is a collaborative audio/video and competitive experiment
that is part courier race, part surveillance contract and part sonic whisper.
The subjects tail and chase, revealing themselves in the act through image and
subconscious rumblings. This fast-paced spontaneous urban drama results from
undefined parameters and the willingness to rub two ideas up against each
other to see what (did) happen(s).
Gwen MacGregor is a Toronto-based visual artist. She has made a
substantial body of site-specific installation work that is multi-disciplinary
in its approach, incorporating video, performance photography and sculptural
objects. She has exhibited her work extensively in Canada as well as London,
England, Prague, Czech Republic and Mexico City. She currently has a solo
exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario curated by Jessica Bradley. gwengwen@interlog.com
Jay Wilson is a multi-disciplinary artist, designer and
ex-zookeeper. He is the president of the Board of Directors of Mercer Union,
Centre for Contemporary Art in Toronto. Jay is involved in the Enemy Project
with collaborator Derek Sullivan and will be part of Officina America, curated
by Renato Barilli, in Bologna, 2002. walnut2@sympatico.ca
Someone's Stealing Energy, 2001
A short unnatural film by Darlene Naponse
2min running time
This short film is
challenging the realms of energy sources within the quadrants of people, like
the one's standing beside you and yourself. There are people in the world that
are battling the 'debauched-passengers' in this world. These are the people
who steal your energy. This experimental short, visits the unnatural world of
choice and consequence in a journey with hope to find more energy. Visuals and
music help portray the story, of a man with no name, who takes what is left
from inside himself and contacts the worlds under him. The
'debauched-passengers' is a metaphysical story of technological gods and
goddesses, transformed in your house. What happens when a technological
breakdown confuses the 'debauched-passengers' and all sub-terrestrial life
forms join together. A sarcastic, unnatural film in the sense of it's
non-sci-fi movement, and it's fantastical array of new ideas.
Darlene Naponse is a young Ojibway woman from Atikmegoshing -
Whitefish Lake First Nation in Northern Ontario. She writes, directs, produces
and thinks a lot about film/video, television and multi-media. She sees
herself as a independent video/filmmaker creating 'Rez-Style Filmmaking'. She
can be found standing in the edge of the reserve twirling, while looking to
the sky, wondering and creating. You can find some of her work on Canadian
broadcast stations like APTN (Aboriginal Peoples Television Network) and WTN
(Woman's Television Network). Her shorts have also been screened and won
prizes in different film/video festivals across Mother Earth. darlene@pineneedleblankets.com
I'll Be Your Angel (video documentation of a performance) Tanja
Ostojic, ©2001
(recorded and edited by Cheryl Rondeau)
15min running time
I'll Be Your Angel, a performance created for the 49th Venice
Biennale, consists of a four-day performance with Venice Biennale Director
Harald Szeemann, as supporting 'actor'. The set is the Biennale and its
pavilions, openings, cocktails, dinners, press conferences... As Szeemann's
escort and 'angel', I have structured the work using elements of mystery, both
personal and public and playing with the glossy gossip of art world whispers.
The piece is designed to provoke a questioning of existing power structures.
In using Szeemann as 'material', I am accessing his iconic stature. He is a
respected and powerful personality with a 'loaded name' who can 'guarantee' a
public platform for my fragile questions concerning the re-valorization of
human relationships within the art world. A major cultural event, the Venice
Biennale is also a global phenomenon. It is a tourist attraction, a place of a
grotesque celebration of art as commodity and an intellectual soup...
The video incarnation of I'll Be Your Angel is the result of a
surveillance mission conducted from within the walls of the Biennale. In many
ways, it is a guerrilla commando event, providing those on the outside a
glimpse in. This video document becomes an 'unofficial' component that fluidly
snakes in and out of the language and the construct of the art system.
Tanja Ostojic is a performance and inter-media artist born 1972
in Yugoslavia, based in Belgrade. MA: Faculty of Fine Arts, Belgrade and
ERBAN, Nantes, France. Exhibitions: 2001: Body and the East Gallery Exit Art,
New York; 1999: PS1, New York; DESTE, Athens; ICA, London; Polysonneries
Festival, Lyon; 1998: Manifesta 2, Luxembourg. Exhibited unofficially on the
Venice Biennale in 1997 and 1999. Ostojic is active in socially and
politically engaged art, internet, video, theatre, writing and curating
exhibits throughout Europe. tostojic@yubc.net
and hottanja@hotmail.com; Looking
For A Husband With EU Passport: www.cac.org.mk/capital/ostojic/;
Three/Free postcards project: www.galerija.skuc-drustvo.si/ostojic/;
text by M. Rose: www.art-themagazine.com/paris3.htm;
Remont #2: www.co.yu/artzine
child's play (a look at McLuhan), 2001
Lori Paradis
8:30min running time
"Jobs are finished; role-playing has taken over; the job is a passé
entity. The job belonged to the specialist. The kids know that they no longer
live in a specialist world; you cannot have a goal today. You cannot say, "I'm
going to start here and I'm going to work for the next three years and I'm
going to go all that distance." Every kid knows that within three years,
everything will have changed -- including himself and the goal."
-- Marshall McLuhan with A.F. Knowles, York
University Instructional Services Video, 1971
Lori Paradis is a Sudbury-based artist after the question, an
understanding - what is to be we? what is it to be you? what is it to be
me?... questions of time, of space - of rhythm. Her work surrounds the chaos
within simplicity, to push and shove what's immediate. Her work can also be
viewed at Tranz-Tech International Video Art Biennial October 2001 in Toronto
- or you can talk to me. rambler321@hotmail.com
Io ti ucciderò (I will kill you), 1999
Paolo Ravalico Scerri video and performance intervention, dimensions
vary
In
this video installation, I want to speak about the violence that every man
lives daily, the violence towards him self. In this video installation you can
see a man (I am the actor) slowly coming up from the border of the screen. He
picks up a knife, points it at the spectator and then violently throws it
away. After this, he undresses and falls down - a victim of himself.
Complementing the video component, I also perform as part of the installation
- moving through the crowd making eye contact with individuals. Confronting
and 'staring them down'.
Paolo Ravalico Scerri was born 1965 in Trieste, Italy. He holds
an MA from the University of Bologna, Graduate School for the Humanities -
DAMS Thesis: Aspects of video Art. He also hold and undergraduate degree in
Fine Arts at the Trieste Art Institute. His work has been included in several
solo and group exhibitions across Europe including DEFINIZIONE D’IDENTITA, Il
Ponte Project in Rome and SCOPANDO, B&D Studio Contemporanea in Milan. Scerri
lives and works in Trieste. scerri@libero.it
STILL BORN, 2001
Cheryl Rondeau and Heather Topp
5:30min running time
Ruminations on reclaiming the bedrock. A short, sensitive survey of one
woman's journey.
Cheryl Rondeau is a photographer and visual artist whose work has
appeared in a variety of publications. metro@sympatico.ca
Heather Topp is a multi media artist. Born in Montreal, Quebec
(Canada), influenced by many summers on the shores of Burnt Church, New
Brunswick. Moved to Sudbury, Ontario in 1980.
Prisoners of Information, 2000
Carl Skelton
5min running time
A five-minute video,
telling the story of daring escapes from a couple of (mental) black holes, and
the subsequent invention and performance characteristics of the Agency
Inducer. The Agency Inducer is an example of the video projector's potential
as a therapeutic device -- an animated image is projected onto the viewer's
chest and belly, in order to perfectly balance their power and responsibility,
without rupturing their sense of humor.
Carl Skelton was born in Toronto, educated Canada and France,
lives and works in New York and teaches in Brooklyn. carl@ultratopia.com
We're Getting Younger All The Time, 2001
a video installation by Steele+Tomczak
60min running time
When first we cast a shadow, eternity becomes possible. An echo of
Plato signals the yearning: if I am here now, then let me be here when next
the sun sets, rises, tomorrow, a week from now, next year ... for awhile, a
long while, forever (perhaps). If it's not asking too much. We bargain,
creating whole cosmic spheres that revolve around our constructed faith.
Unbelievers simply fall away, doubting the possibility of ever-lasting life,
they exist as outsiders, expelled from the circle.
Steele + Tomczak have worked exclusively in collaboration since
1983, producing videotapes, performances and photo/text works. Legal Memory
(1992), their first feature-length work, has been shown in a number of film
festivals since its release including: The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian
Festival, the Festival Internazionale Cinema Giovani (Turin, Italy), the
Toronto Festival of Festivals and broadcast on TVOntario. In 1996, their work
THE BLOOD RECORDS: written and annotated, received a world premiere at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York. Their installation work We're Getting
Younger All the time is currently on tour in the U.K. Steele teaches at the
Ontario College of Art & Design. Steele and Tomczak co-teach in the Visual
Studies Department at the University of Toronto and are founders of V tape, a
Toronto media arts centre. kimlisa@interlog.com
Gnat Devil, 1998
Julie Voyce
(Buttons courtesy of R.E.D. H.O.T. Productions)
Julie has a colleague who conjures beautiful things. His name is Ed
Pien. Ed suggested Hell as a project. Over 200 people were asked about their
pet peeves. There is a Patron-Anti-Saint of all pet peeves. It is the
Gnat-Devil. Any soul who confided a peeve received a Gnat-Devil button. You
can read the book. There is also an option to take a quick trip to Hell and
back.
Julie Voyce likes to make prints and drawings and jewelry and
paintings and books and knick-knacks and the odd toy. Ms Voyce gets a real
thrill doing correspondence art. She lives in a large city and has a deck. The
lake is a 20-minute walk away. jvoyce@hotmail.com
Start Singing Somewhere - Realized, 2001
Jay Wilson (from the Wish List Series)
The Wish List
Series are sculptures that spell out things I want to do before I die. Lately,
I've started to realize my wishes; last year, for example I really camped, but
I still have to thank Joni (Mitchell that is). Start Singing Somewhere -
Realized consists of me singing the word Somewhere for five minutes. The piece
is improvised in any location. It's not as monotonous as it sounds. It is
about the joy of singing even if you have insurmountable stage fright. I start
with my back to the audience, perhaps down an alley, facing a corner or in a
stairwell and for the next five minutes I face my fears.
Jay Wilson is a multi-disciplinary artist, designer and
ex-zookeeper. He is the president of the Board of Directors of Mercer Union,
Centre for Contemporary Art in Toronto. Jay is involved in the Enemy Project
with collaborator Derek Sullivan and will be part of Officina America, curated
by Renato Barilli, in Bologna, 2002. walnut2@sympatico.ca
