Canadian Art Winter Issue Launch and Holiday Celebration
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Canadian Art managing editor Bryne McLaughlin, critic and Magenta Magazine Online editor Bill Clarke, Canadian Art office manager Liz Knox and critic Charlene K. Lau at the fall 2009 Canadian Art magazine launch / photo Yvonne Bambrick |
Canadian Art launched its much-anticipated winter issue at Leo Kamen Gallery in Toronto on Wednesday, December 16, 2009. The evening featured a performance by visual artist and blues-country guitarist Arthur Renwick, whose work was featured in the winter issue and was on view at the gallery.
Wrapping a spectacular 25th year that saw the launch of a new format in the fall, Canadian Art drew its silver-anniversary celebrations to a close with a winter issue that looked at the idea of Canadian art history from a variety of angles.
Exclusive to the issue was an excerpt from award-winning author Ross King’s forthcoming book about the Group of Seven’s war years. King’s book, connected to an exhibition at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in the fall of 2010, picks up the story of the group in 1916 as World War I rages in Europe and artists at home face critical local audiences.
Also in the issue, former Walrus arts editor Daniel Baird surveyed the recent photographs of artist Arthur Renwick, who asked a slate of contemporary First Nations artists to transform themselves in front of the camera.
In other highlights, writer R.M. Vaughan profiled sculptor extraordinaire John Dickson on the occasion of a survey show of his works in Clarington, Ontario. In Toronto, author Gillian MacKay profiled artist Iris Häussler, whose installations based on fictional historical characters engaged (and sometimes enraged) audiences in Toronto for three years, including in a surprise project at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Curator and critic Philip Monk revisited the launch of General Idea’s infamous FILE magazine, one of the keystones of artist-run culture in the 1970s. From Montreal, author E.C. Woodley visited the iconic Quebec modernist painter Fernand Leduc, now in his 90s. And from Vancouver, Sara Mameni, winner of the first Canadian Art Writing Prize, published an expanded version of her award-winning story on artist Denise Oleksijczuk and the making of her 2008 film Role.
This winter issue was accompanied online by image portfolios, Vancouver Cultural Olympiad picks and a video from the Power Forum at Art Toronto.
To subscribe to Canadian Art or give a subscription as a holiday gift—and to receive a substantial discount off our newsstand prices—please visit canadianart.ca/subscribe.
