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Nobuo Kubota Loop Holes 2003 Video still Courtesy of the artist |
Robert Morin’s films, which I have never seen despite his incredible fame in Quebec, blew me away. (Such are the linguistic divides in Canada that I’ve seen Steve Reinke’s work several times, but never his.) Four films from Morin’s early 1980s production seem to master the condition of the unreliable narrator, and of using fragments from one experience to talk about another. His 1984 film Evil Madness is a tour de force, combining campy werewolf legends, unreliable narrators, down-home Quebecois snowmobilers and socioeconomic unease to terrific effect. Morin’s work with amateur actors here and elsewhere is also breathtaking, blending reality and fiction with terrific skill. Fans of more recent works by the Coen brothers and Guy Maddin should find a lot to savour here.
Also strong in contemporary feel is documentation from some of Rita McKeough’s recent performances. McKeough’s combination of interests in sound, animatronics, environmentalism, labour and gender makes her, when nestled quietly into the drywall during some performances, like a kind of Ana Mendieta of the Home Depot generation. Whether walking city streets with a pet tree on wheels or hanging onto the bumper of a carlike machine as it moves slowly across a gallery, McKeough’s interweaving of art’s macho and fey impulses is very effective.
One artist that will almost certainly be unfamiliar to many viewers is Kevin Lockau, exhibited here under the aegis of the Saidye Bronfman Award for excellence in fine crafts. While the bulk of Lockau’s work tends to the abstract, the more figurative work here, of two dogs, is quite appealing. Lockau pioneered techniques of glass casting, and his dog figures are impressive amalgams of concrete, sand, natural rock and steel as well as glass. He gets the gesture of these animals just right as they prick up their wonderful transparent ears to check each other out. It’s one of the first things you see when you enter into the space and it well suggests viewers approaching strange pieces of artwork, sniffing them for familiar reference points.
Sculptor John Greer, unfortunately, is represented by a not-so-strong work. In 1989’s Reconciliation, five stone-carved fruit-pit shapes are arrayed around a large bronze leaf. It’s the leaf that throws the work off for 2009 viewers; it seems clumsy and dated, even though the elegant stone-carved forms maintain their appeal. Greer’s scope of work across his career is so broad that it would be good to see more or different work by him, or even photographs thereof.
Also perhaps in need of more elucidation are works from Nobuo Kubota. His Sound Loops video from 2003 is striking, with nine streams of video and sound interwoven into a grid format. All the sound is Kubota’s manipulated vocals, conjuring the experimental voice works of John Zorn and John Cage, as well as, perhaps, the Zen-monk traditions an accompanying text alludes to. Yet the work is also, in a sense, claustrophobic; in this and in Kubota’s “phonic slice” works, there is a reading that suggests being overwhelmed and hemmed in by language rather than rising above it into another plane. Perhaps more examples of Kubota’s diverse practice would have conveyed, again, the wider backdrop of his interests.
A single painting by Gordon Smith does stand as strong evidence of his work on landscape and abstraction, with easy links to Monica Tap’s blurred and layered landscapes and other contemporary trends. But again, it would have been nice to see more.
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Gordon Smith Winter Pond 2002 Courtesy of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa / photo © NGC |
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