VoCA's Top Five: Cockburn, Gringler, Zack, Bayne, Marman & Borins

Every *SECOND FRIDAY* VoCA will introduce our 'TOP FIVE' - five Canadian artists whose exceptionally well-made, well-conceived and original work we've recently featured, and recommend to art collectors.

This week:

Daniel Cockburn - video

Click HERE

Jason Gringler - painting

Click HERE

Etienne Zack - Painting

Click HERE

Mike Bayne - Painting

Click HERE

Jennifer Marman & Daniel Borins - Sculpture & Installation

Click HERE

VoCA Recommends...Gothic art at Edward Day Gallery, Dianne Bos in Vancouver & Global art links

1. Dan Kennedy: Lost in the Echo: New Paintings and Drawings & Catherine Heard: Errata

Edward Day Gallery, Toronto

November 3rd - 25th 2007

Click HERE for gallery website



Dan Kennedy, The Voice Mansion, 2006. Image: edwarddaygallery.com

Dan Kennedy’s paintings have a gothic flavour wherein geologists and tramps, hunters and itinerant professors, beards and volcanoes, sleepwalkers and hucksters, sedimentary rock and the Milky Way galaxy all become actors and settings for the beginning of a journey into stories of geologic time, stardust adventure.


Catherine Heard, Symmetries #10, Cut paper. Image: edwarddaygallery.com

Medical science, monstrous deformity and mythology converge in Catherine Heard’s Errata installation. Sculptures and intricate hand-cut paper pieces combine the beauty of craft and the curiosity of the monstrous form.


Catherine Heard, Symmetries #13, Cut paper. Image: edwarddaygallery.com


2. Dianne Bos: Lumen

Jennifer Kostuik Gallery, Vancouver

2-25 November 2007

Dianne Bos is well known for her museum exhibitions that feature handmade cameras, walk-in light box installations, and sound pieces.


Dianne Bos, Versailles, Ghost in Window, 2003, Color pinhole photograph. Image: kostuikgallery.com

These tools and devices formulate and extend her fascination with journeying, time, and light-forms. Over the past 25 years Dianne Bos has continually explored motifs such as galaxies and constellations, European interiors with light portals (such as windows or doors) and figures presented as light apparitions.

Lumen is Dianne Bos' first Vancouver solo exhibit will feature new photographic installation including illuminated light boxes, book cameras and images from real and imagined voyages.


Dianne Bos, Rapallo, Italy, 2005, Color pinhole photograph. Image: kostuikgallery.com

For more information, please click HERE


3. Art links from around the world

-Doris Salcedo’s crack at the Tate Modern:

Read full article HERE

-Chanel’s mobile art project:

Read full article HERE

-Legendary art dealer Illeana Sonnabend dies:

Read full article HERE

-The cult of Frida Kahlo:

Read full article HERE

Video Art at MoCCA, Toronto & LeMoine FitzGerald at the University of Manitoba

1. ANALOGUE: Pioneering Video from the UK, Canada and Poland 1968 - 1988, at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto

Friday, November 2, 2007 1pm - 10pm
Saturday, November 3, 2007 10am - 6pm

For more information, please click HERE


Colin Campbell, Sackville I'm Yours, 1972. Image: uclan.ac.uk

This event seeks to illuminate the little-known early histories of artists' video, linking the work of artists in the UK, Canada and Poland in order to broaden an understanding of how, in the course of 30 years, a versatile and politically charged medium made the transition from the margins to the mainstream of contemporary art practice.


From Robert Morin's award-winning Yes Sir! Madame...Image: canadacouncil.ca

To date, ANALOGUE has screened in 3 other venues in the UK (TATE Britain, FACT Liverpool and Norwich Art Gallery) and at Anthology Film Archives in New York. This fall, it travels to Canada for a 2 day video feast at the MOCCA.

Check out work by brilliant Canadian video artists including Colin Campbell, Jeffrey Spalding, Lisa Steele, Tom Sherman, Vera Frenkel, Robert Morin and others.


Vera Frenkel, "Real Mirrors I", 1973. Image: artbank.ca


Tom Sherman, Exclusive Memory, 1987. Image: pavedarts.ca


Friday, November 2, 1-4pm
SCREENING: Polish programme and q & a with curator and/or artists

Friday, November 2, 7-10pm
SCREENING: UK and Canadian Programmes #1

Saturday, November 3, 10am-1pm
SCREENING: UK and Canadian Programmes #2

Saturday, November 3, 2-3pm
Panel with curators Peggy Gale, (Canada), Chris Meigh-Andrews (UK) and Lukasz Ronduda (Poland).

Saturday, November 3, 3-5pm
Panel with artists, moderated by Peggy Gale


2. FitzGerald in Context: Gallery One One One, University of Manitoba

11 October to 9 November, 2007


A work by LeMoine FitzGerald. Image: malaspina.com

“This is a serious historical display.”

This exhibition is an unusual opportunity to see major works by L.LeMoine FitzGerald (1890-1956), the last member of the Group of Seven, and some selected works by other artists who were his friends and whose work he collected.

Organized by Professor Marilyn Baker, art historian at the University of Manitoba School of Art, FitzGerald in Context sets the artefacts of FitzGerald's life alongside significant works of art from the National Gallery of Canada, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and University of Manitoba collections.


LeMoine FitzGerald, Composition No.1, 1951. Image: glenbow.org

FitzGerald's early aspirations to be a fine artist were encouraged and nurtured by the friendships he made with local artists and art supporters. Close friends such as the German born Fritz Brandtner, the notable Canadian artist and writer Bertram Brooker, and Robert Ayre, a pioneering art critic who was also the editor of Canadian Art - all at one timeWinnipeggers -promoted his art and helped to make his reputation in eastern Canada.

The letters of correspondence in the show reveal these friendships and his good relations with members of the Group of Seven, like Lawren Harris, that helped FitzGerald gain recognition for his art across Canada.


Lawren Harris: Maligne Lake, Jasper Park, 1924. Image: nationhood.ca


Lionel Lemoine Fitzgerald, Winnipeg Backlane, c. 1935. Image: pegasusgallery.ca

By the 1950s FitzGerald's artistic significance was established and a large retrospective exhibition was in the planning stages to honour his life's work. When he died in 1956 his death announcement was broadcast
across Canada. Locally his place as an important Canadian artist and the special contribution he had made to the promotion and development of art in Manitoba had already been acknowledged through an honorary degree
awarded by The University of Manitoba in 1952.

For more information on the exhibition, please click HERE

B/R/T: The Inhabited Body at Groupe Molior, Montreal

B/R/T: The Inhabited Body at Groupe Molior, Montreal

3520, rue St-Jacques, Montreal

November 1 to December 2, 2007

Three sound artworks by Montreal artists bring technology together with an exploration of body experience.


Jane Tingley, Cleanroom. Image: concordia.ca

Peripheral Response is a network of cords spread around the room that aims to reflect the body’s central nervous system. As visitors walk through the network, like the skin’s response, the network throbs, tapping the ground in step with the pulses of the visitor, stimulated by his or her presence.

For more info on Jane Tingley, please click HERE



Natascha Roussel, Organisme. Image: arborescence.org

Take off your Legs by Natacha Roussel is an interactive installation that involves suspended mechanical legs. Spectators are asked to activate the legs and interact with them by walking on a module.

Click HERE to view a video of the work.

For more information on Natacha Roussel, please click HERE



Ingrid Bachmann, Symphony for 54 Shoes (Distant Echoes). Image: concordia.ca

The strongest work looks to be Symphony for 54 Shoes (Distant Echoes) by Ingrid Bachmann, which involves 27 pairs of shoes on stage, dancing and moving independently from each other. While perhaps less sombre, it echoes a tradition of 'ghost' works by artists including sculptor Rachel Whiteread, Christian Boltanski and Polish theatre & installation artist Jozef Szajna.


Christian Boltanski, Sans-Souci, 1991. Image: artnet.com

For more info on the artist, please click HERE


A sculpture by Rachel Whiteread. Image: citizen.com

For more information including exhibition hours, please click HERE

Highlights from TIAF Part Two & 1 from the Globe and Mail, 1 from the National Post

1. Highlights from the Toronto International Art Fair - Part Two

Tatsumi Orimoto at DNA Gallery, Berlin - click HERE


Tatsumi Orimoto . Bread Men, 1991/2007. Image: dna-galerie.de

Gilbert Garcin at Stephen Bulger Gallery - click HERE


A surreal image by Gilbert Garcin. Image: gilbert-garcin.com

Elizabeth McIntosh at Diaz Contemporary - click HERE


Elizabeth McIntosh, Untitled (Red, Blue and Purple), 2005-2006. Image: akimbo.biz

Nichola Feldman-Kiss at Projex-Mtl - click HERE


Nichola Feldman-Kiss, a crowd of one self, 2002-06. Image: projex-mtl.blogspot.com


2. A piece from the Globe and Mail on Roy Arden at the Vancouver Art Gallery

Please click HERE

3. Toronto collector Billy Jamieson's shrunken heads and other treasures

In today's National Post. Please click HERE