100 Views - 98
2007

Cormac McCarthy on Oprah Winfrey?

The same Cormac McCarthy who wrote Blood Meridian? The same Oprah Winfrey who only last week was hawking copies of The Secret?

Its Just For Fun time folks!

100 Views - 97
2007

Who is Carrie Walker?

The CSA Ark

Thanks to everyone who braved Vancouver's 48 hour flood and came out for the opening. I haven't been that miserably cold and damp since...well, since I lived in Vancouver.
Special thanks to CSA (Brayshaw, Tong, Harrison,) Kyath Battie, Brad Phillips, Chad Sato, Carl Whittaker, Trudi Smith, Rainbow Friberg, Rob Heinson, Steve McCleod, Erica Henderson, Jason Vanderhill, Scott Mcfarland, Evan Lee, Sarah Turner, Nick Krgovich and Owen Kydd.
Extra special thanks to art critic Douglas Wong (above left,) a surprise guest who offered an hour's worth of unsolicited critique before the show was even hung. Note Wong's unimpressed scowl and Brayshaw's bemused smirk ("Just keeping you on your toes, Tolagson!")

Jamie Tolagson
Ongoing

Curated by Christopher Brayshaw

23 March - 22 April, 2007
Opening Friday, 23 March, 2007, 6-9pm

CSA Space
#5 - 2414 Main Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada
www.csaspace.ca

Good news: Someone has finally made a feature length documentary explaining the vital role sharks play in the ocean's ecosystems.

Bad news: It appears to have been written, directed and narrated by Jeff Spicoli.

100 Views - 96
2007

A special ATLLT salute!

To Rhonda Byrne, Anthony Robbins, Esther & Jerry Hicks, Dr. Reverend Michael Beckworth, Anthony Baron, Deepak Chopra, Dan Millman, James Redfield, Robert T. Kiyosaki, Sharon L. Lechter, Richard Branson, Don Ruiz, Wayne Dyer, and all the other Jim Cunninghams of this world who have made a conscious choice to cash in on the ignorance and uncertainty of their fellow human beings by selling them piles of platitudes disguised as mountains of wisdom...

This one's for you, guys!

You deserve it!

(footage courtesy Werner Herzog)

100 Views - 95
2007

The march 2007 exhibition of 100 Views at CSA Space has unfortunately been pushed back to later in the year, pending the galleries acquisition of it's next door neighbour (that little bit of extra wall space required for the sequential hanging of 100 photographs.)
But, I will be showing a small group of colour photographs at CSA on March 23rd.
If you're free that evening, come say hi (opening time to be announced.)

Simon Hattenstone talks to David Lynch:

Outside, the ground is thick with snow. Lynch loves it. He is very interested in weather. Recently, he started to make a daily weather broadcast for the Los Angeles radio station, indie 103.1. He has already sent over his report for the day. What did he say? "I just tell them where I am. I did it from the train station this morning. I give them the date - and then I tell them what it is like for me right now. Like today I would say that it has been snowing and it is now overcast and grey. And I'd say there's a slight breeze." He points out of the window. "See the way the steam is moving, so there's a good steady breeze. Then I would say the temperature in fahrenheit and celsius. I have to do some research. Today I got the temperature from the driver who had the temperature in celsius, but I also got it from the hotel, and that jived with what the driver said."

INLAND EMPIRE, Lynch's first film since Mulholland Drive, is apparently three hours long, "savagely uncompromised," and shot entirely on digital video. It's also not coming to Canada anytime soon.

Opened today's Vancouver Sun to find a short article (not an editorial) on sculptor Ron Mueck. I'll just quote the last paragraph, as it pretty much summarizes the tone:

His celebrity is such that he simply cannot be ignored. Mueck is 'accessible,' which means people 'get' his art. Galleries are forced to extend their hours as visitors line up to see his silicone and fibreglass creations marking the stages of mankind from birth, to adolescence, to desolation and, finally, to death. Mueck's popularity, of course, represents an unforgivable sin to the segment of the art world believing great art must be unfathomable to the great unwashed. And, to these elites, Mueck's art is no more unfathomable than an unclothed department store mannequin."

So, again with the 'elites.'
I keep waiting to meet one of these 'elites.' Judging from the adjectives that are often used to describe them, I imagine them to be pale, humourless, vampire-like creatures who sit around in sterile, modernist highrises signing artist's death warrants. Boy, would I like to give them a piece of my mind.
Unfortunately, most of the people I know personally who are working in the field (artists, critics, curators) seem to be the exact opposite. Thats kind of weird, isn't it? Sort of like all those weapons of mass destruction that we knew were there but could never quite manage to locate.

Let's consider, for a moment, the fact that Ron Mueck is now showing his work in every city on the planet, that he's represented by a multitude of high end galleries, and that he is raking in truckloads of cash. We might infer from that that these controlling 'elites' we've been told so much about are maybe not quite as powerful as we've been led to believe. Or maybe that they aren't really 'elites' at all, in the true sense of the word. Maybe what the writer really means when he says 'elites' is 'critics.'
[note to younger readers: a critic is somebody who makes up their own mind about things!]

If that's the case, the problem isn't that a shadowy cabal of out-of-touch art snobs have conspired to keep Ron Mueck's sculptures from an appreciative general public, but rather, that a few serious minded art lovers (you know, those folks who live, shit and breathe art) have had the temerity, in the face of near overwhelming public disagreement, to say "Personally, I don't care for it. Here's why..."

If there is an "unforgivable sin" in today's market driven culture, it's that.