It’s a Canadian affair, this Domestication of Distance. Its also the title of an exhibit on at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Beyond Measure: Domesticating Distance, on now until January 2016. It’s ostensibly about the immigrant experience but it is more. Crossing borders, boundaries, cultures is the stuff of the newcomer but in this wide country it is also the stuff of the resident. Beyond Measure: Domesticating Distance is presented in association with the South Asian Visual Arts Centre and features five contemporary artists, Meera Margaret Singh, Surendra Lawoti, Abdullah M. I. Syed, Asma Sultana, Tazeen Qayyum. The exhibit explores the composition of duality, the coupling of the two and the resulting oneness of the hybrid. The show has been curated by Ambereen Siddiqui and Linda Jansma of the McLaughin Gallery The RMG hosts a Douglas Coupland sculpture on its outer wall. It is a tribute to Painters 11 but it utilizes Coupland’s concentric circles imagery. They look like targets but they are transmitters. They communicate over distance. They are symbols, they bring two solitudes into one sphere. It’s a Canadian thing, bringing the two sides together, whether it’s the zipper, the bra, the Blackberry, the Telephone or many other inventions, this country is built by joining two extremes together, doing so fast. Speed is the thing, its cold, its wild, pass fast, use the boards, use the borders, skip over the middle. The need for speed is the source of Hockey and the canoe. Get there quicker, get the message there faster, snap, snap, ziiiiiiiiip, done in a jiffy. The domestication of this dangerous vast emptiness known as Canada is ongoing. It’s a task for all who come here and all who live here. It’s survival of the fastest but to truly know this country, any country, any culture we must map the in-betweens and step back from the edges.
Absolutely Free sculpt new soundtracks for McLaren NFB films.
To celebrate the centenary of Canadian filmmaker Norman McLaren’s birth, the Toronto International Film Festival commissioned psych-synth band Absolutely Free to compose soundtracks for six of McLaren’s films to be played live as the films were being projected outside This re-imagining of McLaren’s work occurred Sept 7 2014. The National Film Board and Chart Attack were also involved and the films with their new soundtrack are being slowly made available via ChartAttack’s YouTube. "Re-Sounding: Synchromy" and "Re-Sounding: Mosaic" have been previously released and "Re-Sounding: Spheres" is also now available. The score is for McLaren’s 1969 animated choreography of pearl-like shapes. Absolutely Free’s debut self-titled album is available on Arts & Crafts Records and the three-piece have scheduled appearances at POP Montreal Sept. 19, the Bloor-Ossington Fest in TO Sept. 20 and a date at the Music Gallery also in Toronto on Oct. 18.
Ralph Alfonso's Photography Retrospective on tour with The Diodes
Bongo Beatnik Ralph Alfonso is a legend; a writer, musician, poet, band manager, author, photographer, record exec, label owner, art gallery owner, graphic designer, publisher and publicist who has been documenting the Canadian art and music scene from its early outsider roots to its present insider status.
But before he was a legend he was Ralph Alfonso, a comic book fan who became a journalist writing about the emerging punk scene of the mid 70s. A one time one hour interview with Toronto punk debutantes, The Diodes, became four decades of managing those self same rockers. Together they became legendary having opened the infamous punk rock club, The Crash & Burn, which did, metaphorically. But not before it was documented on film, a film that will be shown, along with a gallery of Alfonso’s photographs from his vantage point smack in the middle of what we call Punk Rock!, at the Diodes upcoming reunion gigs to be held at The Phoenix in T.O., Sept. 11, Hamilton’s It Ain’t Hollywood Sept. 13 and the Station in Brantford Sept. 15. Gord Lewis and Dave Rave of Teenage Head will open the Hammer and Hogtown gigs. The Diodes will also play Pop Montreal Sept. 17, and the Manantler Craft Brewery in Bowmanville Sept. 12. Manantler will brew a special tribute IPA, “Time Damage” which will be available at all the shows.
Time hasn’t done much damage to the Diodes, their songs or to Alfonso who says 2015 is just as exciting time in Canadian music as was 1975. He gives the thumbs up to labels, Bonsound in Montreal and Dine Alone in Toronto as well as to Arts and Crafts co-founders Jeffrey Remedios, recent appointment to CEO of Universal Canada.
Alfonso says the development is interesting in so far as Universal chose not to promote from within but from without but when it comes to the argument about indie vs major he says they are just words to describe an approach to business. When he began he says there was no word for the music being made. It was just new sounds and a new sense of possibility.
“I found it like a door opened. you could do whatever you want,” says Alfonso. “There were no rules, no labels. It was a magic window for 1977 and most of 1978 but then the rules and regulations came in. And they came in from England. The British were the masters of packaging and invention. . . . So they repackaged it and it became Punk and this is how you look and this is how you play. A lot of their stuff was genuine too because there were real political problems in England and punk became the music of the proletariat.”
While punk was happening at the same time in London, New York and TO it was doing so for different reasons. It was a voice for the working class in Britain but it was the voice of the middle class in North America.
“We didn’t have the poverty here so there was nothing really to rage against,” says Alfonso. “Also at a certain time there an artificial dividing line where some were art rockers but others were ‘We’re from the streets man!’ But Caveat Emptor, all is not what it seems because the supposedly street cred guy was from a middle class family and he was really revolting against his folks but if he ever got into trouble he could always call Dad. There was something artificial about it but ultimately the music from here was on a different level.”
A level different enough to survive the damage time can do, a level that crossed classes and genres, labels and categories and entered a timelessness. Alfonso has survived through all his manifestations, “Some people think of me as a major label guy. Some people see me as the Indie guy. But I run into other people and they say ‘oh you’re the guy with the art gallery in Montreal,” he says. The Diodes too, live on, in photographs, on film, on record and on stage.
Artist Jay Dart moves into the Beyawnder
Montreal’s Galerie YOUN is presenting “Now Entering Beyawnder”, a new exhibit by drawist Jay Dart, he of the bearded lumberjack imagery. The exhibit opens Sept 10 and the opening is a launch party for his “Images of Yawnder” catalogue featuring an essay by Toronto Star critic, Murray Whyte. Dart’s watercolour and coloured pencil drawings portray a curious mix of bearded gentlemen in even curiouser circumstances. They speak to a past that didn’t exist and a future that doesn’t yet. Dart’s lumberjack-like jacks are friendly, attractive icons. There is presently a popular affection for this idealized Canadian heritage and the “man’s man” look is trending, a kick back perhaps at the rise of the “nerd” as business tycoon and their role as bacon-bringer-homer-er. Dart’s dudes could retort, sure you can code but can you cut down this Sequoia? But its Dart’s “Beyawnder” title that speaks to his present and thus to our future. The brightly coloured bearded ones once inhabited the Yawnder but now have moved further out, into the greater Beyawnder area. What Dart is saying is that there is a place for these dudes, and in particular the back to basics creativity, sustainability and D.I.Y. they represent, in the future.
Vessna Perunovich, Unoccupied NY, video still, 2012.
Latest RMG exhibit will move you through its Permanent Collection
Friday Sept. 11 The Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa presents the opening of“Moving Image”, a new exhibit of works from the gallery’s permanent collection, curated by Linda Jansma. This exhibition, which will run until August 20 2016, features a mix of contemporary and historical Canadian artists, including Don Maynard, Alfred J. Munnings, Michael Snow, Dorothy Knowles, Vessna Perunovich, Tony Scherman, Emily Carr, A.Y. Jackson and others. The idea of a moving image relates instantly to film but its not just the medium that is moving in this exploratory exhibit it is the subject. An image can also be moving in the emotional sense; an image can move a person. Moving people has been central to the growth of Oshawa, it is a city synonymous with transportation because of its long car manufacturing heritage. The city began as a First Nation portage, remains the home to General Motors Canada and the Automotive Centre of Excellence at UOIT and was home to probably the most famous Canadian horse, Northern Dancer. It has a port, a rail station, an airport, an automotive museum, a military vehicle museum and sits between two 400 series highways. During the summer the city hosts two festivals, “Bikes on Bond” as well as the three day “Autofest”, which draws thousands to view hundreds of vintage and antique cars every year. It is also a city that is on the move as it grows northwards towards the Oak Ridge Moraine, the home of artist, Bill Lishman, the man who taught birds how to fly. Given all that history “Moving Image” may just be the most appropriate exhibit to be shown in Oshawa ever.