by CHRISTINE REDFERN

I should have known it would be a great year for the arts in Montreal the moment I grabbed hold of BGL’s moose turnstile at Art Mûr last January. It marked the first in a parade of fabulous works that rolled through our town over the past 12 months.

February brought Studio 303’s Projet/Projo at the MAI, where local duo 2boys.tv (aka Gigi and Pipi, aka Stephen Lawson & Aaron Pollard) wove their magical mix of cabaret and video. Their performance Zona Pellucida was nothing short of genius. Guillaume Lachapelle’s small wooden sculptures at Circa in March transported the viewer to whimsical and bizarre places where carousel horses buck off their riders and people hang from coat racks.

April saw art lovers wandering through the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ permanent collection, on the hunt for seventeen of Nicolas Baier’s photographic works. The lack of an exhibition space for Baier inadvertently led to one of the most interesting presentations of the year.

Hello Haida

In May, the best historical and contemporary Haida imagery hit town in three separate exhibitions. The McCord hosted Haida Art: Mapping an Ancient Language and Robert Davidson: The Abstract Edge. Meanwhile, the Musée d’art contemporain’s Brian Jungen retrospective finally let Montrealers check out his contemporary masterpieces made from plastic chairs, baseball bats and the famous Nike sneakers.

I can’t remember why, but I missed Studio 303’s always engaging Edgy Women Festival in March. Luckily, curator Miriam Ginestier remounted one of the highlights, Endless Medication in June, allowing me to watch Nathalie Claude and Marijs Boulogne deliver their physical and unforgettable performances. Elena Willis’s exhibition of elaborately staged photographs inspired by her dreams at the McClure Gallery was another highlight.

July marked my falling in love with the beautiful Parisian Laundry space: both the light-filled upper floors and the windowless basement bunker showed a continuous stream of interesting works. While my favourite show of the summer was Long Scroll by Cai Guo-Qiang at the National Gallery’s space in Shawinigan. It was definitely worth the 90-minute car trip to witness Cai turn violent and explosive material into a meditative and poetic experience.

Not so visual

In September, Champ Libre’s Invisible City spread videos, installations and sound works throughout the Bibliothèque Nationale. As part of Francisco Lopez’s piece “Blind City,” I was blindfolded and given a cane before being led through the streets of Montreal by a blind volunteer. This walk turned out to be my number-one art experience of 2006. My hearing and, more surprisingly, my sense of touch became highly sensitive with the loss of my sight, severely distorting my experience of the surroundings and Lopez’s sound installation.

October saw Rhéal Olivier Lanthier and François St-Jacques celebrate 10 years of Galerie Art Mûr with the memorable group show Art Fiction. Karilee Fuglem conjured ghosts from Montreal’s past in her barely visible installation at the Darling Foundry.

Annie Pootoogook walked away with the Sobey Art Award in November. The exhibition of finalists (BGL, Steven Shearer, Janice Kerbel and Matthew Reichertz) is still on view, free and well worth seeing over the holidays. Also still on is Rodney Graham and Neo Rauch at the Musée d’art contemporain, as well as December’s top show, Gilles Clément at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Clément is particularly compelling as his philosophical approach turns what many might consider the “ugly” or “wasted” spots in our urban fabric—the ditches and vacant lots—into valuable reserves of nature’s biodiversity. Experience it yourself and start seeing beauty in unimagined places in 2007.