Exhibitions on tap

>> Hybrid works and tantalizing combinations at this year’s Biennale de Montréal

PEEK INSIDE FOR ANIMATION: Graeme Patterson’s “The Grain Bins”

The Biennale de Montréal kicks off today, pumping enough quality art into our city to satiate the cravings of us degenerate art junkies and maybe even get a few neophytes hooked. Be prepared to experience hybrid works that mix up video, painting, photography, sculpture, performance, booze and sex in a wide variety of tantalizing combinations.

As part of the opening celebrations, this weekend holds a multitude of special events. I expect Saturday’s performance by Peaches, Carole Pope and guests at the SAT (1195 St-Laurent) and the cabaret featuring Montreal’s 2boys.tv and Los Angeles’s My Barbarian at the Sala Rossa (4848 St-Laurent) should both be highly entertaining. On Saturday afternoon from 2–5 p.m., at l’École Bourget (1230 de la Montagne), critics and curators discuss Borders, Reportage and the Radical Imagination, while on Sunday All Tomorrow’s Parties: Cabaret Inc.? looks at the impact of performance artists on the music and art scenes. Friday night at 11 p.m., catch the Canadian premiere of Daft Punk’s Electroma at the Cinémathèque québécoise (335 de Maissoneuve E). And daily through Sunday, Julie Doucet and Dominique Pétrin will be available to help you adopt a work of art at la Centrale (4296 St-Laurent).

Titled Crack the Sky, the Biennale occupies six different venues around town. Ground Zero is l’École Bourget, where you’ll experience work by 32 artists such as Annie Pootoogook—who recently won the $50,000 Sobey award and is included in this summer’s prestigious Documenta art festival in Germany—as well as Americans Scoli Acosta and Virgil Marti, Westerners Chris Cran, Luanne Martineau and Brian Jungen, and locals Eleanor Bond and Lynne Cohen—to name but a few. When you need refreshment, settle in at the Candahar, an exact replica of an Irish Pub complete with drinks and bartender, created by Irish-born, Winnipeg-based artist Theo Sims.

Five other great exhibitions are also on tap: Galerie de l’UQÀM (1400 Berri) hosts Venice-Biennale bound David Altmejd; Dana Claxton is at the Cinémathèque québécoise’s gallery; while the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts presents Brazil’s Iran do Espirito Santo. The comic genre gets the art-world nod it deserves in the huge exhibition Comic Craze at the Saidye (5170 Cote-Ste-Catherine). While at the Parisian Laundry (3550 St-Antoine W.), I’m looking forward to Graeme Patterson’s sculptures about his hometown of Woodrow, Saskatchewan, population 10. He presents animation inside highly detailed replicas of grain elevators and hockey rinks. This should offer a nice juxtaposition to Uruguay native Ignacio Iturria’s drawings, paintings and sculptures concerning everyday urban life in Latin America. Throw in the work of filmmaker Noam Gonick in collaboration with Luis Jacob, Quebec’s favourite trio of tricksters BGL and art by Peaches, and I’d say you’ve got one must-see biennale.

Crack the Sky runs until July 8,
info: www.ciac.ca