Emerging at
Joyce Yahouda

TWO-PLY PIANIST: Christophe Jordache’s “Fiesta”

Like many galleries around Montreal, Joyce Yahouda (372 Ste-Catherine W., #516) shows its commitment to supporting the city’s emerging art scene by opening its doors to first-time curator Sarah Bertrand-Hamel.

“I’ve worked with Joyce Yahouda for almost two years now as a collaborator and coordinator,” explains Bertrand-Hamel. “We had an empty space this summer, so she proposed that I curate a show, which was a fun and stimulating challenge for me.”

Describing the curatorial process as an act of discovery, she was initially concerned that her selection of works was too diverse to create a coherent vision. But as she looked closer at the pieces, she began to see many thematic links.

Entitled Les Choses en soi, the exhibition brings together the work of six Montreal artists: Jim Holyoak’s drawings and Myriam Bizier’s videos share an underlying concern with the environment and its creatures, while the installation by Christophe Jordache, and Andréanne Godin’s drawings both play with the juxtaposition of seemingly disparate objects into one unified space.

The show opens this Saturday, Aug. 15 at 3 p.m. with individual but complimentary performances by Adam Budd (whose work focuses on the Self) and Vicky Sabourin (focusing on the Other).

by STACEY DEWOLFE

Sounds of the Main

STREET MEAT: Hearing There

You may think you’ve seen all there is to see on St-Laurent but sound artist David Drury thinks you still might be missing something.

“Walking along St-Laurent is almost completely a visual experience—we see the buildings, we look in the windows. My idea was to create a piece in which that visual exclusivity is tempered with a little sounding,” says Drury.

His audio-art installation Hearing There aims to remedy this by having participants block the actual sounds of the area by putting on headphones and listening to snippets of music, dialogue and found sound he’s prepared for 19 locations, which include Schwartz’s, Coupe Bizarre and Cinema l’Amour.

Drury says he wants participants, “to walk up to that window at Janos where the chicken is always being grilled and to hear the richness of the sizzle, to walk by the Amp Shrine at Moog guitar and hear some heavy feedback and so on. To imagine what it would be like if sound was as much a factor as sight.”

The tracks, as well as a map, can be downloaded at hearingthere.com.

by MATT JONES

The CFL sings!

Henry Adam Svec knew he had struck gold last summer when he stumbled upon a set of unmarked audiotapes at the National Archives of Canada. He turned out to have found none other than the legendary CFL Sessions, a project undertaken by eccentric folklorist Staunton R. Livingston in the ’70s to record the original songs of Canadian football players. With a grant from the Canada Council, Svec set about rerecording these important yet anonymous contributions to Canadiana.

At least that’s the story Svec tells. CFL Sessions also briefly made the national spotlight when Svec managed to pull the wool over one naïve Moncton journalist’s eyes. Despite the fact that for his last album, The Boy From ET, he posed as the eponymous child actor and sang a song allegedly co-authored by Gérard Depardieu, Svec says, “I’ve had people really upset when they find out it’s not true!”

Svec’s funny, folksy album includes titles like “Life Is Like Canadian Football” and “Song Written Upon Getting Cut by the Argos” and is available for free download at thecflsessions.ca. He sings and spins his yarns along with Erin Lang at Cagibi (5490 St-Laurent) this Sunday, Aug. 16 at 8 p.m.

by DAVID LEVITZ

Keep your hand on the truck

The Centre for Education and Theatre in Montreal (CETM) got into the crowded festival business last year when they launched The Next Wave Festival of New Musicals.

Back for round two, the group is hosting a line-up of musicals and other events to the end of August, including John Pielmeier and Matty Selman’s Slow Dance With a Hot Pick-up, a comedy-drama that revives an odd slice of Americana: the endurance contest.

Corey Castle directs the piece, with musical direction by Nick Burgess, as a motley group of contestants try to win a truck by keeping a hand on it as long as possible. Last one standing (after a few days) wins.

Contestants croon, “You can work my hand till my knuckles bleed, but you can’t get blood from a stone,” as the show looks into the often grim lives of its characters.

CETM are still recruiting volunteers for current and future editions of the fest in a bid to make Montreal “Off-Broadway North”—a place where talent can stick around instead of fleeing south.

Aug. 15, 20, 29 at 8 p.m. McCord Museum (690 Sherbrooke W.) details at montrealnextwave.com

by NEIL BOYCE

IS IT ART?

FELTED UP: Ever wonder what a teddy bear foetus looks like? Or imagined what a teddy’s skull might look like if it had one? Using evolutionary biology as a basis for her studies, artist Stephanie Metz recreates the development of teddy bears and the decomposition of real-life animals in her felted-wool sculptures.

Before the foetuses or skulls can be shaped, however, the material must be matted and compressed until it becomes one solid mass. Using special felting tools, Metz then shapes the sculpture by poking the wool in particular directions, eventually resulting in solid, somewhat fluffy skulls and taxidermy-like animals.

These sculptures may be cute (and atomically correct, for the most part) but they don’t come cheap—prices start at $1,000. When you think of it though, that’s a relatively small price to pay for a piece of Teddy Bear Natural History.

stephaniemetz.com

Arts hole

DO THE LOCOMOTION: Exporail, the Canadian Railway Museum in Saint-Constant, celebrates model railroads with a special exhibition of miniature trains and events this weekend, Aug. 15–16. You can hop aboard the Museum Express, which leaves Lucien-l’Allier at 11 a.m. and takes you directly to the museum on the south shore. The train returns to the city at 4 p.m. See exporail.org for prices and details. • TWO’S COMPANY: Jason Cantoro and Hugo Mudie mix media and ideas and ruminate on what makes Montreal a unique city in their joint show, C’t’arrangé, on until Sept. 6 at Galerie Dominique Bouffard (1000 Ameherst, #101). The vernissage takes place Wednesday, Aug. 19 at 6 p.m.

Artistat

The number of artist-researchers who’ve been working together as the Office for Archival Review to investigate Skol’s (372 Ste-Catherine W., #314) archives and its history as a centre of interaction and whose findings will be presented this Saturday, Aug. 15: 7