Autumn harvest

Photos, performances, prettied-up oil drums,
a giant theremin and more

FROM MIXTAPES TO MULTIMEDIA:
Hatchmatik’s The Apprenticeship of Bobby Swinzilla

by STACEY DEWOLFE

The fall season gets going this weekend with a plethora of shows opening across the city. Tonight, Thursday, Sept. 10, Battat Gallery (7245 Alexandra, #100) celebrates the opening of Amy-Claire Huestis’s Landscape with Bombers, a collection of watercolours examining the impact of war on the natural landscape.

Le Mois de la Photo kicks off their annual celebration of all things photographic tonight with The Spaces of the Image. Check out their user-friendly Web site (moisdelaphoto.com), complete with wine glass icons, to see where you might grab a glass or two as you dig the scene. Later this week, on Saturday, Sept. 12, Dazibao (4001 Berri, #202) opens its fall season with Caroline Martel’s Cinemas de l’industrie, in which Martel uses archival footage to investigate the ways that material degradation affects our reception of filmic images.

The following week, Sept. 17–26, the good folks at La Centrale (4296 St-Laurent) and Articule (262 Fairmount W.) team up for VIVA! Art Action. Featuring an array of performance-based collaborations, the shows will take place in various locations including the galleries themselves and Bain Saint-Michel (5300 St-Dominique). See vivamontreal.org for details. Over at Art Mûr (5826 St-Hubert), Cal Lane’s Sweet Crude transforms oil drums into delicately beautiful objects with the aid of an industrial blowtorch. Describing herself as a “visual devil’s advocate,” Lane plays with contradictions to address issues raised by the oil crisis.

MAN VS. NATURE

As September draws to a close, Parisian Laundry (3550 St-Antoine W.) makes my day, devoting all three levels of the gallery to a new immersive work by BGL. Entitled Postérité-Posterity, the installation explores mankind’s unpredictable relationship with nature.

If moving pictures are your thing, head down to The Emporium Gallery (3035 St-Antoine W., #74) for Montreal-based Hatchmatik, who unveils his multi-media installation The Apprenticeship of Bobby Swinzilla on Oct. 8. Later in the month, the gallery plays host to Sweden’s Agnes Thor, whose photographs portray a voyage of discovery through worlds both familiar and unknown.

After a few months hiatus, DHC/ART (451 St-Jean) reopens its doors on Oct. 16 with Living Time, the first installment of a new programming initiative that adds evening events and educational projects to the mix, featuring the Canadian premiere of exhibitions by Dutch artist Guido van der Werve and Taiwanese-American performance artist Tehching Hsieh.

October also sees the opening of three new exhibitions at the MAC (185 Ste-Catherine W.). In addition to shows by Francine Savard, Tricia Middleton, and Tacita Dean, the Projections Series features the hypnotic videos of British artists and twin sisters, Jane and Louise Wilson. The MAC also plays host to the RBC Canadian Painting Competition (Oct. 8–18), featuring the work of 15 semi-finalists from across Canada. The winner of the competition will be announced at the exhibit’s opening gala.

ALL TOGETHER NOW

Collaboration seems to be a theme this fall, as painter Pierre Dorion invites artists such as Neil Campbell and Barry Allikas to participate in his project Off the Wall at Leonard and Bina Ellen (1400 de Maisonneuve W.) on Oct. 29. Seeking to examine the relationship between the artist and the wall, Dorion’s project will also include archival and sculptural works by Nancy Goodwin and Claude Tousignant.

Push Gallery (5264 St-Laurent) adds some colour to the grey days of November with a series of new paintings by Vitaly Medvedovsky. Capturing the surreal landscapes of everyday life, the award-winning artist’s images are always visually striking and thematically compelling.

There are also manifold opportunities this fall to get your hands dirty with interactive arts and crafts fun. Lab Synthèse (435 Beaubien, #200) is opening its doors to fans of pen and paper on Wednesday evenings from 8-11 p.m. With a goal of building a community, all they ask is that you bring some work to share, and a little music to enliven the room.

If you like the looks of this, keep your eyes open for this year’s Art Pop line-up, which is all about the shared experience. Among the many exhibitions on offer, you can make a little music with Christian Pelletier and David Beaulieu’s giant theremin installation, run amok destroying furniture in

Jessica Campbell and Bridget Moser’s pinata room, and be captured eating cake and chocolate sculptures in Lalie Douglas’s video project.

And finally, as winter settles in, Dazibao is home to an evening of photographic cut and paste on Dec. 5. With artist Paul Butler on hand to lend guidance and support and a glass of wine to provide inspiration, this is a unique opportunity to flex your artistic muscles with archival images from the gallery vaults.