Performance pastiche

>> Street spectacles, aquatic art and tripping in southern Ontario

by EVE MACLAUREN

Art veteran Nao Bustamante's performance "Sans Gravity" was billed as capable of provoking "an ambivalent feeling between sensationalism and guilt." In reality, she was nothing short of threatening. Last Thursday, as part of La Centrale's Mois de la Performance, she methodically ate, drooled and spit out red roses which she chewed from a bouquet gaff-taped to her wrist.

Still to come in the Mois de la Performance: Diane Borsato will be baking cakes and giving herself massages as part of "The Self-love Project" (1-5 p.m. daily, except Sunday-Monday, until Dec. 14); Joelle Ciona's "Rêverie lucide" compares insect and human behaviour, as she chews little bits of paper and sticks them on a yet-to-be-determined store-front window (during business hours, Dec. 8-14); and Vida Simon's "effigy," an homage to Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector involves a carriage of puppets (at the corner of Duluth and Parc, Dec. 10, 4 p.m.). The event's free closing dinner/soirée takes place Dec. 14, 6 p.m. at La Centrale.

Water world

Next up, H2O takes centre-stage in the installation "Waterworks," by Shelly Low at Articule. It's an imaginary laundrette where mundane objects are slowly transformed as water seeps through buttons, runs down strings, glows in baby bottles, saturates books, fills buckets and endlessly drips from a sink. Low draws attention to the ongoing work of life, and avoids demonizing or glorifying it. Her installation focuses on work that is often invisible: anonymous work done in factories and houses, by women, the uneducated or immigrant workers. The sound of the drip, drip, drip of water reinforces the repetitive nature of much of this work and the subject matter comes from the laundry where Low's family lived and worked during her childhood.

Low continues the exploration of unsung labour in the second installation "Twenty-five- basket Basket." Here, 25 dollar-store baskets have been chopped up and taped back together to make one large laundry hamper. On the walls surrounding the basket are the stories of peoples' worst work experiences. Send your own tale of woe to lousyjob@hotmail.com and join ranks with the beer bottle cleaners, box stuffers, insane-asylum janitors and fish-factory workers.

Over at the Saidye, a relatively motionless form gains movement. In the hands of Gary Evans, landscape painting is no longer a static art. Called the "landscape of 60 miles an hour" by one Ontarian curator, these paintings play tricks on our visual perception. The same picture can be both blurry and clear, or flat with a depth of field. This show's curator Stewart Reid warns, "it is dizzying to examine each shape--they overlap and meld. They seem to proliferate like multicoloured fungi." Perhaps this is the key to the work: Gary Evans has been stumbling around southern Ontario staring at ditches, bushes, fields in the ultimate hallucinogenic setting--the suburbs.

Le Mois de la Performance at La Centrale (460 Ste-Catherine W., #506) until Dec. 14

Waterworks, by Shelley Low at Articule (4001 Berri, #107) until Dec. 17

Seeing Things, by gary Evans at the Liane and Danny Taran Gallery in the Saidye Bronfman Centre (5170 Côte-Ste-Catherine) until Jan. 14