VISUAL ARTS:
Island art trip

Tattoo culture, biogenetics, dogs, street painting and other scorching city sights

by CHRISTINE REDFERN

Summer is here and it's time to travel. However, if you, like many of us, aren't actually going anywhere, may I make a suggestion? Put on your sneakers and a knapsack, invent a personal history for yourself, pretend you're on vacation and go see some great art. (For the more adventurous, call it an art performance and add it to your résumé.) To get you started, here are some of Montreal's art-vacation hotspots.

Nelson Hendriks' new humorous and ambiguous video installation, Satellite, opens today, June 10, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. With imagery culled from space documentaries, German educational films, current events and his own video works, Hendriks shows us, says curator Stéphane Aquin, "how we make sense of things and how we don't." Also worth seeing at the MMFA is Present Tense, a selection of contemporary works that the museum has recently purchased. And don't miss the interdisciplinary bad-boy Jean Cocteau's show upstairs.

Pop explosion

Juliana España Keller's glamtrash video/photography exhibition Culebra (Snake) runs until June 23 at the McClure Gallery (350 Victoria). In her words: "Equally enamoured with tattoo culture and the new-age, campy costume drama and serial-killer splatter, I am constructing bizarre intersections of reality and situation in which pop culture's interlocking clichés are amplified and exploded openly." To hear more, go to the artist's talk tonight, June 10, 7:30 p.m., at the gallery.

The Supper Club Soirée, which takes place June 11, is an offshoot of the great monthly Kiss My Cabarets at the Sala Rossa (4848 St-Laurent). Danette MacKay, the talented host and organizer explains: "Whenever I see films where people are having dinner and dancing, and there's a show going on, I'm just so jealous I can't stand it. So because I couldn't find anywhere to have that kind of evening myself, I decided to put one together." The event features a sumptuous six-course dinner with martini included, a cool projection component and some of Montreal's top performers: Joe Cobden, Richard Saunders, Gigi L'Amour, Hoola Hoop Becky and more. To reserve e-mail kissmycabaret@ yahoo.ca, $75 (ey, what's a vacation if you're not indulging a little?).

Nell Tenhaaf's Fit/Unfit showcases her installations and multimedia projects from the past 15 years. Her work looks at the limits and potential of cross-disciplinary interpretations of the body through artistic, scientific and technological practices, touching on issues that cross into biogenetics, technology, representation and feminism. The artist and local communications/art writer Kim Sawchuk will give a tour of the exhibition at the opening on June 22. It runs until July 31 at Concordia's Ellen Gallery (1455 de Maisonneuve W.).

Bettina Hoffman presents her everyday photographs and, for the first time, her videos, in Spoil Sport. This work delves into a world of non-verbal communication through constructed scenes involving children, adults at a party, dogs and their masters, and the like. These unveil complex social, intimate and sexual relationships (I'm not sure if the dogs figure into the last part - guess we'll have to wait for the show to find out). It runs from July 15–Sept. 12 at the Saidye's Liane and Danny Taran Gallery (5170 Côte-Ste-Catherine).

Staining the streets

Lastly for some outdoor art happenings. Nuit Blanche sur Tableau Noir, the annual streetpainting event is tonight and tomorrow, June 10–11, 10 p.m.–2 a.m. on Mont-Royal between St-Hubert and de Lorimier. This year's theme is "Le paysage exposé" (Exposed Landscape) and six teams of artists will create a giant painting measuring 12 by 160 feet long. Throughout the weekend, this festival hosts a plethora of events for everyone, including art cars, live music and kids' stuff. See the full program at www.tableaunoir.com.

Head to the mountain for Artefact 2004's Sculptures urbains. The first edition three years ago was situated along the Lachine Canal. This year, the works of 13 artists can be discovered spread over Mount Royal from June 30–Sept. 26.

Happy travels.