ART POP: ART OR ARSE? YOU DECIDE AT ART.POPMONTREAL.COM
Full Art Pop schedule online now.
POP Montreal’s visual arts component presents emerging, innovative, and celebrated artistic talents from outside of established art canons who are hyper-engaged with/within the points of intersection between music and visual arts (fuck dance, let’s art), high and low art (in a non-boring way), and the transcendent experience with the everyday (lordavmerceh). It aims to propagate the co-mingling of diverse communities and to shatter boundaries of both genre and medium. Consider it an inter-semiotic fuck dance.
October 2nd
Satellite of Love
Masai (5637 Ave. du Parc)
October 2nd-5th, vernissage October 2nd - 18h
Six artists – David Lafrance, Jessie Kotler, Blake Hargreaves, Shawn Kuruneru, Margaret Haines, and Patrick Dyer – examine pop music culture through its somatic grounding in the objects of its packaging. Through diverse aesthetic and conceptual vocabularies, each derives inspiration in some way from the rock show, celebrity cult, album covers, as well as the substance of music itself as one of our most elusive art forms. The relationship between packaging aesthetic and musical product provokes a variety of responses from the formation of subcultural identities, to glamourized posturing, to fetishistic worship. Working across a variety of media, the artists will mediate the ephemeral side of a community and its individuals; a body-network visible through a subcultural flesh, expanding almost infinitely through the distribution of its recordings and merchandising.
October 4th
Jack Dylan Presents: Antidepressants for the Coming Apocalypse
Yves Laroche L'Autre Galerie (4 St-Paul East)
October 4th-11th
Vernissage October 45th - 18h (w/ Dishwasher & Miracle Fortress)
In this doom struck era of plotting terrorist snakes and Al Gore's bad vibes, we can all be forgiven for feeling a bit stressed. Even, at times, for behaving badly. Unfortunately for us all, Jack Dylan's new paintings cannot prevent the planet from slipping out from under our feet. Neither can they shoe away the green house gases, nor end all war with a great big hug and a sloppy wet kiss. But they do promise to pacify, cheer up, and pluck out your anxieties over visa bills, impotence, and your big ass.
"I am immortal, I am eternal, I am inevitable, I AM APOCALYPSE!
Ha Ha Ha Ha haaaaw! Ha Ha Ha ha HAAW!
October 5th
in collaboration with the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal
RODNEY GRAHAM BAND
Yves Laroche L'Autre Galerie (4 St-Paul East)
October 5th, 20h: Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (185 Ste-Catherine W.)
October 7th, 24h: Fractal (7240 Clark) w/ Daddy's Hands
A founding member of new-wave cult-legends U-J3RK5 (f. Ian Wallace & Jeff Wall) and member of power-pop super-group Volumizer (f. members of Pointed Sticks and Dishrags), Rodney Graham writes sometimes serious, seriously terrific songs of his own. Whether singing a Cohen-meets-Smog-like verse turned infectious power-pop situationist chorus ("I'm a Time Waster"), an absurdist cowboy lament, or a tune for Albert Hoffman's LSD trip that rips off/pays tribute to Syd Barrett, Graham brings the same kind of a-little-thought-edness to his music that he does to his art. Apparently he’s a little-known conceptual artist too.
As well, the Fractal space will be overtaken by special installation by the YPF.
October 5th
Madame Edgar Invites:
KILLOFFER & CHARLES BURNS
Madame Edgar (6370 St-Hubert)
October 5th-October 19th, vernissage October 5th - 18h
The two influential comic artists, Killoffer (676 Apparitions of Killoffer) and Charles Burns (Black Hole, Skin Deep), combine forces in this rare exhibition of their flawless original drawings. The artists have also been commissioned by Pop Montreal to produce a limited edition collaborative piece.
October 6th
Benefit for Head & Hands:
COVER ME: COVERS OF COVERS
Madame Edgar (6370 St-Hubert)
October 6th-October 30th, vernissage October 6th - 17h
Over twenty artists re-interpret their favourite album covers in this fundraiser for local charity Head & Heads. Organized by Neil Doshi of the YPF. Confirmed artists include: Aya Kakeda, Christy-Claire Katien, Corri-Lynn Tetz, Daniel Cambil, Danijela Pruginic, Adam Gorley, Pony of Prey, Dessa Harhay, Aaron Mcconomy, Jen Storey, James Kerr, Krissy Longtin, Serigraphie Cinqunquatre, Luc Ramsey, Kelly Mcdonald, Paul Zacharias, Mike Giles, Semolina Pilchard, Tyson Bodnarchuk, Angie Johnson, Ned Maloney, Liam Maloney, Milena Roglic, Jaime Allen, Willie Brisco.
October 6th
NADER HASSAN: Birth Emergency Death Garbage waste organic de composition rot rust break Urban trans Dermy decay fertility: Towards an understanding; with astonishment.
Nader's Workshop (4857 St-Laurent)
October 6th - 19h, October 7th - 12h-18h
Nader Hassan’s intense and meticulous sculptural work finds a purpose for both human and environmental waste through its use of a combination of recycled objects and found-animal taxidermy practices. The artist’s unique workshop will be viewable to the public for both days.
October 7th
Leisure Projects Presents:
HAZEL MEYER: SMOOCHE DE LA ROOCHE
Dare-Dare (Between Saint-Laurent/Clark, Arcade and Rosemont/Van Horne)
October 7th, 17h
A playful back-to-school audio-athletic skipping project complete with Leisure Cocktails (we’re talking McDonald’s orange drink-influenced here). Expect heartbeats to quicken, a feminine set of variables to be subverted, and kneesocks to be worn.
Following Hazel's performance will be a live re-filming and re-imagining of the award-winning Dumb Angel film from acclaimed director, Deco Dawson. Dawson will be attempting to create a new film from scratch, on site, and everyone is invited! With his one take, one shot approach, everything must be executed perfectly and the Dumb Angel crew is willing to stick it out until they get it right! Be there to witness Anders Erickson drumming his heart out, the original film projected above him AND a LIVE camera feed showing exactly what the camera sees!
October 7th
RYAN FOERSTER
My Hero Gallery (3655 St-Laurent, suite 206)
October 7th - 16h w/ Royal Mountain Band, Tomorrow's Friend, Barkus Born, Spider.
Brooklyn-based Tomorrow’s Friend, Barkus Born, and Spider will be taking us along with them through a pool of atmospheric psyche rock and whispering folk. Accompanying these sounds will be a silent film by Brooklyn-based, Canadian-born Ryan Foerster.
October 7th
MASTERS OF POSTER ART
Canadian Grenadier Guards Armoury (4171 avenue de l'Esplanade)
October 7th-8th - 12h-19h
John Van Hamersveld, Emek, Seripop, Ron Donvan (Firehouse Kustom Rockart, Gary Houston, BREE,REE, Edmund Lam, Alice Phieu, Serigraphie 514, Jack Dylan + more.
Featuring a dozen poster artists, running the gamut from legendary 1960s railblazing torch-bearers to highly-respected 2006 innovators, selling their work on site. From John Van Hamersveld (author of the famed silhouetted-figures-against-day-glo beach-scene poster for The Endless Summer, as well as album covers for Magical Mystery Tour and Exile on Main Street) to local mind-melters, Seripop.
October 8th
pazzia: SOFT SCULP
SAT (1195 Saint-Laurent)
October 8th -17h
pazzia is an international network of cross-disciplinary artists committed to a fusion of classical music with performance art. A team of emerging textile artisans will spontaneously sculpt their products as responses to the gestures, energy and ambience of a live string quartet with improvisational didjeridu in this Australian programme.
ART POP is now accepting limited art exhibition submissions for the 2007 edition. Questions/comments/death threats to Shawn Petsche at shawn@popmontreal.com. Artist ubmissions should contain an artist c.v., art samples (low-res jpgs are fine), and an artist statement. Interesting/and interested galleries and venues are always welcome!
More information at art.popmontreal.com
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Highlights from Art Pop 2005:
Step From My Mouth: The Woodcuts & Paintings of Billy Childish: Artist, musician, author, poet, general shit-disturber, and of course, simultaneous none-and-all-of-the-abover, British artist and champion of the amateur Billy Childish exhibited his fascinating works for the first time in Montréal in conjunction with the British Council. The common line on Childish is that he has released over 100 albums, painted over 2,500 paintings, and published over 30 books; a prolificacy which suggests that he creates works as easily as words step from his mouth. Looking at Billy Childish’s art is a lot like listening to him speak -- no matter how frankly he speaks of his own dysfunctions, or sounds off on others’, every intense word comes across as deliberate, regardless of its conversational nature. In the same way, Childish’s art is both immediate and lends itself to careful consideration. Billy Childish: champion of the amateur, founding member of the ‘Stuckists’ (stuckism.com), and a man hard to pin down as anything but absolutely essential.
POST-POP!: POST-POP!: An exhibition of ground-breaking concert poster art from around the world. The “post-popular” describes a world of ever multiplying and narrowing musical sub-genres coming up alongside – and defining themselves against – one another, closing the already-declining window of mass appeal. Concert posters play an important role in encoding, making visible, and articulating these processes of differentiation, and therefore in mobilizing the resulting musical communities. This leads to the creation of a fascinating urban landscape, transplanted into Galerie Madame Edgar, in which wildly different musical sub-genres, visually translated in wildly different ways, co-exist, and in which the repeating of similar codings worldwide blurs the line between the local and extra-local. Showcasing the role of poster-art in independent musical scene-definition, POST-POP! exhibited the work of over fifteen concert poster artists from around the world – Seripop (Montréal, QC), The Little Friends of Printmaking (Madison, WI), Leia Bell (Salt Lake City, UT), Tetsunori Tawaraya (Japan), etc.
Puces Pop: With over 79 taste-making presenters, this curated fair presented a spectrum of quality independent cultural entrepreneurs from artisans, zine makers, record labels, fashion designers, poster artists and more.
Pavilion Three: Platforms, Terraces, Temples, Palaces, Courtyards, Stairways and Pyramids: Pavilion Projects, DareDare, and POP Montréal collaborated for a fête gallante, a multi-disciplinary outdoor performance piece addressing the political, social, and personal history of Montréal’s famed Square Viger. "A mysterious, melancholy, dreamlike world populated by well-dressed people who flirt and play gracefully in a park like surroundings. Featuring four separate performances commissioned by Pavilion. Toronto artists Luis Jacob, Will Munro, David Armstrong Six & Quebec’s Les Fermières obsédées, took over Square Viger’s concrete garden. The outdoor event cycled around a number of performances addressing the history of Square Viger as well as the politics of the intimate and social sphere. These exigent actions were inturn supported by musical interludes provided by the sprawling Gavin Deathfuck, Dorothy Gellar, Awesome and the first effort by DELORO (band as artist collective featuring Armstrong Six, Tony Romano, Dave Clark & Dallas Wehrle (of the Constantines)."
We Sold Our Souls to Rock 'n Roll: The still concert and press photos of Yannick Grandmont and Christopher Heldt, expertly charged with spirit and electricity, brilliantly walked the line of documenting a burgeoning musical scene on a tangible, realisitc level, and heightening the awareness of the artificiality of rock star aesthetics.
Six for Five: An Illustrated History of the Jewish Criminal 1900-1940: Pat Hamou's sepia-toned, cross-hatched drawings of Jewish mafia members were imbued with contradictory thoughts: pride, shame, intrigue, humour, etc., thoughts intimately tied to this history all-too-often forgotten.
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