Category: Ottawa

A good night’s sleep

The Humble FabulistLeave a comment

Would you be comfortable with being photographed while asleep? What if your photograph ended up, one among dozens, on a giant canvas on a wall of a major museum, scrutinised by thousands of visitors, be it art lovers, habitual museum-goers or the occasional curious?

Steven Shearer
Sleep II 2015
Ink jet print on canvas

For Sleep II Shearer amassed thousands of found images of people sleeping. He painstakingly crafted the work into a rhythmically balanced composition, paying special attention to combinations of subject matter, scale and colour. Some individuals sleep peacefully, some in a near ecstatic state, while others seem eerily close to death. In representing the universal state of sleeping, the artist invites us to witness a vast and intimate record of anonymity. 

National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

October 29th, 2017

National Gallery of Canada || The Art

The Humble FabulistLeave a comment

The building itself is so photogenic, one could spend hours trying to capture the gorgeous light-and-shadow play that goes on all day, thanks to its octagonal skylights. But that would only be half the fun; so today, let’s take it a step further and focus on the art.

Today and tomorrow and tomorrow… “Maman” the giant egg-carrying spider; bronze, stainless steel and marble, 1999 (cast 2003) by Louise Bourgeois.

”No Foreigners” (série Nos maîtres les fous / Our Insane Masters), 2016, acrylic on canvas by Cynthia Girard-Renard

”Casualties of Modernity”, 2015, mixed-media installation with HD video, by Kent Monkman

In this installation, Monkman’s drag-queen alter-ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, an agent provocateur and trickster, appears on screen and in mannequin form clad in a PVC nurse’s outfit, tending to her patient, the wheezing cubism. The work is a satirical look at art through Miss Chief’s eyes, foregrounding the artist’s critique of modern art through the downfall of romanticism, cubism and primitivism.

”Eunoia”, 2013, steel extruded aluminum, acrylic and components by Daniel Young & Christian Giroux

”Dérive 45 & 46”, 2015, acrylic on canvas
”Vendredi 11 août 1989 – Mes idées s’envolaient aussitôt” [Friday 11 August 1989 – My ideas took flight immediately], 2014, vinyl and digital print mural by Latifa Echakhch

 

”Soundsuit”, 2015, mixed media including gramophone horn, ceramic birds, metal flowers, strung beads, fabric, metal and mannequin – by Nick Cave

Healing Rattles: Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, 2010 by Angela Marston

Majestic, 2011, lamp posts, steel, glass, electricity, by Michel de Broin

De Broin’s array of revitalized New Orleans streetlamps, uprooted by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, light up the area as night falls {source}

National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

October 29th, 2017

National Gallery of Canada || Ottawa

The Humble Fabulist3 Comments

What can a visitor do on a rainy October Sunday in Gananoque, apart from eat and sleep? Drive to Ottawa, of course. It’s only a two-hour drive, maybe less in good weather.

And what can a visitor do on a rainy October Sunday afternoon upon arrival in Ottawa with only a couple of hours to go before dark? Go straight to the National Gallery of Canada. Of course!

Housed in a stunning glass and granite building full of light that is carried from the skylights on the roof, the gallery is an excellent antidote to depressing weather. It was designed by Moshe Safdie, who is responsible for a number of iconic structures around the world, including, for example, the Marina Bay Sands complex in Singapore, the infinity pool of which tops both the building and my personal wish-list.

Back in Ottawa; see these glass octagonal features on the roof?  That’s how they look like on the inside, with the addition of white sails to diffuse the light.

“Maman” the giant egg-carrying spider outside the gallery, is a sculpture (1999, cast 2003) by Louise Bourgeois.

National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

October 29th, 2017