www.kellyrichardson.net

Howlin' Wolf

THE STAR
Critic’s choice

Back in 2002, a Nova Scotia grocery magnate decided it would be a good idea to hand out $50,000 every couple of years to an up-and-coming Canadian artist, to help a promising career gain momentum.

To say that it’s worked is an understatement. By focusing on young (under 40, that is) artists, the Sobey Prize has generated a level of excitement the country’s visual arts scene has probably never known: Putting the focus on future potential, not past achievement, Sobey has done what no one else in Canada has been able to do: Generate actual enthusiasm about the country’s visual culture.

Now an annual affair, and upped to $70,000, this year’s field is probably the strongest yet, with the region-specific shortlist having been boiled down to Luanne Martineau for the West Coast and Yukon; Graeme Patterson for the Atlantic region; Marcel Dzama for Prairies and North; David Altmejd for Quebec; and for Ontario, Toronto’s Shary Boyle.

But the long list for Ontario, meanwhile, reveals the embarrassment of riches we have in emerging artists here. With the shortlist whittled down to one representative, the talent left on the floor seems worthy of another award all on its own. There being no local Loblaw Prize to fill the gap, we’ll have to settle for the Cambridge Galleries’ upcoming show of Ontarian Sobey long-listers, which includes Derek Sullivan, Luis Jacob, Kelly Richardson, the team of Christian Giroux and Daniel Young, and, of course, Boyle. The show opens tomorrow at 7:30, with a free bus service departing the Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen St. W.) at 5:30 p.m. For a tour through your hometown/province’s explosive artistic potential, it’ll be hard to beat.

Murray Whyte

Cambridge Galleries
Sobey Art Award: Ontario Shortlist
Cambridge Galleries Queen’s Square
July 10 – August 22, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday, July 10 at 7:00 pm
Cambridge, Ontario, Canada

BEIJING 798 BIENNALE
CONSTELLATIONS
The Man Who Fell to Earth
August 15 – September 12, 2009
Curator: Raul Zamudio

Prosthetics, facelifts, sex changes, skin lighteners, tanning booths; these are just some of the myriad corporeal reconfigurations via technology at the disposal of humans today. As such, these ontological modifications of the body only make age-old questions of the self that much more obsolete or, on the other hand, more complicated? The Man Who Fell to Earth is an exhibition that explores the mutating corporeal self and the malleability of subjectivity in a futuristic present where life is exceedingly accelerated via technology subsequently exacerbating social alienation.

The exhibition tropes Walter Tevis’ similarly titled novel The Man Who Fell to Earth. Tevis’ science fiction tale concerns an interplanetary visitor who comes to earth looking for water for his water-depleted planet. In order to deflect attention from his extraterrestrial nature, the generically named Thomas Jerome Newton disguises himself as human; and this symbiotic morphing between homo sapiens and space alien is metaphorically articulated in the exhibition in numerous ways not limited to canine/anthropomorphic graphing, butterfly/pudenda interfacing, and transgender/racial shape-shifting.

The Man Who Fell to Earth explores the metamorphosis of race, gender, flora and fauna within the backdrop of the science fiction genre in diverse media including painting, photography, sculpture, works-on-paper, video, performance, installation, and sound works.
The Man Who Fell to Earth is a curatorial project that will be part of the Beijing 798 Biennial that will open on August 15 2009. The Beijing 798 Biennale is titled Constellations.

Kelly Richardson will be featured in the Beijing 798 Biennale as part of The Man Who Fell to Earth.