From the category archives:

Interview

An Interview with the Displaced Artists of Sterling Road: New Book, New Perspectives

by Rea McNamara on February 26, 2016
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TORONTO — On January 11th, Toronto artists and studio mates Lili Huston-Herterich, Vanessa Maltese and Abby McGuane were informed by their landlords of a 55% rent increase for February. This means their studios, located at a two-storey factory on Sterling Road, would jump from $1,905.50 CDN per month to $2,964.50.

The artists weren’t alone — indeed, as first reported in the Toronto Star, the landlords increased the rent across the board, with other artist and small business tenants also being forced to vacate the formerly desolate industrial zone in Toronto’s lower Junction neighborhood. The rapid revitalization along Sterling Road is bittersweet — despite the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art’s imminent move to the historic Tower Automotive Building at 158 Sterling next year, as well as new developments like “limited edition townhouses”, artists are getting pushed out of their live/work studios to be converted into offices for film production and advertising companies.

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The Sum of Everything: An Interview with Charles Atlas

by Rea McNamara on February 12, 2016
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“The career of the American filmmaker Charles Atlas has been a steady but slow-burning fire for more than 40 years,” wrote Holland Cotter just last year. Despite pioneering the media-dance art form, and collaborating with dancers and performers like Michael Clark, Marina Abramović and Leigh Bowery, Atlas didn’t have his first solo until 1995 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. That’s a big name institution to land a solo with, but it’s only been within the past decade that he’s had a steady stream of solo presentations at institutions and galleries. Those include the Tate Modern, London’s Vilma Gold, and Luhring Augustine in Chelsea.

Why the CV gap? This question naturally came up in the context of Atlas’s recent screening of his early works in Toronto. Organized by Pleasuredome, the event was a cross-section of motion movies, narratives and video featurettes accompanied by a book launch of his first monograph at Art Metropole.

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Miami’s Art Scene Looks to Ownership for Longevity

by Michael Anthony Farley on January 27, 2016
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In nearly every city, the art world is feeling the pinch from rising rents and a dwindling supply of large, affordable spaces for making or exhibiting work. But in Miami, a growing number of gallerists are opting to buy their own real estate—putting the breaks on a cycle of gentrification and the instability that comes with renting.

And they’re leaving Wynwood—until recently the undisputed center of Miami’s gallery scene—in droves. Many gallerists, studios, and artists are looking north to Little Haiti to rent or buy. I sat down with Brook Dorsch (of gallery Emmerson Dorsch), Nina Johnson-Milewski (of Gallery Diet), and the couple Annie Berkowitz and Jordan Trachtenberg, who recently opened the new &gallery in a building they bought for their own design and real estate offices. Collectively, they’re transforming a suburban-looking stretch of NW 2nd Ave into Miami’s latest—and permanent—arts neighborhood. We discussed the merits of property ownership and strategies for making it more accessible to Miami’s art community.

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Johnny Rogers on Pyongyang Apple Store

by Michael Anthony Farley on January 6, 2016
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Artist Johnny Rogers has turned to social media for product development ideas. These crowd-sourced designs will be unveiled next month at his bootleg “Pyongyang Apple Store” inside Current Gallery.

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Michelle Segre with Irena Jurek: On the Uncertain Impermanence of Driftloaf

by Irena Jurek on December 15, 2015
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Last month, Michelle Segre’s show Driftloaf closed at Derek Eller Gallery. The exhibition comprised brightly-painted loaves or slices of bread suspended on pediment-like found objects. They’re familiar but strange, and certainly pique one’s curiosity.

Irena Jurek sat down with Segre, and discussed the show.

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Rebecca Goyette With Irena Jurek: The Terrifying Experience of Ghost Bitch

by Irena Jurek on November 24, 2015
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Between 1692 and 1693, more than twenty people were executed in Massachusetts. They were the victims of a series of trials and persecutions against people accused of witchcraft. Most were women. All but one died of by hanging. During that time, Rebecca Nurse, a 71 year old grandmother known piousness and stature in the community was hung for witchcraft.

Years later, her great, great grandchild, Rebecca Goyette tells a new story, inspired by the events that killed her grandmother. I was lucky enough to be part of the live studio audience for the the filming of her new work “Ghost Bitch: Arise From the Gallows”, which imagines the life of a character by the same name doing historical reenactments by day and dominatrix work by night. She is a modern day witch who works hard to fulfill the expectations of thrill-seeking tourists—and art audiences.

The result was improvisational work of theatre and film that so thoroughly impressed and terrified me I reached out to Goyette to discuss the work. It premieres at the Satellite Art Show in a bandshell on Miami Beach next week, as part of her curatorial project “Extra Teats: A Screening of Bad Ass Puritan-Purging Digital Artwork”. The screening includes works by Katie Cercone, Kerry Downey, Dawn Frasch, Faith Holland, Narcissister, Kenya Robinson. We discuss gender dynamics and power struggles, Ghost Bitch, and the filming of that project and the most frightening art I have ever paid witness to.

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Launching the Largest Digital Biennale in the World on Shoestring Budget: An interview with David Quiles Guillo

by Paddy Johnson on October 29, 2015
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This Sunday, the new digital art biennale known as “The Wrong” (again) will officially go online. It’s so large, I’m not sure how we’re going to see it all, but in preparation for the day, I spoke to the Wrong founder and organizer David Quiles Guillo.

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The Blockchain and Digital Art: On ascribe, and its New Form of Art Authentication

by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara on October 22, 2015
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Trying to understand blockchain technology is a bit like trying to wrap your head around the subprime mortgage crisis: It may take more than a lifetime to fully grasp the concepts. In a nutshell, the blockchain is a distributed database—think a living, breathing spreadsheet operating in real-time—that audits itself every ten minutes and can’t be tampered with. An entire bitcoin network, for instance, relies on the blockchain as a shared public ledger. Every transaction of the cryptocurrency then is unalterably recorded.

Turns out this is the equivalent of digital provenance, so it’s very important to art. We talked to ascribe, a company that is using Blockchain technology for art authentication and contracts.

While in Berlin, we had the chance to speak with their creative team—including co-founders Trent and Masha McConaghy—to get a better sense as to what exactly ascribe offers to artists, and delve further into how it plans to specifically address the ongoing issues around the ownership, loaning and consigning of digital art.

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Transforming a Foundation into an Institution: An Interview with Creative Capital’s Ruby Lerner

by Paddy Johnson on October 14, 2015
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Every summer, when Creative Capital grantees and consultants arrive at the annual Creative Capital Retreat, President and Executive Director Ruby Lerner is there to meet them. It’s a small gesture, but I always thought it reflected the spirit of the organization and Ruby herself: warm, generous, and there for you when you want to get down to work. (Nobody goes to the retreat expecting not to work.)

This year, Ruby announced that she will step down from the helm of Creative Capital.

Given all the accomplishments of the foundation under her lead, I wanted to get a better sense of that history. With the organization hosting its fall benefit tomorrow—a homecoming ball in honour of Ruby—the timing couldn’t be better.

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An Interview with Art Handler Magazine Founder Clynton Lowry: Looking at Labor, Trade and Kickstarter

by Paddy Johnson on September 24, 2015
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The first issue of Art Handler Magazine looks different than any trade magazine I’ve seen. It includes an interview with Britton Bertran, the man behind Installator, a widely popular tumblr focused on images documenting the art installation process; a photo essay by Victor Hugo in which the tools of art installation become the work itself; and a how to article by Inball Straus that describes how a custom made clamshell shaped pouch helps protect irregularly shaped objects.

All of these articles focus on art handling in some way, but more broadly, labor as it exists in the market. These are great successes, but as a new independent publication, they still have many hurdles to clear. Number one is funding. I talk to Art Handler Magazine Founder and Editor in Chief Clynton Lowry about his new Kickstarter Campaign and the magazine itself.

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