Contact Photography Festival 2010

I can't believe that I never wrote about the exhibitions I saw at this year's Scotiabank (never forget the sponsor!) CONTACT Photography Festival.  Truthfully, I only attended two and passed by one often.  With a group called, Art Strollers , a group for caregivers and babies who attend workshops, tours, and other cultural events within the city, I went with my little guy to MOCCA to hear a talk about The Mechanical Bride.  The exhibition itself - amazing!  Curated by Bonnie Rubenstein, the exhibition featured the work of John Armstrong and Paul Collins, Dana Claxton, Kota Ezawa, Jacqueline Hassink, Ryan McGinley, Josephine Meckeper, Matt Siber, Alec Soth, Britta Thie and David LaChapelle (the David LaChapelle).

Needless to say, the talk enhanced the works selected by Rubenstein.  The exhibition title comes from Marshall McLuhan's The Mechanical Bride: The Folklore of Industrial Man (1951), which juxtaposed short critical texts with examples from print media.  It was meant to highlight and resist the power of advertising, using a strategy of mimicry.

The artists chosen, assert a critical voice by drawing upon and refashioning the rhetorical tactics of advertising (Marchessault, Contact Photography Festival catalogue, page 31). The photographs reflect on the process of persuasion.

As a bonus, LaChapelle also had a massive mural in the courtyard of MOCCA. The work, entitled The Rape of Africa simultaneously references the grand architectural paintings of the Renaissance and the supersized advertising billboards of the present. It is a take on Botticelli's Venus and Mars (c.1484).  LaChapelle's contemporary allegory evocatively comments on the effects of war, mining, and mass marketing on Africa.  He seamlessly references art history, current events and popular culture.  It was spectacular!

On my own (ok, with baby strapped to chest), I dashed over to Galerie Lausberg to catch James Robert Durant's exhibition Tropical Punch. I had rented James some workspace the prior year and had watched him develop his work, taking vintage and current photographs and assembling them into vivid, resin-rich canvases. This collection explores the idea of the purchase-able paradise.  I loved it.  I felt like I was in a tropical clime, the colours were so fresh and bright, the canvases, both large and small.  These fictional photographic landscapes blur the lines between truth, fantasy, and the passing of time.  It was a much-appreciated reprieve from the everyday.  Gorgeous!