The effecT: Should i STay or Should i go?

Winnipeg art gallery november 3-5 2016 centre for contemporary canadian art 20th anniversary symposium conTenTS Symposium Program 5 Welcome 13 Foreword 15 The Centre For Contemporary Canadian Art 18 The CCCA Canadian Art Database 19 Guest Speaker Martha Langford 21 Reading Jeanne Randolph 22 Spotlight Board Member Presenters 24 Spotlight Guest Presenters 25

Panel 1 The Winnipeg Effect: (t hose from here, who left or stayed) Noam Gonick 26 Suzanne Gillies 28 Robert Houle 30 Laura Letinsky 32 Panel 2 The Winnipeg Effect: (those who came and stayed) Mary Reid 34 hannah_g 36 Kristin Nelson 38 Alexis (Letch) Kinloch 40 Panel 3 The Winnipeg Effect: (assessing the history of contemporary art in Winnipeg) Kegan McFadden 42 Sigrid Dahle 44 Steve Loft 46 David Churchill 48 Keynote Presentation Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan Why Winnipeg? 50

Akimbo Writer in Residence Jenny Western 51 SympoSium Committee Book Launch 52 Andrew KeAr, Bill KirBy, KegAn mCFAdden, SheilA SpenCe, , liv vAlmeStAd Library/Bookstore 54 Cover: SuzAnne gillieS & douglAS SigurdSon, 1980. Everything Must Go! 56 photo: SheilA SpenCe There’s More Than One Way 57 deSign: SuSAn ChAFe The Afterlife Cabaret 58 editing: Bill KirBy, KegAn mcFAdden Acknowledgements 60 SyMpoSiuM prograM ThurSday noveMber 3

6:30 pm Registration

7:00 pm Welcoming remarks Patricia Bovey, [MC], Director Emerita, Winnipeg Art Gallery; Past Chair, Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art

launch of the Winnipeg effect project Bill Kirby, Founder and Director, Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art

guest Speaker Dr. Martha Langford Research Chair and Director, Gail & Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, (And now a word from our sponsor): How the CCCA has kept faith with the artist – what a concept! What an effect! SPoNSoRED By BoRDER CRoSSINGS

7:30 pm Reception

1968 1971 Bill Lobchuk The Eleventh New Winnipeg Art establishes Winnipeg Show Gallery building opens The Screen Shop at Oct 31 - Nov 24 at 300 Memorial Blvd. 48 Princess Street Winnipeg Art Gallery

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8:30 am Registration / Coffee 11:00 am Spotlight 3 Diane Whitehouse & Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art (MAWA) 9:00 am Welcoming Remarks Presented by Liv Valmestad

reading by Jeanne randolph panel 2: The Winnipeg effecT Sewer of Stories (ThoSe Who caMe and STayed) SPoNSoRED By WINDoW / AS WE TRy & SLEEP PRESS Panelists: hannah_g, Kristin Nelson, Alexis (Letch) Kinloch Moderator: Mary Reid Spotlight 1 SPoNSoRED By MENToRING ARTISTS FoR WoMEN’S ART, ACE Art INC., Border Crossings UNIVERSITy oF SCHooL oF ART Presented by Kegan McFadden Spotlight 4 panel 1: The Winnipeg effecT: Celebrating the legacy of The Professional Native Indian (ThoSe froM here, Who lefT or STayed) Artists Inc. in Canada Panelists: Suzanne Gillies, Robert Houle, Laura Letinsky Presented by Jaimie Isaac Moderator: Noam Gonick SPoNSoRED By PLUG IN INSTITUTE FoR CoNTEMPoRARy ART, 12:30 pm LUNCH [provided] BUHLER GALLERy, VIDEo PooL MEDIA ARTS CENTRE, AND PLATFoRM CENTRE FoR PHoToGRAPHIC + DIGITAL ARTS library/booKSTore Spotlight 2 in The lecTure rooM all day Bill Lobchuk,Grand Western Canadian Screenshop & Border Crossings Study Centre CARFAC Manitoba Also As Well Too Press Presented by Leona Herzog and Ted Howorth Lives of Dogs Press As We Try & Sleep Press 10:45 am HEALTH BREAK Parameter Press Martha Street Studio prints Grand Western Canadian Screen Shop prints

1972 1973 1974 Plug In. Inc. is co-founded Bruce Head: Painted New Prints from Winston Leathers Ivan Eyre: Recent Don Reichert [A Winnipeg by Suzanne Gillies, Douglas Objects and Graphics the Screen Shop Cosmic Variations Paintings and Sculpture Centennial Exhibition] Sigurdson and Lorrine Raboud April 10 - May 17 Nov 15 - Dec 31 March 1 - May 16 March 19 - June 19 Oct 21 - Jan 12, 1975 Winnipeg Art Gallery Winnipeg Art Gallery Winnipeg Art Gallery Winnipeg Art Gallery Winnipeg Art Gallery

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1:30 pm Spotlight 5 3:45 pm Spotlight 7 The 1980s in Winnipeg The Sleeping Beauty Cabaret Guest Presenter: Jon Tupper Presented by Doug Melnyk

panel 3: The Winnipeg effecT KeynoTe preSenTaTion: (aSSeSSing The hiSTory of ShaWna deMpSey & lorri Millan conTeMporary arT in Winnipeg) Introduced by Bev Pike Panelists: Sigrid Dahle, Steve Loft, David Churchill SPoNSoRED By THE LIBRARy GALLERy/CLIFF EyLAND Moderator: Kegan McFadden SPoNSoRED By URBAN SHAMAN CoNTEMPoRARy ABoRIGINAL ART, 4:30 pm book launches THE ’S GALLERy 1C03, MARTHA STREET STUDIo Aunt Agony’s Cavalcade of Mysteries , by Bev Pike Lives of Dogs Books by Artists Spotlight 6 Winnipeg Telephone (Artist) Book The Royal Art Lodge Also As Well Too Presented by Diana Thorneycroft 7:00 pm + FIRST FRIDAy Exhibition openings & Events 3:30 pm HEALTH BREAK

1975 1976 1977 Don Proch’s Eight from West Coast Waves David Umholtz opens Arts Manitoba: The Design Process Asessippi Clouds Aug 22 - Oct 5 Sept 4 - Nov 14 the Moosehead Press Issue 1 [] at Herman Miller Jan 8 - March 2 Winnipeg Art Gallery Winnipeg Art Gallery Lithography Workshop is published March 10 - April 17 Winnipeg Art Gallery Border Crossings Winnipeg Art Gallery

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11:00 am – 5:00 pm 8:00 pm ccca Winnipeg effecT cabareT open for visits to Winnipeg’s galleries and artist-run centres. Jekyll & Hyde’s Freehouse 437 Stradbrook Avenue at osborne Street 4:00 pm exhibition opening and publication launch The Revival of the Sleeping Beauty Cabaret: Lantern Fine Art, 211 Pacific Avenue The Afterlife Cabaret Everything Must Go! - Plugette ephemera 1972-1980 Performers: Ellen Peterson, Cathy Nosaty, Sharon Bajer, Archival material and photographic documentation from the first Debbie Patterson, Lori Freedman, Erika MacPherson, decade of Plug In Inc. from the personal archives of co-founders Gerry Atwell, Angie St. Mars, Allysa Watson and Frances Koncan Suzanne Gillies and Douglas Sigurdson organized by Doug Melnyk Publication launch: Mondo Trasho, edited by Kegan McFadden (As We Try & Sleep Press)

6:00 pm exhibition opening Special Collections Gallery, School of Art 313 ARTlab, University of Manitoba (Fort Garry Campus) There’s More Than One Way: An overview of collective art making practices in Winnipeg, 1968-NOW Curated by Kegan McFadden

1977 1977 1978 1979 Prints from the Grand Sculpture on the Prairies General Idea: Kenneth Lochhead. Form & Performance The Winnipeg Perspective 1979: Western Canadian July 16 - Sept 25 Hot Property An Exhibition of Nov 10 - Jan 7, 1979 Photo / Extended Dimensions Screen Shop Winnipeg Art Gallery Oct 19 - Oct 22 Paintings. 1952-1975 Winnipeg Art Gallery Feb 23 - April 8 March 17 - April 25 Winnipeg Art Gallery Winnipeg Art Gallery Winnipeg Art Gallery Canadian Cultural Centre

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The Winnipeg Art Gallery joins in celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art. As the venue sponsor partnering with the CCCA for the symposium The Winnipeg Effect: Should I Stay or Should I Go? I welcome every participant and visitor drawn from across the country, to this art-charged city. As Canada’s oldest civic art gallery, the WAG strives to ensure that exhibitions and programing continue to both celebrate the role artists and artistic communities have played in developing art in Winnipeg and, in turn, reflect on how this city, its history and environment, have shaped the artistic excellence that Winnipeg is known for. The CCCA Canadian Art Database continues to be an important resource for artists, students, and scholars. As an online record, it represents a primary source of vital information about contemporary Canadian art to the world. I commend founder and director Bill Kirby for the passion and work he has in - vested in creating and developing the CCCA Canadian Art Database, as well as Dr. Martha Langford and the commitment Concordia University’s Jaris - lowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art has demonstrated by providing the Database with a sound institutional home. Welcome to Winnipeg, where you all should most definitely stay!

Dr. Stephen Borys Director & CEO Winnipeg Art Gallery

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bill Kirby The cenTre for conTeMporary canadian arT and...“The Winnipeg effecT”

A bit of history… In 1973 I was invited by Don Reichert to come to Winnipeg to be the Director of Gallery 1.1.1. at the School of Art, and to teach a course on Canadian Art. The invitation was delivered through Virgil Hammock [who I had known some 5 years earlier, when he was Art Critic at the Edmonton Journal, and I was Di - rector of the Edmonton Art Gallery]. The following year, Ferdinand Eckhardt invited me to become Curator of Con - temporary Art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (replacing Philip Fry). By the time I left Winnipeg in 1978 to join the Canada Council as a Visual Arts officer, I had developed a close relationship with the art community and I know that I took some of Winnipeg with me. I kept in contact with Winnipeg over the next 18 years largely through annual jury visits to artists’ studios and galleries in Winnipeg as Director of the Canada Council Art Bank. After leaving the Art Bank in 1995, I founded the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art (CCCA) as a registered charitable organization with a mandate to foster and promote the appreciation of contemporary Canadian Art. To ac - complish this, I created the Canadian Art Database to document the careers of leading Canadian artists, along with various Canadian art institutions, artist groups and events. From modest beginnings in a high school in ottawa, the Canadian Art Database has grown to be an essential resource for exhibitions, teaching and learning, and scholarly research. My contact with Winnipeg over the years had clearly left a lasting impression on me so, after 15 years in Toronto, when circumstances suggested a change, I decided to move back here. My family had previously moved back to Win - nipeg, so it was an easy transition, and I soon felt right back ‘at home’.

14 15 The Winnipeg effecT included in the database, and to examine the effect that Winnipeg artists and art http://ccca.concordia.ca/winnipegeffect institutions have had on the cultural life of Winnipeggers and on the Canadian art scene as a whole. A number of Winnipeg artists and writers have made significant impacts on the The resulting Winnipeg Effect Project has involved the extensive researching and lives and careers of others—as teachers, mentors, gallery administrators, and assembling of information and materials documenting the art exhibitions, art activists. In addition, several artists, who at one time in their career have called events and related activities. To date, over 4,000 references have been entered Winnipeg their home, have gone on the other parts of the country, [and abroad], into the database to form the basis of a Winnipeg Art Chronology and Timeline . and have made significant contributions in their new locations. Exhibition invitations; catalogues; reviews; slides, photographs and digital im - Art galleries, art dealers, and art events have also played important roles in ages; and other archival ephemera are being gathered from a wide range of launching and furthering the careers of many Winnipeg artists over the past many Winnipeg art institutions, archives, artists, and members of the public. Many of years, and have been an integral part of the cultural life of the city and the country. these organizations and individuals have allowed access to their websites and Winnipeg has clearly had an effect on the art scene across Canada. archives and have been instrumental in the development of this project. While the current Winnipeg art scene has been receiving more national atten - The cumulative effect of bringing together a wide range of materials and infor - tion in recent years, to my mind, relatively little was known about Winnipeg’s long mation into a searchable, comprehensive overview will not only increase the and rich art history. one of the reasons for the general lack of knowledge was knowledge about Winnipeg’s vibrant art scene, but will facilitate the ongoing the lack of a comprehensive body of information and visual material with which investigation into the effect that Winnipeg’s art institutions, artists and writers to teach, to study, and to conduct research. have had on the cultural life of Winnipeg and the Canadian art scene as a whole. Students, teachers, and the general public throughout the province, With the renewed interest in archives and documentation, and with technology across Canada, and abroad will have access to a wealth of online material on making it easier to document art events and to repurpose digital materials for Winnipeg artists and art institutions. dissemination over the Internet, it seemed like the ideal time to address the matter. By harnessing the collective memory of the art community, I hope the Winnipeg Ef - In late 2012, I undertook a new initiative to increase the representation of Win - fect Project will significantly expand the knowledge and study of Winnipeg’s art nipeg artists in the Canadian Art Database. To date, the Winnipeg Artists Project history and, that Winnipeg’s important contribution to Canadian cultural life will has added more than 50 artists to the Database, with over 4,800 images illus - be better recognized and appreciated. trating their work. While I am launching the Winnipeg Effect Project here at the Symposium, the While working on the Winnipeg Artists Project , I spent considerable time en - project will remain a work in progress as more listings and illustrative materials gaging with the art community, and discussed the idea of a broader project to are added to the Winnipeg Art Chronology in the coming months. document the contributions of important Winnipeg art institutions, organizations and events that have helped shape the cultural life of Winnipeg since the Winnipeg continues to have a significant effect on me…I’m here to stay… 1960s. My goal was to provide a cultural context within which to study the artists – Bill Kirby, Founder and Director, Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art

1981 1983 The Floating Gallery Occurances: aceartinc. Video Pool Don Reichert: Paintings The Grand Western is established Four Manitoba Painters is established is established from the Landscape Canadian Screen Shop: Nov 8 - Jan 3 May 8 - June 19 A Print Legend Winnipeg Art Gallery Winnipeg Art Gallery Oseredok

16 17 The cenTre for conTeMporary canadian arT The ccca canadian arT daTabaSe ccca.concordia.ca

The Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art (CCCA) was founded in 1995 by Established by Bill Kirby in 1996, the CCCA Canadian Art Database is now Bill Kirby as a federally incorporated, not-for-profit charitable arts organization, housed at Concordia University in Montreal, under the auspices of the Gail and with the mandate to “increase public awareness of, involvement in, and support Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, a Research Centre for, the visual arts in Canada”. within the Faculty of Fine Arts. The focus of the CCCA's activity since its inception has been the CCCA Canadian As of october 2016, the Database contained: Art Database project. In 2011, after 15 years in Toronto, Kirby moved from Toronto • 52,718 images and 722 media clips by 637 prominent Canadian visual, media to Winnipeg and re-located the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art here. and performance artists; • 1,338 images by 38 leading Canadian graphic designers ccca board of direcTorS • more than 1,260 texts on art by 193 Canadian writers and curators • A series of Video Portraits profiling artists, graphic designers and art personalities bill Kirby andreW Kear Founder and Director Curator of In addition, the database and website presents a wide range of documentary Centre for Historical Canadian Art photographic and textual materials on Canadian art, presented through several Contemporary Winnipeg Art Gallery focused archival projects documenting important Canadian artist groups, arts Canadian Art organizations and major arts events—including: The Winnipeg Artists Project, currently displaying more than 4,500 images of e.J. (Ted) Kegan M cfadden work by 52 Winnipeg artists hoWorTh writer (Chair) curator The Isaacs Gallery [1956-1992] with material from york University Archives visual artist artist The Dorothy Cameron Gallery [1959-1974] TRAFFIC: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980 The Donovan Collection, St. Michael's College, paTricia bovey Sheila Spence The ChromaZone Artist Collective, Toronto [1981-1986] Adjunct Professor artist, Collective City [Toronto Artist Collectives 1985-2012] (art history, cultural administrator Nuit Blanche Toronto [2006-2015] policy and arts 2,700 pages of Society of Artists exhibition catalogues [1873-2002] management), searchable by year, page and artist University of Winnipeg; • The Artists Project [currently including over 1,300 images by 27 Inuit Director Emerita, diana artists—with textual content in English, French and Inuktitut], and a complete Winnipeg Art Gallery; ThorneycrofT past chair CCCA visual artist out-of-print recording of Inuit Throat Singing • The oneZeroZero Virtual Library [History of the Small Press in Canada] leona herzog [1945-2002] (Secretary) • A searchable Canadian Art Chronology currently holds more than 11,000 Manager Atrium liv valMeSTad references to art exhibitions and events—searchable by artist, event type, Services, Buhler Gallery, Art Librarian, venue/location and date St. Boniface Hospital art historian and visual artist, • A searchable Canadian Art Bibliography holds over 7,000 references—word University of Manitoba searchable by writer, artist, publisher and date.

18 19 gueST SpeaKer don’T ThroW iT aWay, give iT To The ccca

MarTha langford (and noW a Word froM our SponSor): hoW The ccca haS KepT faiTh WiTh The arTiST – WhaT a concepT! WhaT an effecT!

Martha Langford is Research Chair and Director of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art and a professor of Art History at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. Her publications include Sus - pended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums (2001); Scissors, Paper, Stone: Expressions of Memory in Contemporary Photographic Art (2007); A Cold War Tourist and His Camera , co-written with John Langford (2011); and an edited collection, Image & Imagination (2005), all from McGill- Queen’s University Press. Her forthcoming edited collection, Narratives Unfolding: National Art Histories in an Unfinished World , will appear in spring 2017, also from MQUP. She is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Canadian Art History/Annales d’histoire de l’art canadien . Recent journal articles on Canadian photographic history have appeared in History of Photography, Visual Studies, Intermedialities: History and Theory of the Arts, Literature and Technologies , and Journal of Canadian Studies . She has a longstanding interest in the Canadian artist and filmmaker Michael Snow, about whom she has written numerous essays and book chapters, as well as the Art Canada online publication Michael Snow: Life & Work , for Art Canada Institute. Langford was the founding director of the Canadian Museum of Con - temporary Photography (1985–94), overseeing the transfer of the National Film of Canada, Still Photography Division to the National Gallery of Canada, where its photographic collections have been consolidated under the Canadian Pho - tography Institute. Langford is now heading an editorial committee to write His tories of Photography in Canada , to be published by Art Canada Institute.

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Jeanne is an intellectual who has been writing ficto-criticism for artist exhibitions and books since 1983. Her practice perverts psychoanalytic theory in the service of culture. Jeanne’s first work of cultural criticism was The Amenable Object Jeanne randolph (1983). Jeanne’s writings have been collected for publication as books from 1991 ( Psychoanalysis and Synchronized Swimming ) to 2015 ( Out of Psycho - This incantation was published in Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan’s group analysis: ficto-critcism 2005-2015 ). Jeanne is unwillingly mesmerized by mass exhibition catalogue “Subconscious City” curated for The Winnipeg Art Gallery media, advertising and post-modern evil; thus her two books Ethics of Luxury in 2008. I took the title of the exhibition literally. our personal Subconscious (2007) and Shopping Cart Pantheism (2015). If invited Jeanne will free associate knows only the dumb, merciless cravings of our hindbrains. I pondered how to in public at conferences and classrooms, reacting unpredictably to her diapos - represent aspects of Winnipeg that are inherent in the same way. I decided itives and the roar of the slide projector; while somehow adding insight to the that whatever is inevitable in a city’s hindbrain must be its Will-to-Depravity. A topic at hand. Her two most recent uninhibited performances were the keynote City’s Will-to-Depravity is impossible for newspapers to depict with facts. But address, Free Association as a Research Method , perpetrated upon the audi - whatever is impossible to depict continues nevertheless. “Sewer of Stories” ence at The Canadian Network for Psychoanalysis and Culture conference, therefore is evocative, not factual. “Sewer of Stories” is like a perpetual cross - University of Toronto 2015 and The Bottom Feeders lovingly disgorged for word puzzle; the audience can fill in any names that seem to them to match Plug In ICA on the occasion of Kegan McFadden’s exhibition Yesterday Was the clues. Once Tomorrow (or, A Brick is a Tool) , Winnipeg, 26 February 2015.

1983 1984 1986 Stage One The Women's Program Aganetha Dyck: The Dynamics of Tony Gallery 1C03 Another Artexte: [Randal Newman] at Plug In is named Recent Work Tascona: Works on is established at the Meditations on a Landscape Nov 28 - Dec 14 MAWA [Manitoba Artists Aug 26 - Sept 23 Aluminum 1973-1984 University of Winnipeg – Interim State Ace Art Inc. for Women's Art] Winnipeg Art Gallery Winnipeg Art Gallery [Kenneth Coutts-Smith]

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SpoTlighT 4 Celebrating the legacy of The Professional Native Indian Artists Inc. in Canada JaiMie iSaac Jaimie Isaac is an interdisciplinary curator and artist, mem - ber of Sagkeeng/ Treaty 1 territory. Isaac is the curator of SpoTlighT 1 Indigenous and Contemporary Art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Border Crossings She holds a Masters of Arts from the University of British Kegan M cfadden Columbia okanagan. Recent exhibitions include We Are On Treaty Land , and Quayuktchigaewin: Making Good, for the Winnipeg Art Gallery. She co-founded The Ephemerals Col - lective, collaborated on official denial (trade value in progress) , and was co-faculty for the Wood Land School at Plug In In - SpoTlighT 2 stitute 2016. Bill Lobchuk, Grand Western Canadian Screenshop & CARFAC Manitoba SpoTlighT 5 The 1980s in Winnipeg e.J. [Ted] hoWorTh Jon Tupper and leona herzog Jon Tupper is the Director of the Art Gallery of Greater Vic - toria. Prior to coming to Victoria he was the Director of the Confederation Center Art Gallery in Charlottetown. He has been Director of the Walter Phillips Gallery and As soci - ate Director of Creative Residencies in Media and Visual Arts at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Associate Di rector SpoTlighT 3 of Curatorial Affairs at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and Director Diane Whitehouse & Mentoring Artists of Plug In Inc., also in Winnipeg. I n 1998 founded the Banff for Women’s Art (MAWA) International Cu ratorial Institute. He represented Canada as liv valMeSTad the Commissioner to the Sao Paulo Bienial and Co-Commis - sioner to the Venice Biennale. He is a recipient of the Queens Diamond Jubilee Medal for his work with Canadian Museums.

SpoTlighT 7 The Sleeping Beauty Cabaret doug MelnyK Doug Melnyk works in drawing, performance and video, SpoTlighT 6 often in collaboration. He has performed in numerous Win - The Royal Art Lodge nipeg Fringe Festivals as well the Edinburgh Fringe, with diana ThorneycrofT Gorilla , named Pick of the Fringe, and venues in London and New york. He is author of Naked Croquet (Turnstone Press), Doctor Meis t (Lives of Dogs Books by Artists), and numer - Video transfer for Doug Melnyk’s ous queer comic zines. Las Vegas, Danny Kaye’s Eyes and “Sleeping Beauty Cabaret” Spotlight other video titles are in permanent collections of the Win - presentation courtesy of Rick Fisher nipeg Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada, and the Mu - and Video Pool “in honour of Donna”. seum of Modern Art in New york.

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noaM gonicK

The ebb and flow of artists pursuing economic and educational opportunities Directing feature films, documentary film/television and creating new media/ in - near and far is constant, however I’m interested in another narrative of exile stallation art, noam gonick ’s work spans the distance between mythic Utopian and return inscribed on this city: namely the herding onto reservations of the hippie cults ( Wildflowers of Manitoba 2007, with Luis Jacob) and real-life queer pre-existing Native inhabitants to make way for colonization, and the influx of olympians clandestinely meeting LGBT activists during the Sochi games ( To First Nations back into this city after a century (or more) of banishment. Cultur - Russia with Love , 2015). Directing the premiere episode of the forthcoming ally sensitive moderators open events like ours stating “This is Treaty 1 Terri - APTN/CBC TV series Taken (2016) about #MMIW to the short film 1919 (1997) tory”. What are the realities of being treaty people, treaty artists? The ‘Winnipeg about the Winnipeg General Strike, and the semaphore of prison architecture Effect’ may come from labour radicalism, a potent ethnic mix of immigrants, in the installation Precious Blood (2007), Noam favours projects which nurture cold, isolation… to these I’d add the dawning realization that this experiment is the audience’s desire for dissent, in a zone where sexuality, race and class situated on a land grab whose legacy urgently calls out for expression. And in tersect. Premiering theatrically, broadcast internationally, Gonick’s work has what happens when settler artists whose ancestors sought refuge on occupied debuted at Venice, TIFF, Berlin, and Sundance, been collected by MoMA, UBC land tune their privileged voices into this theme? Who objects and why? Belkin and the National Gallery of Canada and streamed worldwide on Netflix.

1986 1988 1990 1991 : William Pura: Crossroads Pauline Kupiak: Robert Houle: Love & Gravity Caroline Dukes: At A Retrospective Nov 20 - Dec 15 Recent Work Indians from A to Z [Lowell Morris] the Focus of Forces Nov 16 - Feb 15 Gallery 1.1.1., School of Art Jan 9 - Jan 27 Feb 11 - May 6 March 15 Jan 20 - March 17 Winnipeg Art Gallery University of Manitoba ace art inc. Winnipeg Art Gallery Ace Art Inc. Winnipeg Art Gallery

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same as that which had originally committed us to Plug In: we loved art and we loved artists, and Toronto appeared to be full of both. That is to say, the comings and goings of artists may be determined by forces that have little to do with ca - reer trajectories, risk evaluations, etc. Rather, they are sometimes propelled by more incidental elements of human experience – curiosity, adventure, caprice.

Born and educated in Winnipeg, Suzanne was a founder of Plug In Inc., and served as its co-director from 1972 to 1980. Working out of Toronto throughout the 80s, she was involved in various engage - ments, including that of director of the Niagara Artists Centre, and as studio Suzanne gillieS as sistant for General Idea. In Toronto, Suzanne inaugurated and coordinated the first fundraiser held by the Canadian visual arts community in support of What compels an artist (or an art administrator) to live in one particular place persons living with AIDS. Entitled “Walls on Fire”, this auction was produced at or another? I imagine the decision to stay somewhere or to go somewhere else the yyZ Artists’ outlet in 1988, and featured works from artists across Canada. is largely conditioned by an interest in the advancement of a career. Can I make Since returning to Winnipeg, Suzanne has played a variety of roles, including art here/there? Have access to a market for this work? And so on. A particular that of associate director of the gallery at the University of Manitoba School of place will either serve this ambition nicely, or it will not. Art, and that of independent curator for projects involving, for example, the Faculty But what about the individual whose comings and/or goings are not directed by of Architecture, Video Pool and Floating Gallery. In the 90s, she registered the any particular career ambition? Thinking back to my own departure from Winnipeg ironic title “Institute of Contemporary Art and Design” as a simple fund-raising in 1980, I am struck by the casual (I would even say blithe) nature of this deci - mechanism for the support of independent art projects. Suzanne has held a sion. After nine years at Plug In, my co-director Doug Sigurdson and I rapidly particular interest in the development of a broader social conversation in the pieced together a succession plan for the organization… and simply uprooted vi sual arts, in formats that include community TV, artists fashion shows, web- ourselves. casting and most recently “The Fort Garry (Ladies’) Pony Club.” What was our motivation to relocate in Toronto? Certainly we had no “job Her committee work and board affiliations include an extended stint on the Man - prospects”—or any particular plans at all. I suppose the motivation was the itoba Arts Council, in the early 2000s.

1992 1993 Eleanor Bond: E.D.G.E. Manitoba The Grand Western Canadian Screen Latvian Photographers in The Pressing of Flesh The Metaphysics of Social Centres June 30 - July 25 Shop: Printing, People and History the Age of Glasnost Oct 1 - Oct 23 Wellness [Rob Flack] Jan 19 - April 14 Ace Art Inc. Sept 11 - Nov 15 Dec 22 - Jan 16 Plug In Gallery and Oct 26 - Nov 10 Winnipeg Art Gallery MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina Floating Gallery Floating Gallery Floating Gallery

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n robert houle is a Saulteaux artist from Sandy Bay First Nation. He graduated o J from both the University of Manitoba (B.A.) and McGill University (B.Ed.) and studied painting and drawing at the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts roberT houle in Salzburg, Austria. Houle has been exhibiting internationally for over 40 years and taught at the ontario College of Art and Design University for over 20 years. Born at St. Vital Hospital in St. Boniface, raised on the Sandy Bay First Nation, He is the author of several essays and monographs on major contemporary and having studied at Assiniboia High School and later, the University of Man - First Nations and Native American artists and has curated or co-curated ground - itoba in Winnipeg, my relationship with this city and my reserve has shaped my breaking exhibitions. His work can be found in the collections of many institu - development as a visual artist and proud Anishnabe. As a speaker, family gath - tions including the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of ontario, Winnipeg erings: social, cultural and political, kept dahnishnabemowin, my language, alive. Art Gallery, Royal ontario Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney Aus - This city has also recognized my work with residencies, retrospectives, site spe - tralia, and National Museum of the American Indian. Among the honours he has cific installations and an honoris causa from my alma mater, the University of received are honourary doctorates from University of ontario Institute of Tech - Manitoba. nology (2016) and the University of Manitoba (2014), the 2015 Governor Gen - Although I left in 1970 to study art history in Montreal, my attachment to Manitoba eral’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, the Canada Council Residency Program remains constant through return trips home for graduations, weddings, funerals for the Visual Arts in Paris (2006), distinguished alumnus, University of Manitoba and powwows and my personal sovereignty is framed within the political and his - (2004), Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship (2003), Toronto Arts Award torical Treaty one, the ceding by my ancestors of the land where Winnipeg now (2001), membership in the Royal Canadian Academy (2000), and the Janet stands, a city of cultural dynamism and diversity where I always feel at home. Braide Memorial Award for Excellence in Canadian Art History (1993).

1994 1995 1996 Eyre With Honour A Slow Remembering Sculptures: Blair Marten Myron Turner Aganetha Dyck Urban Shaman May 26 - June 16 [Diana Thorneycroft, Solo Exhibition Feb 2 - Feb 25 May 11 - Oct 26 Contemporary Gallery 1.1.1., University Sigrid Dahle, Di Brandt] Oct 7 - Oct 29 Floating Gallery Winnipeg Art Gallery Aboriginal Art of Manitoba School of Art Floating Gallery Ace Art Inc. is established

30 31 panel 1 ThoSe froM here, Who lefT or STayed don’T ThroW iT aWay, give iT To The ccca

laura leTinSKy

What does being from a place actually “do” to the person from that place? laura letinsky , BFA from the University of Manitoba, 1986, and MFA from yale Winnipeg, at a 49.88 latitude and -97.15 longitude, 245 meters above sea level, University’s School of Art, 1991, is now a Professor in the Department of Visual with a climate reputedly similar to Siberia, and a population fueled by waves of Art at the University of Chicago. Exhibitions include the Mumbai Photography immigrants (for those more recent, the temperatures, a shock), has been a Festival, Mumbai, India; MIT, Cambridge, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, pretty amazing site of fomentation for artists, writers, musicians, and thinkers. Chicago; The Photographers Gallery, London; The Denver Art Museum, Co; For me, some inexorable mind’s image of the absolute authority of its horizon Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New york; and The Ren - line, the ruthless rigor of its weather, the intense relief of light’s respite, and of aissance Society, Chicago. She is represented by yancey Richardson Gallery, a deep knowledge that allows me to return, in person and in my head, heart, NyC. Awards include the Canada Council International Residency, Kunstler - and spleen, this continues to inform what I do. haus Bethanien, Berlin, The Anonymous Was a Woman Award, and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Publications include Ill Form and Void Full , Ra - dius Press, 2014, Feast , Smart Museum of Art, UC Press, 2013, After All , Dami - ani, 2010, Hardly More Than Ever , Renaissance Society, 2004, Blink , Phaidon Press, 2002, and Venus Inferred , University of Chicago Press, 2000.

1996 1997 1998 1999 A Gathering of Spirits : Paintings for Toni Onley: Tom Lovatt: the handmakers’ tale: Five Hundred Naked Men [Rosalie Favell] Dimly Lit Rooms / Paintings Japan Remembered The Human Position Robert Archambeau [New Work by Doug Melnyk] July 5 - Aug 3 for Brightly Lit Rooms Nov 2 - Nov 29 [Manitoba Studio Series] and Don Reichert June 3 - June 30 Floating Gallery Winnipeg Art Gallery Gallery Winnipeg Art Gallery Gallery Gallery

32 33 panel 2 ThoSe Who caMe and STayed don’T ThroW iT aWay, give iT To The ccca

Mary reid

I find it somewhat awkward to moderate a panel whose topic is dedicated to Mary reid is currently the Director/Curator of the Woodstock Art Gallery. Prior “those who came and stayed,” as I came, stayed for a decade and then went to her move back to ontario in 2014 she was the Director/ Curator of the School back to ontario. Please note I did not “go back home” because Winnipeg was of Art Gallery at the University of Manitoba (2011 to 2014) and the Curator of my home for ten years. My time here was a very significant and formational ex - Contemporary Art and Photography at Winnipeg Art Gallery (2004 to 2011). In perience for me both professionally and personally. Due to the uniqueness of 2010, she worked with the Winnipeg Arts Council as part of the Cultural Capital Winnipeg it provided important opportunities that allowed me to develop my own program of events to coordinate My City’s Still Breathing , a symposium that ex - strengths. The character of the city and its extraordinary arts community allowed plored the many dimensions of the arts, artists and the city. Reid has lectured me to achieve many goals that would not have been possible in other arenas. and taught at Georgian College, the University of Winnipeg and the University Although I am gone for the time being there is always the twinkle of opportunity of Manitoba on issues regarding contemporary art, curating and museum prac - to return and stay for good. tice as well as critical writing. Before moving out west for a decade she was the curator at the MacLaren Art Centre, Barrie, ontario. Reid received her Master degree in Art History in 1999 and in 2014 returned to york University part-time to embark on her Master of Business Administration.

2000 2001 Cecile Clayton-Gouthro: Eduardo Aquino: 111101 William Eakin The Atomic Age Tony Tascona: Paul Butler: "Getting there Connecting at an Sept 7 - Oct 14 Sept 28 - Jan 7 [Photographs Resonance is half the fun!" Unknown Rate Gallery One One One Winnipeg Art Gallery by David McMillan] May 24 - Sept 16 Oct 12 - Oct 26 Gallery One One One University of Manitoba Nov 3 - Nov 27 Winnipeg Art Gallery Gallery One One One University of Manitoba Gallery School of Art

34 35 panel 2 ThoSe Who caMe and STayed don’T ThroW iT aWay, give iT To The ccca

Institutions are, of course, collectives of people, and when they choose to be generous and open and take their mandates to heart, they become incredibly powerful vehicles for thought, creation, and positive change. This part of the prairies doesn't seem to feel overly anxious about more artists choosing to stay here, there's still lots of room, and perhaps this informs the kind of unaffected hospitality that can so easily be labeled 'radical' because it is perceived as rare. It fosters artists' growth and makes it a hard place to leave— being able to realise your ideas and dreams is both seductive and addictive. r e h

s hannah_g is a writer, contemporary storyteller, and interdisciplinary artist. Her A

n

e academic background is in literature & philosophy and modern & contemporary r a K poetry respectively but after completing her post-graduate studies, she became involved with several visual arts organisations, most notably the Cube Micro- hannah_g plex, where she cut her teeth as an arts programmer. As an artist, hannah's work is varied, with her chief areas of interest being the effect of recollection on identity In Bristol, England, I first experienced radical generosity enacted by volunteers and interrupting personal and public spaces. She has performed and exhibited through a self-funded, off-kilter arts centre, The Cube Microplex. This was a in Canada, England, Belgium, Romania, and the USA. As a contemporary art formative experience that shaped my approach to programming and directing programmer, hannah is committed to supporting artists in the realization of their a centre. In another city, on another continent, I was the recipient of another ideas and works via professional and institutional generosity. As such, at aceart - profound round of generosity enacted by arts administrators and artists through inc., in addition to mounting five exhibitions annually by emerging artists, she their institutions. This experience, in Winnipeg, enabled me to realize my own co-founded the Cartae open School and founded the current Flux Gallery.She arts practice. is also the editor of the gallery's annual anthology of art writing.

2001 2002 Late Echo: Recent Lita Fontaine: Bev Pike: The Spinster Project Grace Nickel: Dominique Rey: The Bathers Micah Lexier: 1 works by Tom Lovatt Without Reservation Jan 24 - Feb 22 A Quiet Passage Sept 12 - Oct 4 Oct 11 - Nov 8 Dec 7 - Dec 30 Jan 17 - March 15 Gallery One One One April 18 - July 22 Gallery One One One Gallery One One One Gallery Winnipeg Art Gallery University of Manitoba Winnipeg Art Gallery University of Manitoba University of Manitoba

36 37 panel 2 ThoSe Who caMe and STayed don’T ThroW iT aWay, give iT To The ccca

KriSTin nelSon

From Die Maschine to snowplows: Kristin Nelson will recount several tales that Born in Ajax ontario, Kristin nelson received her BFA in Visual Arts at Emily explain the reasons why this artist made Winnipeg her home (even before moving Carr Institute of Art and Design (2003) and MFA at Concordia University here). For the last thirteen years, she has been musing, comparing and con - (2014). Through a process of examination and re-contextualisation, she transforms trasting Winnipeg to all other manner of Canadian city, finding more reasons to mundane subjects into larger social concerns. Kristin has recently completed a stay than to leave. The belief in, and the actuality of mentorships play a huge three month Canada Council International Residency at Artspace in Sydney role in maintaining its fabric. It is both the tenacity and the precarity of Winnipeg, Australia (2015) and has previously participated in a residency at the Banff Centre that make it a place of refuge for the faint of heart, and a platform for the pos - for the Arts (2008). She has exhibited work across Canada as well as in México sible, in active social, political and artistic engagement. and has served on the board of directors of the Manitoba Craft Council and the Manitoba Printmakers Association. Her work is represented by Lisa Kehler Art + Projects.

2003 2004 2005 Bruce Head / Winston Blind Spot: Reva Stone: Displacement MAWA re-locates The Study of Indian-ness Gordon Lebredt: Leathers [Celebrating The Gothic Unconscious Jan 7 - Feb 22 to 611 Main Street [Jeff Thomas] By the Numbers - 50 Years of Joint Gallery One One One Winnipeg Art Gallery Art Gallery of painting)programme Exhibitions] University of Manitoba Southwestern Manitoba (photography Gallery Nov 10 - Jan 27, 2006 Gallery One One One, School of Art University of Manitoba

38 39 panel 2 ThoSe Who caMe and STayed don’T ThroW iT aWay, give iT To The ccca

aleXiS (leTch) Kinloch

Winnipeg is my chosen city. It's a special thing to choose a city; to decide, out - letch Kinloch is a recovering nomad who founded Also As Well Too Artist side of familial obligation, where your life will be lived. I have come to realize Book Library and resists autobiographicising. that when I talk about Winnipeg I really mean its arts community. This distinction is important to make. While it may feel abstractly naval-gazey to constantly rem - inisce about the specialness of this city, it seems completely appropriate and important to celebrate the complex connections made here. These connections are made possible because of the unbelievable people who enliven this place and the lives of others by virtue of being brought together through the varied and tenuous connections we have to the arts.

2006 2008 KC Adams Bond, Dyck, Koop, Place, Colour and Light [Roger Art City is founded Maze: Stephen Grimmer, Caroline Dukes: Sept 14 - Oct 13 Thorneycroft Lafrenière & Brigitte Dion] by Wanda Koop Kevin Kelly, Steven Nunoda, Concealed Memories Gallery One One One Gallery One One One Feb 7 - April 28 Alex Poruchnyk, Kirk Warren Winnipeg Art Gallery University of Manitoba University of Manitoba Buhler Gallery Gallery One One One University of Manitoba

40 41 panel 3 aSSeSSing The hiSTory of don’T ThroW iT aWay, give iT To The ccca conTeMporary arT...in Winnipeg

“Kelly Lake Store & Other Stories dwells in out-of-the-way places—commu - nities and landscapes obscured by poverty and decline—yet it does so with an eagle eye that extends the reader’s vision upward and outward to en - compass the old problems of the center: power, class, and lineage. Kraus’s narrative propels us forward on a cross-country journey through obscure border towns, big cities, fancy parties, and dusty hippie encampments. The essay’s three interwoven sections construct a rather monstrous architecture in which a desolate Mexican pueblo cuts a path to the offices of the Guggen - heim Foundation.” Motto Books During the question and answer period I asked Chris what the difference is between Radical Localism and navel gazing … She replied, “hope.” I’m thinking of Winnipeg, and where we fall on this spectrum of Radical Localism and naval gazing. Land-locked somewhere between self-deprecating humour and the looming threat of the tallest poppy syndrome… How hopeful are we?

Kegan M cfadden Kegan Mcfadden is a writer, curator, and artist. Since 2002, Kegan’s As We Try & Sleep Press has produced printed matter, exhibitions, and events that I’m thinking of Chris Kraus. The american writer/critic/artist was in Winnipeg blur the line between the literary and visual arts. His curatorial effort. Quelle speaking at Plug In the summer of 2014. She was there reading from her then Dérive: le possible et le réel de Winnipeg which explored the psychogeography recent publication, Kelly Lake Store , a book-length essay regarding place and of the city was produced as part of the National Arts Centre’s Prairie Scene ini - commerce in the mid-west of America. The essay revolves around a failed grant tiative (ottawa, 2011). In 2012 he started window , a 24 hour artist-run centre to the Guggenheim Foundation where she applied for money to revitalize the on the corner of Bannatyne and Arthur in Winnipeg’s Exchange District. over dying town of Kelly Lake through art. Her point stemmed from the possibility of the last four years, window has programmed nearly thirty projects. Kegan is a what she has called, “Radical Localism.” member of the Board of Directors of the CCCA.

2008 2009 Border Crossings: HeadSpace: Five idot & megapixels [Ewa Harrell Fletcher Terrance Houle: GIVN’R Suzie Smith: Popular Culture, Issue 107 [Winnipeg] Decades of Bruce Head Tarsia & Don Reichert] Feb 13 - March 7 March 28 - May 16 Multiples, and Mass Production Sept 12 - Nov 23 Sept 26 - Jan 11, 2009 Plug In ICA Plug In ICA [Artist Lecture], June 20, MAWA Winnipeg Art Gallery Buhler Gallery

42 43 panel 3 aSSeSSing The hiSTory of don’T ThroW iT aWay, give iT To The ccca conTeMporary arT...in Winnipeg

Sigrid dahle

Though I’m Regina-born and have lived, studied and/or worked in all the major These ruminations informed two curatorial projects: The Gothic Unconscious prairie cities, Winnipeg has been my home for more than three decades. For and There’s No Place Like Home . The former, a year-long project consisting of most of that time, I’ve immersed myself in the pleasures, conundrums, anguish, four exhibitions involving nearly 500 artworks, was presented by Gallery one excitement and boredom of researching, teaching, making, lecturing on, writing one one, School of Art, University of Manitoba in 2003-4. The latter, the sequel about, theorizing, curating, administrating and caring for art. The art practices to The Gothic Unconscious , was my modest contribution to My Winnipeg , a of those who also call this wonderfully weird, profoundly troubled and often one-hundred artist exhibition that travelled to Paris; Sète, France and Winnipeg banal city ‘home’ has been my primary focus. But here’s the thing: our home— in 2011-2013. The final project in the three-part series, Winnipeg Art in the An - like every other subjectively unique ‘locale’ on this planet—is enmeshed in a thropocene , is a speculative curatorial project that will never be produced be - tangled global network and implicated in a sea-storm of trans-global forces. In cause it is always-already in progress. other words, to contemplate Winnipeg-produced art is to grapple with concerns and longings that resonate globally. Creatively, socially and intellectually the process can be a lot of fun—but at the end of the day it can also leave you with a heavy heart. Hope is sometimes hard to come by.

2009 2010 Freya Bjorg Olafson FAX RAW: Marian Yeo: 27 x Doug: Portraits by Wanda Koop... AVATAR [co-presentation Dec 12, 2009 - Feb 21 Gallery of Architecture A Tribute Larry Glawson On the Edge of Experience with Winnipeg’s Plug In ICA and Design opens May 6, MAWA July 19 - Sept 17 Sept 11 - Nov 21 Contemporary Dancers] Gallery One One One Winnipeg Art Gallery University of Manitoba

44 45 panel 3 aSSeSSing The hiSTory of don’T ThroW iT aWay, give iT To The ccca conTeMporary arT...in Winnipeg

STeven lofT

Located almost exactly at the geographic centre of North America, Winnipeg Steven loft is a Mohawk of the Six Nations with Jewish heritage. He is currently has always been a hub of trade and commerce, but also of their corollaries: ex - Coordinator, Aboriginal Arts office with the Canada Council for the Arts. A cu - ploitation and colonization. A city of contrasts and layers, it is known as the rator, scholar, writer and media artist, in 2010 he was named Trudeau National “gateway to the West”, it has always been an intersection of people, cultures Visiting Fellow at Ryerson University in Toronto. Loft has also held positions as and ideas. Curator-In-Residence, Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada, Director/ Curator of the Urban Shaman Gallery (Winnipeg); Aboriginal Curator at the Art Winnipeg is more than the sum of its afflictions and aberrations. More than just Gallery of Hamilton and Producer and Artistic Director of the Native Indian/Inuit the namesake of a disreputable fictional bear, and so much more than, as Theo Photographers’ Association (Hamilton). He has curated group and solo exhibitions Sims so eloquently puts it, “the doorstop of the east,” it is a place where culture, across Canada and internationally; written extensively for magazines, cata - in all its forms, matters. logues and arts publications and lectured widely in Canada and internationally. Loft co-edited the books Transference, Technology, Tradition: Aboriginal Media and New Media Art (Banff Centre Press, 2005) and Coded Territories: Indige - nous Pathways in New Media (University of Calgary Press, 2014).

2010 2011 Jamelie Hassan: Adrian Stimson and Lori Divya Mehra’s solo debut Plug In moves into Extinction Close Encounters: Word Blondeau: Putting the WILD Turf War 460 Portage Ave. [Galen Johnson] The Next 500 Years Sept 25, MAWA Back in the West: Buffalo PLATFORM Jan 14 - Feb 18 Plug In ICA [with The Boy and Belle Sauvage RAW:Gallery Winnipeg Art Gallery (2006-2010), Nov 10 - and Urban Shaman] Dec 19, Plug In ICA

46 47 panel 3 aSSeSSing The hiSTory of don’T ThroW iT aWay, give iT To The ccca conTeMporary arT...in Winnipeg

david churchill

The Queer Ambivalence of Visual Culture in Winnipeg

This paper focuses on prominent Winnipeg artists Noam Gonick, Shawna Dempsey david S. churchill is a Professor of History at the University of Manitoba where and Lorri Milan and their production of alternative historical landscapes of Win - he teaches the History of the Unites States. He currently holds a multi-year nipeg. As such these artists have not simply produced subjective works of sexual So cial Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight diversity and alterity, but have sought to re-conceptualize both the City and the Grant on “Homophile Internationalism during the 1950s and 1960s.” He is the Province as historical landscapes replete with homo erotics and same-sex cor - former Director of the University Manitoba Institute of the Humanities and was poreal intimacies. More significantly these artists have challenged themes of a Rockefeller Humanities Fellow at Columbia University in New york City. Along Winnipeg exceptionalism and splendid isolation within the City’s arts community, with Frank Livingston he is the curator of the Box Gallery, as well as director of while also connecting Winnipeg to broader national and transnational sets of the short video Sandy: The Long Dark Tearoom of the Soul (2015), and occa - historical relations and aesthetic currents. Beyond the cultural effervescence of sional contributor to Border Crossings . homo sex itself, these artists have complicated and deepened the understanding of Winnipeg as a place of significance, while also critically engaging more ex - pansive visual vernaculars that transcend narrow locality.

2011 Artmaking in the Winter Kept Us Warm On Becoming Frontrunners Celebration of Plug In ICA co-presents Shadow of Freud, April 26 - May 8 [Brendan Fernandes] Plug In ICA and Urban Diane Whitehouse My Winnipeg at with Jeanne Randolph Plug In ICA Art Gallery of Shaman Contemporary and Sheila Butler la maison rouge, Paris March 4, MAWA Southwestern Manitoba Art Gallery June 1, 2011, MAWA June 23 - Sept 25

48 49 KeynoTe preSenTaTion Why Winnipeg? aKiMbo WriTer-in-reSidence l e o G

a m e e S

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t e s

a

n i

w a l n s a i d h n c s a t b a a L

a e n i i k i s e M

n o e t o B

h t t p o c S ShaWna deMpSey and lorri Millan introduced by bev piKe Jenny WeSTern

Collaborators since 1989, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan are among Canada’s Jenny Western is an independent curator, writer, and educator based in Winnipeg, best-known performance artists. They were catapulted into the international Manitoba. She holds an undergraduate degree in History from the University of spotlight in their 20s with the performance and film We’re Talking Vulva . At about Winnipeg and a Masters in Art History and Curatorial Practice from york University the same time they made a bold move: leaving their home-and-native Toronto in Toronto. While completing her graduate studies, she accepted a position at the for Winnipeg. It was perhaps the most art-positive decision they have ever made. Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in Brandon where she was the Curator of Since then, their live work and videos have been exhibited in diverse venues as Contemporary / Aboriginal Art from 2005 to 2007 and remained the AGSM’s Ad - far-ranging as women’s centres in Sri Lanka, the Istanbul Biennial, Syd ney junct Curator until 2011. Western has curated exhibitions and programs for aceart - Gay/Lesbian Mardi Gras and the Museum of Modern Art, New york City. This inc., The Costume Museum of Canada, The Estevan Art Gallery, The Kelowna duo has created installations (such as Archaeology and You for the Royal ontario Art Gallery, The Manitoba Crafts Council, La Maison des Artistes, Plug In ICA, Museum) and books (such as Bedtime Stories for the Edge of the World , Ar - Portage and District Arts Centre, Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art, beiter Ring Press). To most, however, they are known simply as the Lesbian Video Pool Media Arts Centre, and The Winnipeg Film Group’s Cinematheque. Rangers. Their humourous, feminist and provocative works have been acclaimed She is currently Akimbo's arts correspondent for Winnipeg. as “one of the high-points of contemporary Canadian artistic production” ( Border Jenny will be live-tweeting from the symposium. Crossings ). Performance documentation and artifacts are held in the collections Follow her @westernJenny including the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian History Museum, the DIA Centre and numerous university libraries across North America. Dempsey and Millan have also contributed to various publications as writers and 2011 2012 and editors, and have curated projects, programs, and exhibitions for galleries Softscape [Eduardo Window With Alec in Mind [Selections Aquino and Karen Shanski] [curated form the Manitoba Arts Council including Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Centre, Buffalo, Gallery yyZ, Toronto, Nov 1 - Dec 10 by Kegan Art Bank Collection], Art Gallery and Gallery 1C03, University of Winnipeg. From 2004-2008 they curated four RAW:Gallery McFadden] of Southwestern Manitoba major exhibitions and one screening as Adjunct Curators of Contemporary Art begins exhibiting at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. These five exhibits showcased 80 Winnipeg artists and didn’t come close to exhausting the wealth of talent in this prairie city. Dempsey and Millan are born-again Winnipeggers. Their experience has shown them that this is a place of possibility.

50 51 booK launch booK launch bev piKe: cavalcade of MySTerieS The Winnipeg Telephone (arTiST) booK Published by lives of dogs artists books Published by Also As Well Too

An arch lonely hearts columnist receives heartfelt pleas. Luckily, her premise is Winnipeg Telephone (Artist) Book is a visual version of Telephone, that child - that the secret to really effective problem-solving is that it must be not only safe hood game where someone would come up with a saying and, as it was whis - but also saucy. Furthermore, Aunt Agony knows that delicate contrivances of pered in each successive person's ear, the message would become more distorted. human exchange may be found in the common trapping mechanisms of flesh- With each artist getting three days for their turn, this book acts (like a phone book eating flora, to which she adapts like a fly on butter. In all of this, as luck would from any given year) as a snapshot of the Winnipeg arts scene at this moment have it, Aunt Agony’s entire conviction on the exquisiteness of living is that a mild in time. bit of turnabout is fair play, as long as it brings a smile to everyone's lips. Participating artists include:

bev pike is an influential cultural advocate known for her large Karen Asher, Ian August, Natalia Baird, Ted Barker, tamara rae biebrich, Irene scale oracular land-form paintings. Since graduating from the Bindi, Lindsey Bond, Kelsey Braun, cam bush, yvette Cenerini, Susan Chafe, Alberta College of Art in 1974, her work has been exhibited Connie Chappel, Sarah Ciurysek, Steven Leyden Cochrane, Aston Coles, Sarah across Canada in solo and group exhibitions. Her current research Crawley, Roewan Crowe, Chantal Dupas, Aganetha Dyck, Richard Dyck, Neil areas include performative landscape, underground shell grot - Dyck, William Eakin, Heidi Eigenkind, hannah_g, Ashley Gillanders, Ming Hon, toes and other Baroque spectacles. Takashi Iwasaki, Glen Johnson, Erin Josephson-Laidlaw, Lindsay Joy, Krisjanis Kaktins-Gorsline, Val Klassen, Dana Kletke, Heather Komus, Rob Kovitz, Megan She has been the recipient of several senior arts grants from the Winnipeg Arts Krause, Colleen Leduc, Erika Lincoln, Andrew Lodwick, Jen Loewen, Craig Love, Council, Manitoba Arts Council and Canada Council. Her work has been col - Mandy Malazdrewich, Monica Martinez, Kegan McFadden, Sean McLachlan, lected by the Canada Council Art Bank, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Divya Mehra, Doug Melnyk, Bernie Miller, Andrew Milne, Shaun Morin, Kristin Art (North york), the Manitoba Arts Council Art Bank (Brandon), Winnipeg Art Nelson, Mark Neufeld, Freya Bjorg olafson, Corrie Peters, Tracy Peters, Bev Pike, Gallery, McKenzie Art Gallery (Regina), the Victoria and Albert Museum (Lon - Praba Pilar, Jeanne Randolph, Willow Rector, Andrea Roberts, Paul Robles, don), Tate Modern (London) and numerous artist-book collections in North Melanie Rocan, Kelly Ruth, Tim Schouten, Gurpreet Sehra, Theo Sims, Suzie America and England. Smith, Sheila Spence, Reva Stone, Rob Taite, Becca Taylor, Tricia Wasney, Michelle Wilson, Lisa Wood, Collin Zipp.

52 53 library/booKSTore don’T ThroW iT aWay, give iT To The ccca

alSo aS Well Too is an artist-run, unincorporated, not-for-profit library for artist books and small press publications. A centre for revelry and research, Also As Well Too currently houses over 300 artist books by more than 200 artists. While the collection fea - tures work created by artists nationally and internationally, the main focus and bulk of the collection is the work of Manitoba artists.

aS We Try & Sleep preSS Established in 2002, As We Try & Sleep Press explores the overlapping points between the literary and visual arts on a project basis. Previous publications range from poetry chapbooks to comic books, flipbooks, broadsheets, photo albums, travelogues, serial mail outs, and children’s tales.

liveS of dogS arTiST booKS Lives of Dogs is a collective that has produced artist books by Bev Pike, Bonnie Marin, Doug Melnyk, Susan Chafe, Richard Brown, Lori Weidenhammer, Grant Guy, Lisa Gabrielle Mark, and Donnely Smallwood. border croSSingS STudy cenTre MarTha STreeT STudio prinTS Border Crossings is one of the key platforms for the investigation of contem - Martha Street Studio is a community-based printmaking facility, located in Win - porary Canadian and international art and culture. Founded in 1977 by Robert nipeg’s Historic Exchange District. It offers the artistic community equipment, fa - Enright, this quarterly magazine is published in Winnipeg, and is responsible cilities, and support to produce, exhibit, and disseminate cutting-edge print- based for bringing international attention to art production on the Prairies. works. The gallery facility and sales area offers the city a unique selection of The Border Crossings Study Centre (BCSC) was developed by the magazine visual artwork from emerging and master artists, both local and international. as a unique, mobile archive of the magazine’s 32-year publishing history, and includes copies of each of the magazines to date. It is housed in a portable hy - paraMeTer preSS brid storage/reading unit designed by architects Neil Minuk (DIN), and Karen parameter press members Abigail Auld, Andrew Lodwick and Suzie Smith work Shanski and Eduardo Aquino (spmb). The archive is made up of the magazines with artists to produce risograph printed material including quarterly —a series themselves and, where issues were no longer available, handmade facsimiles of four risograph editions produced each year—along with other risograph were produced by Canadian photographer Elaine Stocki. It provides a welcom - based projects, together and individually. ing social space for readers to look at individual issues, refer to the extensive Index, and talk about the material in the 127 issues of the magazine. The grand WeSTern canadian While the BCSC is an archive of Border Crossings ’ publishing history, and there- Screen Shop prinTS fore of the contemporary art it covered, it is also an instigator for discussion Established in Winnipeg in 1968 by Bill Lobchuk, The Grand Western Canadian impelled by the topics and the artists it has addressed. The stools and the table Screen Shop was the first print shop of its kind in Western Canada. During its around which they cluster are draws for inquiry, conversation and exchange as 20 year existence, it earned the reputation as being at the forefront of experi - visitors connect through a shared understanding of the diversity of material the mental printmaking technology, and became one of the most important artistic magazine has covered in the course of its history. forces in Canadian art.

54 55 eXhibiTion opening & publicaTion launch eXhibiTion opening lanTern fine art, 211 pacific avenue , one day only! Special collections gallery, university of Manitoba School of art 313 arTlab, university of Manitoba (fort garry campus)

The Plugettes (Lorraine Raboud, Douglas Sigurdson and Suzanne Gilles), 1974 Places for Peanuts. Ink on paper. n.d. 4" x 4"

EVERYTHING MUST GO! PlUGETTE EPHEMERa 1972-1980 THERE’S MORE THaN ONE WaY Archival material & photograph documentation from the first decade of Plug In An overview of collective art making practices in Winnipeg, 1968 – NoW Inc. from the personal archives of co-founders Curated by Kegan McFadden Suzanne Gillies and Douglas Sigurdson Exhibition continues through December 2nd, 2016 MONDO TRaSHO publication launch Curatorial presentation: Thursday, November 17, 4:30PM Edited by Kegan McFadden (As We Try & Sleep Press) There’s More Than One Way acts as an overview of collective art practices in The correspondence and other documentation connected to all of the gallery’s Winnipeg. Through a mix of artwork, documentation, and ephemera, this exhi - program activities from the period are properly housed at Plug In ICA, and at bition shows the various approaches to art making beyond the singular artist. the provincial archives. But what about the ephemera connected to this social Divided into identifiable camps: those who come together to produce a work activity—the mountain of personal desktop clutter (snapshots, postcards, doo - under a singular entity (General Idea), those collectives comprised of individual dles, letters) that accumulated in the course of those highly social afternoons? artists to get together to get stuff done (Average Good Looks, The Ephemerals), those who banded together, briefly, to make just one piece before going their Doug and I dutifully cleared our desks when we left PLUG IN in 1980. But now it separate ways (Fish Brides Collective, Who Are the 500), and finally those who seems that neither of us can open an old book or a shoe-box or a kitchen just love(d) making work together (Royal Art Lodge, The Abzurbs, Places for drawer without another bundle of this ancient material falling out. Clearly, every - Peanuts) … this show casts a wide net with the hopes of pointing to various thing must go. approaches to the question of collective art making in Winnipeg over the last The material is offered here for perusal—or for the taking, if anyone is inter - fifty years. ested—with the hope that it may trigger (or flesh out) a recollection of the af - – Kegan McFadden ternoons spent in the gallery, and the times that informed them. – Suzanne Gillies 56 57 The revival of The Sleeping beauTy cabareT: don’T ThroW iT aWay, give iT To The ccca The afTerlife cabareT

organized by doug MelnyK

After attending the first meeting in September 2016 for the revival and begin - ning plans for her solo act as a writer/performer in the November show, longtime regular Sleeping Beauty Donna Lewis died unexpectedly. Her passing has influ - enced the planning of the revival in a number of ways, including inspiring the final theme for the themed series of cabarets.

perFormerS

ellen peterson Cathy nosaty Sharon Bajer debbie patterson lori Freedman erika macpherson gerry Atwell Angie St. mars Allissa watson Frances Koncan

2012 Metamorphosis: archiving the artist: ARTlab opens at Window 3: Collin Zipp Robert Houle: enuhmo My Winnipeg: There's A Conversation [Jackson strategies for personal the School of Art, Sept - Oct andúhyaun (the road home) No Place Like Home Beardy, Eddy Cobiness, archival management University of WINDOW Gallery School of Art Gallery Sept 8 - Oct 7 Jackie Traverse & Linus [Emily Doucet], Ace Art Inc. Manitoba University of Manitoba Plug In ICA Woods], Buhler Gallery

58 59 acKnoWledgeMenTS

The Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our partners and sponsors.

HoST PARTNER

Arts AccessAbility Network Manitoba

act art inc. Border Crossings patricia Bovey Buhler gallery university of winnipeg’s gallery 1C03 Bill Kirby wanda Koop leona herzog library gallery/Cliff eyland martha Street Studio mentoring Artists for women’s Art platform centre for photographic + digital arts plug in institute for Contemporary Art university of manitoba School of Art urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art video pool media Arts Centre window