October 27 – December 9, 2006

Haraldur Jónsson and Steingrímur Eyfjörð
Curated/ Organised by Hannes Lárusson and Birna Bjarnadóttir

Opening Friday, October 27 @ 7:30pm
Artist talk by Haraldur Jónsson: Saturday, 28 October, 2pm

Exhibition sponsored by: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Iceland, Department of Icelandic Language and Literature, Páll Guðmundsson Memorial Scholarship, University of Manitoba.

Haraldur Jónsson: The Gap, the Wound
There are those who view art as being separated from reality and artists as the true exiles. However, in the case of Haraldur Jónsson’s artwork, one could make the opposite observation,
viewing art as reality, or as the medium that brings about the only possible reflections of reality. Far from in exile, the artist is here and now, his perception being of a moonlike quality, stimulating the ebb and flow of the countless reflections of reality, as if reality itself gravitates towards this human attribute. Thereby, one would not wish to disregard the human condition. Reality is hard to grasp, in particular the one that can only be perceived from within, or the reality of inner experiences. (Continued)

Critical Distance Vol. 12:1
Self-Serve at La Pagode Royale: by Shelly Low
October 13 – November 18, 2006

A response by Iris Yudai

From the hippest eatery to the most formulaic fast-food joint, every restaurant begins as an imagined space. Before the building, the chef, the menu, or the customers – first comes the concept. The restauranteur starts by creating an imaginary business to satisfy an imaginary customer. Artist Shelly Low is intrigued by restaurants both real and imagined, and in Self-Serve at La Pagode Royale, she has created her own kind of meta-restaurant.

(Continued)

October 13 – November 18, 2006

Shelly Low

Reception: Friday 13th October, 7:30pm (Artist in Attendance)
Artist talk: Saturday 14th October, 2pm

Critical Distance by Iris Yudai

This current work springs from the research in Low’s previous project: La Pagode Royale, and explores the commodification and manufacturing of culture. La Pagode Royale takes its name from the Polynesian/Chinese restaurant, which Low’s parents owned and worked in during the late seventies and eighties.

This project experiments with the use of food, and involves building a large scale Pagoda out of rice krispie squares. Rice krispies are a processed, sweetened derivative of rice. Rice krispies “squares” are a familiar North American treat, with its’ golden color alluring and desirable. The main sculptural element of this project takes the name of Low’s parent’s restaurant and materializes it into a 9 foot pagoda made up of over a thousand rice krispie squares. Already, a golden pagoda is trivial in terms of representing what it is to be ‘Chinese’. And to be built out of a North American processed treat (rice krispie squares), further enhances a ‘served up’ idea of culture.
(Continued)

August 18 – September 30, 2006

Rebecca Belmore

Artists’ Reception: Friday August 18 at 7:30pm

As part of Parallel, aceartinc. presents Architecture For A Colonial Landscape, an exhibition consisting of two video-based works; the video component of Fountain, presented at the 51st Venice Biennial and a new video installation called Architecture For A Colonial Landscape.

Both works reference historic and current cycles of oppression, greed and theft – theft of land, theft of language, theft of identity and theft of human rights. Both works counter such moral abandon with a last-gasp, guttural act of defiance and self-determination through gesture and action.

Thursday August 10, 2006

an open members show of video works
7pm to 11pm at the PARK THEATRE, 698 Osborne St. S. $3 at the door.

2005

press run of 1000
ISSN 1497-8776
$10.00

(Continued)

June 16th – July 30th, 2006

Recent work by Daniel Barrow

Closing Reception 7:30pm, July 30th

Critical Distance by Steven Matijcio

Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry

A new performance by Daniel Barrow
Presented by ace art inc. in collaboration with the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival

July 19th-30th, 2006: Performance 7pm nightly
2pm matinée closing performance on Sunday, July 30th

For more information please contact aceartinc. or the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival Box Office.

Aceartinc. and Daniel Barrow would like to make a special thank you to Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council The Canada Council for the Arts and Jessica Bradley Projects, The Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival, VideoPool, PlugIn ICA, and Lloyd Branson.

Critical Distance Vol. 11:5
No One Helped Me: Daniel Barrow
June 16 – July 30, 2006

A response by Steven Matijcio

Daniel Barrow’s No One Helped Me is a cross-disciplinary collage that lays its pieces bare to emphasize their congregation; playfully animating elements of painting, drawing, cut paper, sculpture and written narrative via the vehicles of video, projection, and performance. The look and feel of the ensuing constellation recalls early 20th century magic lantern shows, comic strips, and serial novels with yellowed stock and pastel colours crossing the patina of time with the pathos of nostalgia. These individual parts assume collective life through what Barrow has variously titled “graphic performance,” “live illustration,” and (perhaps most fittingly) “manual animation” – marrying actions of the eye and hand as he manipulates drawings on mylar transparencies across the screen of an overhead projector. The ensuing process accentuates the elements of storyboarding and cinematic perspective habitually present in Barrow’s hybrid collages, bending fantasy and reality in a maze of floating body parts and enigmatic gestures evocative of the avant-garde Surrealist movement. This latter comparison is especially telling in the context of No One Helped Me (and its sister performance Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry), where Surrealist staples such as the dream world, the unconscious, and the search for layers beyond our immediate reality are conjured through the lens of Barrow’s quasi-biographical storytelling. Another Surrealist symbol functions as the iconic purveyor of this passage as the human eye takes on a recurring role; undergoing antibiotic treatment, cosmetic mishaps, prosthetic enhancement, tears (and tears), unrequited gazes and various other trauma that turns the vision of both artist and audience increasingly inward. Here, in the liminal territory of the mind’s eye, Surrealist architect André Breton’s hinted at the eye’s perceptual capacity when writing, “The eye exists in an untamed state. It presides over the conventional exchange of signals apparently required by the navigation of the mind.” In a similar space of semiotic ambiguity – between visions inside and outside a conscious state – Barrow launches his waking dream.
(Continued)

Julie Deamer: Director of Outpost for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Lecture: 7pm, Tuesday 23rd May 2006

Sarah Glennie: Commissioner of Ireland’s participation at the 51st Venice Biennale 2005
Lecture: 7pm, Friday 9th June 2006

Matt Keegan: Independent Curator, Artist and Publisher, New York
Lecture: 7pm, Thursday 29th June 2006

This series is designed to increase the visibility of local artists to artists and curators outside of Winnipeg, and, conversely, to provide the opportunity for local artists and cultural producers to become more familiar with artists and curators from away. This program is a valuable opportunity to look at issues, trends and changing standards in professional practice within the International contemporary arts scene as well as fulfilling our role to demonstrate commitment to professional and artistic development of Manitoban artists. (Continued)

May 5 – 20, 2006

Students from the University of Manitoba

Reception: May 5, 7.30pm

mark saunders, krisjanis kaktins-gorsline, takashi iwasaki, peter kralik, kelsey braun, elaine stocki, kazuteru miyauchi, dominika dratwa, denise c. miller, nora kobrinsky, josh dudych, jenny moore koslowsky, alexis dirks, ryan klatt, john small, melody white

Critical Distance Vol 11:4

mentis prehensio
Sarah Crawley
March 10 – April 22, 2006

Luminous Gestures of Intimacy: The Photographs of Sarah Crawley
A Response By Roewan Crowe

In her recent work entitled, mentis prehensio, artist Sarah Crawley returns to the physicality of the body as her source of image-making. She uses her own body in this work, as well as her lover’s to create abstract photographic images that engulf us in luminous colour. These images are predominantly variations of red, with some black, and their intensity radiates heat to the outer edges of the gallery. The 13 photographs are satisfyingly large (50” X 65”). They are not framed, rather they are applied directly to the walls of the gallery, grafting a photographic skin onto the space. These sensuous, saturated skins appear to be lit from behind, creating an illuminated vellum manuscript of sorts. It is a glowing story about artistic invention, the abstracted body and a persistent desire for intimacy. (Continued)

March 10 – April 22

Sarah Crawley
Artists’ Reception: March 10 – April 22
Artists’ talk: Artist Talk Saturday March 11, 2pm

“At 10 years of age, I developed a unique compulsive, repetitive behaviour. I blew on my hands. Having difficulty describing this past behaviour to a friend, I reenacted the gesture only to be flooded with sensory impressions and memories from that time in my life. I was struck by the physical nature of my response.”

During the research and production of her last body of work, ala lingua, Sarah Crawley developed an interest in line, the repetition of line and pattern, and how these conjure memory. Recreating more repetitive gestures from her past, Crawley began to consider the lines and patterns created on the skin as a result of these gestures, to be permanent micro versions of the transient lines left on the sky by the migratory geese in ala lingua. Both are a result of repetitive actions, both are linked to physical memory.
(Continued)

Critical Distance VOL 11:3
Brian Flynn
Cover Series: Belfast Portraits
January 20-February 25, 2006
I love Ireland and Ireland loves me
A response by Kendra Ballingall

It is no accident that the portrait was the focal point of early photography. The cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuge for the cult value of the picture. For the last time the aura emanates from the early photographs in the fleeting expression of a human face. ¹

In the age of the information bomb, a call to arms is a call to represent. Every medium — video, photography, pen and ink — is heavily coded, burdened by its complicity in the competing dialogues of the military-information complex, in propaganda, advertising, newspaper illustration. What medium is at the disposal of the contemporary visual artist? Must it be vestigial, outside, excess? Industrial detritus? Ruins or remains? (Continued)

January 20 – February 25

Brian Flynn
Reception Friday March 10, 7.30 – 10 pm

Brian Flynn uses carpet underlay and his fingers to produce these huge portraits by removing the black bits. While the faces are of real persons, their identity is deliberately swept “under the carpet” of assumptions. The removal of verifiable identity both of persons and the character of the material -underlay- affords these works of art to be inventive and political, ethical and cognitive. The cover images are as mass produced as is the underlay, forging an unflattering link. On a deeper level, the material evokes a hidden existence.

Flynn remarked: “you see the underlay only before the carpet is laid or when it is spent”.

The cover images, a staple diet of culture obsessed by celebrities of all kinds, point not only to the fragile temporaneity but also to the beings “before and after” – where the actual time is not given. Unsettling as both the removal of identity and of presence may be, the scale increases the impact. The persons are not innocent bystanders, they seem to be harbouring guilt. For that is guilt, if anything be guilt, not to increase freedom. Flynn’s visits to Northern Ireland throughout his youth formed his individual voice that aims at revealing the ambivalence of historical truths.

Dr Slavka Sverakova
(Catalogue Essay from Brian Flynn, Cover Series: Belfast Portraits)

Image: Brian Flynn, Wake (detail), carpet underlay, 10 x 20 feet, 2005

Brian Flynn gratefully acknowledges the support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts

November 25-December 9 2005

Gala Night: Friday, November 25, 7PM-Late.
Live music, crêpe stand, creative refreshment, 50/50 draw, silent auction.
Come and celebrate the diversity and creativity of our members’ work in The Winter Warmer, and open show and sale.

Opening night features a live performance by Shary Boyle with music by Christine Fellows, to coincide with the launch of her new book, Witness My Shame.

October 15 – November 12

Catherine Béchard and Sabin Hudon
Béchard and Hudon have collaborated to create an interactive automated sound installation comprising of two works, Au Bout Du Fil and The Voice of Things. Au Bout Du Fil is an acoustic work inspired by a very simple amplification device of our childhood, the string telephone, where a series of strings are stretched between two pails along with a mechanized platform to which paper sheets are attached. The paper rubs back and forth on the strings. In The Voice of Things two huge mechanical brooms are suspended and see-saw, backwards and forwards. As they teeter-totter, they scratch, stroke and brush against a heap of newspapers. Their rhythms, sometimes very slow, convey a feeling of suspension in time and their excessive size suggest a sense of frailty and loss of balance. In both pieces the work is triggered by the viewers presence, and the sounds created are directly related to the position of the viewer to the works.

Critical Distance Vol 11:2

Catherine Béchard and Sabin Hudon
Between Sounds and Abstractions
October 14, to November 12, 2005

BETWEEN SOUNDS AND ABSTRACTIONS
A Response by Deanna Radford

Between our commonly shared understanding of every-day household objects as they are physically and culturally constructed, and, the manipulation of these objects, their meanings, and capabilities, lies Between Sounds and Abstractions. Comprised of two playful and sensitive kinetic sculptures or objets sonore¹, The Voice of Things and Au bout du fil were created by Montreal artists Catherine Béchard and Sabin Hudon and were on exhibit at aceartinc. from October 14, to November 12, 2005. (Continued)

Critical Distance Vol 11:1

Daniel Laskarin, Teresa Ascencao, Adad Hannah
to be continued…
August 16, to October 13, 2005

to be continued… The Real Made Ubiquitous
A Response By Steve Loft

The American public is now really a spectatorship. Grizzly, loud, lewd and stupid is the way of mass television…Now please, let’s have no more pieties about school safety, gun control, road rage and all the fab topics of superficial concern. When the great broadcasting medium of a super state clawing for a few more millions is willing to vulgarize the population for one more ratings point with less shame than Tom Green eyeing the hind quarters of a dead moose, cease the pieties. (1)

Teresa Ascencao, Adad Hannah, and Daniel Laskarin

Opening reception: Friday August 26, 7:30pm
Artist talk: Saturday August 27, 2pm

Critical Distance by Steve Loft

To be Continued… is a group show of three artists from Toronto, Montreal and Victoria respectively, and features three video installations. Glowing Madonna by Teresa Ascencao is an interactive video installation whereby the viewer’s shadow, together with a video projection of a contemporary Virgin Mary, remains glowing on a large photo-luminescent wall. In Room 112, Adad Hannah presents two simultaneously shot views of a hotel room in slow rotation. The footage captures motionless characters; a celebrity is interviewed, a couple fights, a musician is interviewed and subsequently walks out on his girlfriend, an assistant applies powder, and a babysitter sends instant messages on a mobile phone while his charges play video games. Relapse, by Daniel Laskarin combines digital video with sculpture, creating a group of small interconnected boxes, where some of them contain a small, moving image of a building being demolished; its collapse reveals its duplicate, which collapses in turn ­ peeling off layers like the layers of an onion. The endlessly moving video image explores a state of suspended anticipatory consciousness. All three works employ a sense of transformation through ‘capturing’, through either continuous repetition, through video stills shot in real time or by the stealing of your shadow by the actual work.

(Continued)

22 July, 2005

A non-juried members show of video works by: Risa Horowitz, Kevin Kelly, Konrad Kordaoski, Quidam (Doug Kretchmer), Tyrone Otte, Karen Johnson, Lynn Devisscher, Collin Zipp, Jen Delos Reye, Liz Garlicki, Hope Peterson, Matthew Shimnowski, Elvira Finnegan, Val Klassen, Dominique Rey, Ken Harasym, Graham Ududec, Rob Blaich, Brett McLaughlin, Karen Wardle, Leanne Cipriano, Derek Bruekner, Jean klimack, Doug Lewis, Glenn Johnson, Christine Kirouac, Juan Zavaleta, Grant Guy, Susan Kennedy, Anne-Michele Fortin, Simon Hughes, Nicole Shimonek and Paul Butler.

June 9, 2005

A night of spoken word performances.

aceartinc. in collaboration with Urban Shaman hosted a sit-down-club atmosphere of artists, performers and writers to participate in an evening of spoken word. Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal artists participated through an open call from our respective memberships. Spoken word became a recognized and popular genre in Montreal in the early nineties despite its history stemming back to the seventies. Its popularity stemmed from its ability to hybrid a wide array of artistic practices, such as: theatre, dance, poetry, storytelling, performance art, popular music, rap, and even stand-up comedy. This fusion of the different genres has developed into slam poetry, which is delivered energetically and rhythmically; dub poetry, a musical and distinctly Jamaican form; simple readings of printed texts within a literary tradition; text-based performance art; activist messages; monologues or stories; poetry springing from the urban hip-hop culture; experimental sound poetry; or work that draws its influences from all of these forms.

Featuring works by: Colette Balcaen, Daniel Barrow, Gary Bergman, Jan Braun, Barbara Chatelaine, Ira Chatelaine, Shayla Elizabeth, Christoff Eubrecht, Ernest Flow, Rob Fordyce, Paul Friesen, Michael Goertzen, Garth Hardy, Cheyenne Henry, Emilie St. Hilaire, Leila Katz, Traute Klein, Heather McKenzie, Kathryn McKenzie, Duncan Mecredi, George Morrisette, Shannon Pidlubny, Courtney Siebring, Lynnel Sinclaire,Cyrus Smith, Dave Streit, Joan Suzuki, Ferrin Towers and Lindsey Weibe.

martin beauregard : maclean
28 May – June 30, 2005

A response by Christabel Wiebe

Most of us are at least somewhat acquainted with the experience of failure. You know, when you give something a go and it just doesn’t work out. Sometimes you’ve given it your best shot, and sometimes it was just a half-hearted attempt to begin with. But the end result is the same: a flop. At its most excruciating, it is played out in a highly visible manner, in front of others, with a lot of attendant noise and flashing lights or (worse) media attention and documentation of the pitiful act that transpires. This is often referred to as “spectacular failure,” borne of the philosophy “go big or go home.”

(Continued)

28 May – June 30, 2005

Installations, photographs and video works by Martin Beauregard and Maclean

Opening reception: Friday May 27, 7:30pm,
Artist Talk: Saturday May 28, 2pm.

Critical Distance by Christabel Wiebe

Maclean

Martin Beauregard

(Continued)

P.S.: The University of Manitoba Students of Fine Art Annual Juried Show
April 30 – May 14, 2005

a response by Gwen Armstrong

“Works of art are of an infinite solitariness, and nothing is less likely to bring us near to them than criticism. Only love can apprehend and hold them, and can be just towards them.”

A traditional view of student art might contemplate its potential, an artistic appreciation enhanced perhaps by the stir of discovery. Between dismissal and acclaim, critical response remains a highly present constituent in the realm of art-making.

But consider the curious role of the student artist – to create work that is fresh and authentic in response to assignments whose evaluation may impact heavily upon the artist’s creative, educational and economic future. Art school seeks to straddle an unnavigable dichotomy of structure and freedom. The womb, no matter how nurturing, is still a container.
(Continued)

April 30 – May 14, 2005

Opening Reception: Friday April 29, 7:30pm,

Each year aceartinc. provides a professional development opportunity for the School of Art students by offering our space as a site for a juried group exhibition. The students gain experience with the installation processes, while have the opportunity to see their works in exhibition and invite the public to share in their success. This year presented twenty-one artists from the University of Manitoba’s School of Art who, in the eyes of a jury, have situated themselves successfully within the problematic schema of the student artist.

Featuring work by: Jon Armistead,  Cam Bush, Wendy Campbell, Alexis Dirks, Natalie Ferguson, Rob Fordyce, Dagmara Genda, Dionne Horsford, Takashi Iwasaki, Krisjanis Katkins-Gorsline, Jessica Koroscil, Jenny Moore Koslowsky, Sally McDonald, Divya Mehra, Bruce Montcombroux, Agnes Neufeld, Mark Saunders, Johanna Schmidt, Elaine Stocki, Melody White and Collin Zipp.
Critical Distance by Gwen Armstrong

Scott Watson: 21 March, 6pm

Lisa Gabrielle Mark: 25th March, 6pm

Reid Shier: 3rd May, 7pm

confetti : warped: by Karen Azoulay and Robyn Foster
March 5 – April 16, 2005

A response by Cam Bush

Abjection in art is nothing new — or certainly it shouldn’t be to anyone who has been paying even the most cursory attention. To both artists and viewers alike, the banal-as-beautiful has become a (wearyingly) familiar trope for the would-be iconoclast. What once was aesthetically revolutionary has itself oftentimes become banal: the easily caricatured clichÈs of the artiste auteur; the sort of stuff people “don’t get’. The proliferation of this sort of coolly self-reflexive work is not surprising. Compelled toward the deconstruction of, well, something, but still beholden to a largely modernist aesthetic ethos, many artists are left suspended in a void between ‘pretty’ and ‘pretty clever’, with opportunities for investment and transformation relegated to the sidelines or simply forgotten. Alienation is sometimes said to be The Point of such work, which seems both faÁile and, well, sort of beside the point. Where is the viewer left to go but ‘nowhere’ when all the alternatives seem to have been exhausted?
(Continued)

March 5 – April 16

Karen Azoulay : Robyn Foster

Reception: Friday March 4, 7:30-10pm
Artist Lectures: Saturday March 5, 2pm

Critical Distance by cam bush

spoke: Linda Duvall  and Sandee Moore
January 8 – February 19, 2005

A response by Jeanne Randolph

Erskine drank tea with me.  We were in a luscious flow of spirits and vastly merry.  “How we do chase a thought,” said Erskine, “when once it is started.  Let run as it pleases over hill and dale and take numberless windings, still we are at it.  It has a greyhound at its heels every turn.”

(Continued)

January 8 – February 19

Tandem installations by prairie-based artists Sandee Moore and Linda Duvall

Reception: Friday january 7, 7:30-10pm
Artist Lectures: Saturday January 8, 2pm

Critical Distance by Jeanne Randolph

Oct 16 – Nov. 13, 2004

Daniel Young & Christian Giroux

Critical Distance by Kenneth Hayes

2004

press run of 1000
ISSN 1497-8776
$10.00

(Continued)

3 objects: Daniel Young and Christian Giroux
October 16 – November 13, 2004

a response by Kenneth Hayes

Insofar it is possible to say anything in general about contemporary sculptural practice as such, one could identify a present tendency to exploit ever more varied, pre-fabricated, and perishable materials, and say that strategies of dispersion and willful assemblage hold the field. Radical heterogeneity is now the norm. Of course this applies mostly to those works made and presented indoors, which are generally described as sculpture-installation. The other dominant strategy for ambitious sculpture is to assume the form of a pavilion, and with it the full range of social, spatial, and tectonic issues that were once the exclusive concern of architects and building. The great novelty of these works is that they can be entered and experienced from inside. Of course, these works are mostly situated outdoors, in the city or in some park-like setting, and despite their large scale, they are often temporary. With these enlarged means, sculpture takes up once again the classic Modernist role of advancing alternative models of the public and social. It also assumes – presumably unintentionally – much of architecture’s relentlessly ameliorative character, to the point of becoming a form of sophisticated play, even an object of entertainment.

(Continued)

Too Sweet! Go Away!: by Helen Cho
August 28 – October 2, 2004

A response by Doug Lewis

Helen Cho’s exhibition Too Sweet, Go Away! is an installation not to be so easily assumed. It reveals both a simple grace as well as several haptic complexities. In this body of work, Cho appears interested in connections; what they are and how they may be entwined are not left solely up to interpretation (as is everything), but are turned-over to our morays of social engagement. In the exhibition’s entirety, this installation consists of soap-bars (more bars than one should count), as well as over 800 lbs. of white granulated sugar… (poured directly onto the floor), and to the other side of the gallery, two monitors playing single channel videos, (both quite independent of one another).

(Continued)

August 28 – October 2, 2004

Helen Cho

Critical Distance by Doug Lewis

June 11 – July 10

An exhibition of paintings by Manitoban painters, organised by the Programming Committee of aceartinc. Teresa Burrows, Cliff Eyland, Kevin Friedrich, Glennys Hardie, Shaun Morin, Bev Pike, Paul Robles, Tim Schouten.

Critical Distance by Risa Horowitz

May 14 – May 28

Annual University of Manitoba School of Art Student Exhibition: Stacey Abramson, cam bush, Wendy Campbell, Dawn Chaput, James Craig, Dominika Dratwa, Ken Harasym, Maegan Hill-Caroll, Richard Hines, Leah Janzen, Garland Lam, Veronica Lussier, Julia Mark, Mathias Reeve, Joel Simkin, Meera Singh, Jenny Smirl, Elaine Stocki, Ainsley Sturko, Robert Taite, Stephen Weibe, Suzanne Wasyliw-Adams, Collin Zipp.

April

Michelle Allard

April 1 – May 1

Mariela Borello

Critical Distance by Susan Turner

UNDONE: Mariela Borello
April 3 – May 1, 2004

a response to the exhibition by Susan Turner

What I experienced first was colour: gorgeous, bright, strong, optimistic, brash. Cadmium yellow deep, raspberry candy-floss, the palest of pale red, the ambiguity of white on white. And then shape: conch, whorl, target, and that large round ball of coils. And finally texture as I extended my hand outward to touch: silky, delicate, and then rubbery, malleable, and clammy.
(Continued)

February 20 – March 20

Joseph Conlon

Critical Distance by Sandee Moore

101 Talismans for a Happy Death: Joseph Conlon
February 20 – March 20, 2004

a response to the exhibition by Sandee Moore

The commonly held ideal for a “happy death” would be one without pain – a swift death without suffering, or a quiet passing surrounded by loved ones. Catholics believe that a happy death means becoming one with God at the moment of death. Timothy Leary wrote a book on the subject while he was terminally ill; in Designing Death, he proposes that a happy death is simply a matter of choosing the situation you will die in. Similarly, in his novel A Happy Death, Camus espouses a “will to happiness” as the means to a happy life and death. To not be alone is artist Joe Conlon’s idea of a happy death. It is also the impetus for his photo and video installation 101 Talismans for a Happy Death. To not be alone is not only to approach death with loved ones nearby, but also to recognize the universality of death – that everyone dies or is dying.
(Continued)

January 9 – February 7

Les Newman

Critical Distance by Valery Camarta

I’m Only Happy When it Rains, and 20 or 30 other clichéd things I hate about myself: Les Newman¹
January 9 – February 7, 2004

a response to the exhibition by Valery Camarta

THE SCENE: The smoking room in a studio next door to aceartinc. gallery.

act one: FUN AND GAMES
(Continued)

December 11 – December 13

graphic designers fundraising exhibition

December 6

various artists

2003

press run of 1000
ISSN 1497-8776
$10.00

(Continued)

2003

edition of 1000
isbn 0-9696265-9-2
$10.00

Curated and edited by Risa Horowitz Catalogue essayists and panelists: Steve Dietz and Jennifer Woodbury Artists: David Rokeby, Garnet Hertz, Nicholas Steadman, Kevin Yates, Erika Lincoln

Catalogue of an exhibition held at aceartinc., featuring interactive work. Catalogue includes bibliographical references.

October 18

artist lectures and panel discussions

October 17 – November 22

Garnet Hertz [Saskatoon]: Experiments in Galfanism
Nicholas Stedman [Toronto]: The Blanket Project
Kevin Yates [Southampton ON]: Small Dead Woman and other figures
David Rokeby [Toronto]: Very Nervous System
Steve Deitz [independent curator], essayist
Jennifer Woodbury [Director, Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba], essayist
Mike Carroll [graphic designer].

Curated by Risa Horowitz
Critical Distance by Risa Horowitz, Steve Dietz and Jennifer Woodbury

September 17 – September 30

co-sponsored with Video Pool

September 8 – September 9
Community Service / Outreach / Partnership / Workshop
Sarah Crawley

September 5 – October 4

David Garneau

Critical Distance by Cathy Mattes

Cowboys and Indians (and Métis?): David Garneau
September 5 – october 4, 2003
a response to the exhibition by Cathy Mattes

The recent work of David Garneau prods reflection about the phases Métis people may go through when coming to terms with cultural identity. These stages usually result with intense memory overload, as people consider negative or positive personal experiences, and Métis history. This may seem superfluous to some, but it is actually a mode of cultural survival. I believe that for many Métis the experiences of being recognized and recognizing, being and becoming is internalized, and effects how we view ourselves. I would argue that it is embedded in the struggles of our relations, ourselves, government legislation, and being of mixed ancestry. It also comes from the general lack of acknowledgement among Métis people of our experiences, contributions, and in the confusion about who, and what, we exactly are. We are whole – a whole nation, whole families, whole individuals, yet sometimes, it seems that we are treated, or recognized as only being half. It is these things that David Garneau’s work brings to the surface for me.
(Continued)

August 10 – August 17
use of space/studio visits

Sarah Crawley

August 7- August 8

Dada World Data Productions

July 18

Bev Pike, David Street, Ada Bello, Coral Aiken, Alex Badger, Michael Dumontier, Winnipeg Poetry Slam Team, Kevin Matthews, Gruf the Druid, Darek Dawda, Derek Evers, Charles Romero Venzon, The Adzurbs, Dominique Rey, Cliff Eyland, Tannis Van Horne, Nicole Shimonek, Victoria Prince, Glen Johnson, Marianne Jonasson, Joan Suzuki, Rob Fordyce, Can Da ‘Ce Cross, Ron Moore, Brian Sostek [Minneapolis], Megan McClellan [Minneapolis], Risa Horowitz, Erika Lincoln, Kevin from the Fix, Winnipeg Visions Performing Arts Troupe, Leah Janzen, Doug Lewis, Chris MacDonald, Mike Taylor, Shawn Frosst, Hope Peterson, Veronica Lussier, Tim Turner, Karen Owens, Lori Fontaine, Jane Clark, Divya Mehra, Mia Feuer, Eli Epp, Angelene Jeannette, KC Adams, Jen Barthel, Veronica Preweda, Karen Wardle, Holly Procktor. (local artists except where noted)

July 16 – July 28
Told by a Dodo by Funky Chicken
The Two of Us by Purple Fish
Doing Dates by School for Johns

July 15 – August 9

Display of artwork by aceartinc. staff and board: KC Adams, Chris MacDonald, Karen Wardle, Kevin Matthews, Dominique Rey, Shawn Frosst, Veronica Preweda, Jean Klimack, Liz Garlicki, Leah Janzen, Risa Horowitz, Winnipeg.

June 7 – July 5

Hadley Howes, Maxell Stephens

Critical Distance by Risa Horowitz

The Decor Project: White on White: Hadley Howes and Maxwell Stephens
June 7 – July 5, 2003

a response to the exhibition by Risa Horowitz

It is an odd experience, inviting visitors to my home. When the visit is over, I sometimes find myself wandering through the space wondering how it might appear to an outsider, being accustomed as I am to myself and my ways and unaccustomed as I am to newcomer socializing. This experience has been turned on its head by Hadley and Maxwell’s takeover of my dining room, the necessary prelude to their gallery exhibition The Décor Project: White on White.
(Continued)

May 16 – May 30

University of Manitoba Fine Arts Students
organized by Harlyn Weijs

April 12 – May 10

Joanne Balcaen
partner with MAWA for studio visits

Critical Distance by Daniel Barrow

April 12 – May 10

Jennifer Stillwell

Critical Distance by Doug Lewis

Supplies: Jennifer Stillwell
April 12 – May 10, 2003

a response to the exhibition by Doug Lewis

It’s been a somewhat difficult beginning – trying to put pen to paper and write some intelligent thoughts on Jennifer Stillwell’s new work…which I have yet to see. Her most recent installation at aceartinc., entitled Supplies, 2002/2003, has remained ellusive up and untill the opening. The reason is due in part to how Jennifer makes artwork. Her process is one of situation, beginning with efforts grounded in the practice of neo-reductionist methods and followed up with a combination of stubbornness, grit and the sheer action of doing. Jennifer Stillwell prefers the challenge of the site-specific installation (that can be an artform in and of itself). As site specific installations go, each, of course, is different from the next and most certainly differing from the last. After considering various possibilities, I thought that my response to Supplies had to somehow reflect the kind of effort and respect to method that Jennifer puts into her work.
(Continued)

Machination: by Jo-Anne Balcaen
April 12 – May 10, 2003

a response to the exhibition by Daniel Barrow

Jo-Anne Balcaen’s installation begins in the tawny, wood-paneled stairwell of 280 McDermot. It’s an attractive space with high ceilings and a noble, oversized banister. It has become a point of character at aceartinc., and has attracted other installations in the past. In “Machination”, Balcaen shrewdly uses this space to preface the body of her installation which waits at the top of the stairs. (Continued)

February 1 – March 1

Erika Lincoln

Critical Distance by Reva Stone

Scale: Erika Lincoln
February 1 – March 1, 2003

a response to the exhibition by Reva Stone

Perception = awareness, discernment, observations, reading (view, opinion, picture, slant, assessment, experience
(knowledge, occurrence, feel))

How do we represent this fundamentally participatory mode of experience?

We become aware of thinking only in those kinesthetic moments when we actively bind the sights, savors, sounds, tastes and textures swirling around us to our inmost, feeling flesh.¹
(Continued)

January 10 – February 28

mariiane mays

January 10 – January 25

Jennie O’Keefe

December 3 – December 7

various artists

November 21

poems by Sandra Mayor

Cyclops Press

October 26th

Chrisof Migone, Kaffe Matthews, Lori Freedman organized by Steve Bates of send + receive
co-sponsered by Into The Music

2002

press run of 1000
ISBN 0-9696265-8-4
$10.00

(Continued)

October 19 – November 9

Jocelyn Robert
in partnership with send + receive

Critical Distance by Marianne Mayes

L’Invention des animaux: Jocelyn Robert
October 19 – November 9, 2002

a response to the exhibition by mariianne mays

An aeroplane in the sky, a white silhouette in the wide open blue, moving, distorted, relaxed again, pulled out of shape again. Accompanied by high, piping noises, not disagreeable, more like some cute little animal, coming and going. The invention of animals? What kind of a title is this, much too heavy with content for such a light-spirited work.

- from transmediale go public! exhibition, on-line catalogue

It’s human habit that leans us to metaphor, and comfort; and Jocelyn Robert teases this practice with L’Invention des animaux. Robert’s ingenuous installation — the whimsical, erratic image of a plane projected onto a large video screen, the “cute” blips and bleets, chirps and ambient noise traffic of the accompanying audio piece — calls to mind childhood summer afternoons. Lying on your back, staring up at the clouds in the wide, blue sky, who hasn’t brought other shapes and creatures to life by a dreamy slip of the eye, a quick and simple imaginary equation? There is more than one way to make up animals, to bring imaginary beings to life. Rather than invoke metaphor, L’Invention des animaux proposes another model: daydreaming.
(Continued)

September 14 – October 12

Micheline DuRocher, Christine Horeau, Marie-Christine Simard, Sindra MacDowell, Helene Dyck curator: Gail Bourgeois

Critical Distance by Susan Turner

Unexpected Encounters: Micheline Durocher, Christine Horeau, Marie-Christine Simard, Cydra MacDowall, Gail Bourgeois
September 14 – October 12, 2002

a response to the exhibition by Susan Turner

Gail Bourgeois began her ongoing curatorial research in 1999 while living and teaching in Montreal. The following year she produced found image with my history, a charcoal drawn diptych of an isolated house with no windows or doors, and paired it with a bulb and its root tendrils meandering below the surface. For her this drawing was profoundly disturbing and seemed emblematic both of an understanding she’d reached about her family relationships as well as about the gap between the binaries we ascribe to our understanding of our relation to the world. It was the catalyst to question what other artists might do with the same themes that interested her: “ruptures and the ordered flow of existence caused by a breakdown in expectations;” “the difficulty of human communication;” and the “urge to make a home or to nest.” After several studio visits, she selected the work of Montreal artists Micheline Durocher, Christina Horeau, and Marie-Christine Simard, and Cyndra MacDowell from Toronto. The exhibition was first seen at Women’s Art Resource Centre in Toronto. For the Winnipeg showing, the work of Helene Dyck was added. The exhibition will also travel to AKA in Saskatoon and will there add Monika Napier, from Saskatoon, and then to the Richmond Art Gallery, and will pick up a Vancouver artist as yet to be selected.
(Continued)

August 9 – August 31

Co-op Collective: Shawna Dempsey, Lorri Millan, Jake Moore, Zab

Critical Distance by Christopher Olsen

Grocery Store: Live in the Exchange!: The Co-Op Collective (dempsey / millan / zab / moore)
August 9 – August 31, 2002

a response to the exhibition by Christopher Olson

When I was a child, I would accompany my father selling his prints and paintings in Old Market Square. Our table was set up next to folks selling everything from produce to used books, and to pass the time I made crayon and water-colour pictures that I would sell for a dollar. I guess you could say my art career began early.

As did my love affair with the Exchange. During my teen years I spent Saturdays Zen-navigating the streets, digging for treasure in used bookstores, taking pictures of graffiti in the alleys (”Wpg HELL” was a favourite) and spending my evenings at Emma G’s when I wasn’t going to punk shows at the Cauldron and the Albert.
(Continued)

July 18 – July 28

Ken Gregory

Critical Distance by Hope Peterson

July 18 – July 28

Daniel Barrow

Critical Distance by Robert Enright

July 18 – July 28

Joanne Bristol, Gail Brown, Launi Davis, Dennis Jackson, Lorraine Oades, Mark Pounds, Heidi Phillips, Alex Poruchnyk, Yudi Sewraj, Angela Somerset, Jennifer Stillwell, Deborah Van Slet curator: Marian Butler

Critical Distance by Alissa York

July 18 – July 28

Weather Vane II
The Face of Everything
Climate Control

part of Winnipeg Fringe Festival

WEATHERVANE II: Curated by Marian Butler
July 18 – July 28, 2002

a response to the exhibition by Allisa York

Weather. It’s only natural that the word should present itself first in the role of noun — it surrounds and affects us constantly, after all. In the process of responding to part two of the Weather Vane project, however, I found myself dwelling on the idea of weather as verb. “To expose to or affect by atmospheric changes.” Or, even more compelling, “to come safely through, to survive.” Life marks us. Learning to speak Italian (or Cantonese, or Swahili) forges new synaptic pathways, lines of language laid indelible on the brain. A broken heart can knit like a bone but will remain forever vulnerable along the seam. Bodies record (and often recount) the essential narratives of life — foreheads creased in fury or in thought, shoulders rounded in shame, hymens torn, bellies stretched until they stripe. “Look,” a woman might say, touching a fingertip to her thigh, tracing a smattering of glassy scars, “here’s where I hit a gravel patch and felt my first bicycle betray me. I remember, I bit my lips while my dad pressed tweezers into my flesh and plucked out every stone.”
(Continued)

The Face of Everything: Daniel Barrow
July 18 – July 28, 2002

a response to the exhibition by Robert Enright

Winnipeg artist Daniel Barrow is a latter-day romantic who is conducting an ongoing inquiry into the nature and conditions of the romantic sensibility. In Looking for Love in the Hall of Mirrors (2001) he used his special form of animated drawing to present a portrait of the would-be artist as a young man-about-town, discovering the contours of urban life and of his blossoming sexuality. It was a charming annunciation – coming on while coming out – and in both technique and content it held out considerable promise.
(Continued)

Climate Control: Ken Gregory
July 18 – July 29, 2002

a response to the exhibition by Hope Peterson

This is… this is… this is…

The ping of existence, sounding gently, is at the core of Ken Gregory’s latest work Climate Control – or How to Predict the Weather with a Pig Spleen. How can a machine affirm Life? Not ease, enhance or document life, but profoundly confirm the existence of all living matter. Not sentience, but that throbbing, base, survival-mad life we all clutch so close, defend and risk for the unknowing joy of it. I can’t entertain here the personification of any built object – this is of course human nonsense and the wishing of a child. And artificial intelligence as we currently understand it does not enter into the artist’s goals. Despite my resistance to anthropomorphic comparisons, with a sudden vision of reproductive technology inverted I dream the following non-theory: if the inventor transposes his body, his lived experience, into his mechanical product, it will mirror the joy of creation. For an artist working at a high level of technological interrogation, there results a most unique byproduct: the warm machine.
(Continued)

June 26

an evening of live jazz

June 21 – June 23

Risa Horowitz: lecture
Maggie Ross: lecture
Lois Klassen: lecture, workshop

June 13 – July 6

Wendy Wersch

Critical Distance by Bev Pike

The New Myth: Wendy Wersch
June 13 – July 6, 2002

a response to the exhibition by Bev Pike

Grace, my thousand-year old cat, is snoozing peacefully next to me as I write. She is dying, dear Reader. I watch her deteriorate hourly, and worry over her coping with her difficulties. All I can do is give her love and try to alleviate her troubles a little. It helps us to try to engage with the character that used to live inside her body as she is fading away.
(Continued)

May 15 – June 9

Joanne Bristol

co-sponsered with MAWA

April 19 – May 4

Students of the School of Fine Art, University of Manitoba

April 19 – April 20

studio visits

co-sponsored with AKA

April 6

CD release party

extension service offered by aceartinc.

March 12

lecture (co-sponsered with Floating Gallery)

February 23

a project of (outdoor video on snow)

various artists, including University of Manitoba video students
co-sponsered by the NSI

Critical Distance by Alex Poruchnyk

sno-screen: Various Artists
February 23, 2002

a project of aceartinc. and the National Screen Institute held in Old Market Square including work by U of M video students

a response to the exhibition by Alex Poruchnyk

It all seemed to start when jake moore saw Heaven, a co-production by Jack Lauder and Lloyd Brandson, at a Video Pool First Video Fund meeting held one snowy night. In Lauder and Brandson’s video, two people walk off across the lake on a frozen winter day wearing only the barest of necessities. Eventually, they disappear on the horizon.

(Continued)

February 22 – March 23

Holly Newman

Critical Distance by Heidi Eigenkind

February 22 – March 23

Mary Kavanagh

Critical Distance by Alison Gillmor

Polish: Mary Kavanagh
February 22 – March 23, 2002
a response to the exhibition by Alison Gillmor

You see a long, narrow table draped in white linen and heaped with silver. Hundreds and hundreds of cups, plates, trays, vases, knives, spoons. At one end of the table a woman is seated, patiently polishing a dish with a small white cloth. For four hours a day for the duration of the show, this is what she does: she chooses one tarnished object from the table, takes one clean cloth from a pile on a nearby wooden cabinet, and she polishes. When she is finished polishing, the woman removes a small, hand-written identifying tag from the object and pins it to the cloth. The object, now gleaming and free of tarnish, is replaced on the table; the cloth, now mussed and marked, is placed on another pile on the cabinet. This process is videotaped.
(Continued)

Lucky Rabbit: Holly Newman
February 22 – March 23, 2002

a response to the exhibition by Heidi Eigenkind

Imagine being a child. A favourite adult takes you to a store. In the store there is room in which 200 objects are on display. The adult says, “You can choose any one of these and take it home.” All of them are lovely, although each of them is lovely in its own way. Some have tags hanging from them. On the tags, other visitors, both adults and children, have written stories. You can write a story too, if you want, at a small desk on which blank tags and pencils wait. Imagine: all that excitement and pleasure. All that tension: which one to choose.
(Continued)

January 18 – February 16

an installation by Karen Hoeberg

Critical Distance by Shawna Beharry

Song for the First Born: Karen Hoeberg
January 18 – February 16, 2002

a response to the exhibition by Shawna Beharry

I often wonder what it means to invite or place “prayer” within a gallery.

What is appropriate for an artist to ask of others?
(Continued)

December 24

Christine Fellows

December 16
Sheila Spence, Joanne Bristol, Susan Mills, April Hickox, Dagmar Dahle, Karilee Fuglem, Candace Savage

designer: Angela Somerset, Marian Butler
Critical Distance by Jen Loewen

Crows: an aceart bookwork including the works of Marian Butler, April Hickox, Joanne Bristol, Karilee Fuglem, Sheila Spence, Susan Mills, Dagmar Dahle, Candace Savage
December 16, 2001

a response to the exhibition  by Jen Loewen

I find myself thinking about crow.

Crow weaves its way in and out of the world. Making its place, it meanders between not-quite-welcome and outcast. A carrion bird who likes to play with shiny objects. It sees opportunity when others would only see death and collects insignificance for reasons only it can know. Crow builds its life, moment to moment, around that which is present. This is its energy.
(Continued)

December 12 – December 15

Sister Dorothy, Neal Livingston, Sharon Alward, Tom Elliott, Tim Philips, Isabelle Hayeur, Zachery Longboy, Terry Bilings, Nelson Henricks, Sarah Angelucci, Nicole Shimonek, Jack Lauder/Lloyd Branson, Grant Guy, Wendy Geller, Dave Grywinski, Marie France Giraudon, Emmanuel Avenel

curator: Marian Butler; co-sponsered by Cinematheque
Critical Distance by Alissa York

Weather Vane: curated by Marian Butler
December 12 – December 15, 2001

a response to the exhibition by Alissa York

“What’s it like out?” we ask. And, literally speaking, the weather is just that — out, the prevailing conditions beyond our bodies (and our buildings, those bodily extensions within which we dwell).

But we all know there’s more to it than that. (Continued)

December 4 – December 8

various artists

November 22 – November 24

2001

press run of 1000
ISBN 0-9696265-6-8
$10.00

(Continued)

October 16 – October 20

Steve Heimbecker: quadrophonic sound performance (Oct. 19)
Diane Landry: La Morue (Oct. 20)
CinDy (Oct. 20)

organized by Steve Bates
Critical Distance by Steve Bates

send + receive festival of sound [004]: Steve Heimbecker, Diane Landry and CinDy
October 16 – October 20, 2001
a response to the exhibition by Steve Bates

There are always challenges associated with hosting send + receive, although 2001 was particularly acute. Having just emerged from the chaos and turmoil of September 11 and its dramatic and far-reaching repercussions, send + receive

Much of the activity around last year’s festival was hosted by ace teetered on the edge of cancellation.artinc. and included, among others, Québécois artist Diane Landry. Landry’s sensitive, playful and poetic work was exhibited earlier in the month as part of Québéque ! New York. Held in New York City and featuring the work of numerous Québécois artists, this group exhibition was located in various galleries around what became known as Ground Zero. The piece Landry was originally scheduled to install during send + receive lay silent under a coating of dust, residue from the Trade Tower collapse.
(Continued)

October 14 – November 10

Diane Landry

Critical Distance by Rodney Latourelle

École d’Aviation / Flying School: Diane Landry
October 14 – November 10, 2001

a response to the exhibition by Rodney LaTourelle

A kind of trance is induced as soon as one hears the faint whistling and begins to sense the slow, sure motions of Diane Landry’s installation, &Eacutecole d’aviation (Flying School). If you are trying to quit smoking, it may be hard to bear.
(Continued)

September 15
Publication Launch: Joanne Bristol, Dagmar Dahle, Candace Savage, Shiela Spence, Susan Mills, Karilee Fuglem

Designer: Angela Somerset and Marian Butler

August 1 – August 31

jake moore and Steve Bates

July 20

Diane Lemieux

June 23 – June 24

A writing workshop with Rob Shaw and Michelle Perry

June 14

June Fundraising Party at the West End Cultural Centre
MC: jake moore
Performers: Chrysalis Sound & Movement, Albatross, The Paperbacks, Christine Fellows, Sixty Stories

June 1 – June 23

Alison Taylor, Kaiberley [Kai] Wilbee, Lisa Kakoske, Maria Lopez-Dabdoub, Dominique Rey, Michele S Sarna

nb. previous MAWA advisory program participants

May 4

SNAC, CARFAC, Gallery 1.1.1., MPA, Gallery 1C03, Main/Access, MAWA, Plug-In, Floating, Wpg. Film Group, MAC, Urban Shaman, Video Pool, WAAC, AGSM

March 24

artists’ lectures by Kevin Matthews, jake moore, Doug Melnyk

March 23 – April 21

Doug Melnyk

Critical Distance by Shawna Dempsey

March 23 – April 21

Michael Dumontier & Tom Elliott

Critical Distance by Kevin Matthews

how are things? Stairwell Installation Project #3: Michael Dumontier and Tom Elliott
March 23 – April 21, 2001

a response to the exhibition by Kevin Matthews

Between the world that is and anything else is imagination, to navigate and render conceivable. Here the compass is largely created by the mechanisms of poetry – analogy is how we provoke this mechanism into revolution; it is what How are things? ultimately pokes at with its own means.
(Continued)

moving: Doug Melnyk
March 23 – April 21, 2001

a response to the exhibition by Shawna Dempsey

It is a laughable irony that we struggle so hard to create images and shapes which move and provoke our audiences, when we all know that nothing is more beautiful or challenging than the myriad of forms found in nature, not the least of which are our own narcissistically fascinating, endlessly varied and magnificently finely-wrought bodies. The fantastic artwork of evolution leaves us all in the dust, imitators at best. Nothing we can build, paint or perform comes close to skin against skin, an animal’s gait, a hand, a paw, a smile, yet we cannot resist echoing the process that brought us here. Each artist struggles to make something new; make something better. Within us explode big bangs of creation, ideas demanding to be built, painted and performed, evolutions which we ink onto paper. We refine these generations of thought and image, make them relevant to our time and place. The resulting ideas change and move continuously, moving us (as people and artists) forward.
(Continued)

January 19 – February 17

Leah Decter

Critical Distance by Lori Fontaine

trace: Leah Decter
January 19 – February 17, 2001

a response to the exhibition by Lori Fontaine

upon entering, i am drawn to the left – a long wall running the length of the gallery, broken by 3 pillars. here, evenly spaced, are 21 “tooth boxes”. within each meticulously-framed square is a single tooth, sculpted and then cast in lead, apparently suspended in space – held fast by a horizontal lead post.
(Continued)

December 5 – December 9

various artists

Critical Distance by Phil Koch

x3 exhibition and sale of multiples @
December 5 – December 9, 2000

a response to the event by Philip Hugo Koch

We’re not used to seeing the inner workings of the exchange of art objects. Artworks are usually held with a special regard, their presentation restricted to well-prepared settings and occasions where proper relations to their audience may be effected. A certain purity is expected of the experience of art, and awareness of the transactions necessary to achieve its presentation would seem to interfere with that purity.
(Continued)

sidewalk project: by Doug Lewis
October 27 – November 25, 2000

a response to the exhibition by mariianne mays

Community … has come to connote very much the “exclusive community” … and perhaps it may always have denoted that exclusivity … What I have sought to work with is directed entirely against that vision of community, and against any interiority of community … The impossible as jouissance (and not jouissance as impossible!) … Every community must share the impossible, lest it fall beneath the hallucinatory reign of an interiority, an identity, etc.

-Jean Luc Nancy

Ah yes. The politics of the city sidewalk. Do you make eye contact? Do you say hello? Move aside? Hold your ground? Hold your breath?

If you’re a self-described “flâneur,” like artist Doug Lewis, you may frequently find yourself negotiating these very questions. Sidewalk Project embodies such pedestrian concerns with care, humour and generous poetic insight.

I walk in, or we are gathered here …
(Continued)

October 27 – November 25

Doug Lewis

Critical Distance by marianne mays

2000

press run of 1000
ISBN 0-9696265-5-X
$10.00

(Continued)

October 15 – October 21

Ed Osborn

co-sponsered with Video Pool

Prescribing Behaviour (fear & JOY): Fiona Kinsella
September 15 – October 14, 2000
a response to the exhibition by Diane Lemieux

The word “prescribe” implies a directive – to fix authoritatively for the sake of order or clear understanding. Its medical reference also suggests something in need of attention, something broken or not quite anatomically or physiologically correct. In Fiona Kinsella’s exhibition Prescribing Behaviour (fear & JOY), she investigates the realm of human physical vulnerability. The artist manipulates found and collected items, those of lost significance, and imbues them with a new sense of meaning and purpose. The reworking and reordering of these objects, along with the assimilation of medical text and imagery and the repetitive nature of the work itself convey an ambiguous message.
(Continued)

the perfect past: Sara Angelucci
September 15 – October 14, 2000

a response to the exhibition by Lisa Gabrielle Mark

Where memory enacts light, a presence of impossible convergence…

– Erin Mouré ¹

Sara Angelucci makes bad photographs. The large-scale, single and multi-exposure images of outdoor scenes that constitute her most recent body of work, collectively titled The Perfect Past, read as textbook examples of what not to do. She uses a mass-produced toy camera held together with duct tape, and at times it is nearly impossible to make out what has been photographed for all the blurring, light leaks and bleeding that occur. Some of the images even have numbers in them, the result of light seeping in through the back of the camera. (Oops!) Furthermore, as if to flaunt her shoddy technique, she often shoots from the window of a moving vehicle as she travels around. One might well ask: “Does she know what she’s doing?!”
(Continued)

September 15 – October 14

Sara Angelucci

Critical Distance by Lisa Mark

September 15 – October 14

Fiona Kinsella

Critical Distance by Diane Lemieux

THEATRE OF PAINT: Derek Brueckner
June 20 – July 15, 2000

a response to the exhibition by Grant Guy

A few years ago, for the Manitoba Association of Playwrights, I presented a two part talk on the new theatre and performance art. The historical overview journeyed from Leonardo da Vinci to Robert Wilson and Ping Chong. At the end of the talk I solicited responses from the playwrights in attendance. One playwright quickly dismissed the six hour talk with the conclusive comment , “It’s not theatre. There is no drama.” His feeling seemed to be shared by many of the other playwrights. But for me, drama can be theatre, but theatre is not necessarily drama.
(Continued)

June 20 – July 15

exhibition of paintings / video installation / residency Derek Brueckner

Critical Distance by Grant Guy

River: Michael Fernandes
June 16 – July 15, 2000

a response to the exhibitiion by Kevin Matthews

We spend a lot of time pretending we’re not immersed, the way a fish isn’t wet, the way we seem to exist discretely, independent of environment. All the while, we recieve signals and corruptions from the fields and corridors through which we move. Each space gives us its incidental messages, even the most innocuous environment is suggesting, offering ideas and opinions. Perhaps the less attention we call to their influence, the more pervasive it is – we are made and undone by environment. (Continued)

June 16 – July 15

an installation by Michael Fernandes

Critical Distance by Kevin Matthews

Hubbub: Daniel Barrow, Ken Gregory, Chris Marten
June 15 and 16, 2000

a response to the exhibition by Randal McIlroy

“What kind of world would be sympathetic to the music we feel must be made?” That question was posed by Eddie Prevost, a percussionist, composer, theorist and for more than three decade an anchor figure in AMM, and English ensemble devoted to the exploration of music in the moment. While Prevost’s provocative question relates more specifically to a different ethic, it resonated during a recent two evenings of sound performance at aceartinc.

(Continued)

June 15 – June 16

Daniel Barrow

soundtrack by Jeff Cressman: Looking for Love in a Hall of Mirrors
Chris Marten with Greg Lowe: Gee Bwadun Tibikung – Where’s the One?
Ken Gregory: Acceleration + Position = Dream

Critical Distance by Randal McIlroy

May 12 – June 3

University of Manitoba Students of Fine Arts

Lesbian Biology 101(circa 1950): case studies: Szu Burgess
March 31 – April 29, 2000

a response to the exhitibition by Robert Shaw

WHAT I READ
Remember when first you read Sarah Schulman’s novel, People in Trouble? The one set in the East Village? About a love triangle between a straight artist couple and the woman’s lesbian lover? Where the woman in the middle is a performance artist whose performance defeats a greedy landlord, and there’s an interracial gay male couple, one of whom dies of AIDS, and there’s a scene where the lesbian meets the straight guy and they form a strained relationship, and the lesbian couple becomes involved in organizations defending people with AIDS and an AIDS activist hatches a scheme to steal credit cards to feed the poor? Doesn’t ring a bell?
(Continued)

bottom / top: by MY NAME IS SCOT
March 31 – April 29, 2000

a response to the exhibition by Darrel Ronald

“It reminds me of Auschwitz.” He said. I heard him, and agreed. I wasn’t going to ask him any more than that. He was Jewish, and had been there before. I wasn’t Jewish but had also been to the camp. Whereas I can talk about it, he can’t. It means too much. “There’s a terror underlying all the structures, it even scares me,” I carry on, thinking backwards. I was in Poland only eleven months ago. The entire day floats close to the surface of memory.
(Continued)

March 31 – April 29

Scott Keefer

Critical Distance by Darrel Ronald

March 31 – April 29

Szu Burgess

Critical Distance by Robert Shaw

March 18

Fundraising Party

What the world needs now is a sense of humour and love sweet love: Debra Mosher
February 18 – March 18, 2000

a response to the exhibition by Cliff Eyland

Debra Mosher makes two kinds of art: photographs, many of which are portraits; and expressionistic paintings, such as those in this exhibition. (Continued)

February 18 – March 18

Debra Mosher

Critical Distance by Cliff Eyland

Tinkering, Sensors, Machines and Me: Ken Gregory
January 21 – February 18, 2000
a response to the exhibition by Kevin Matthews

Tempting indeed it is to see too much in Ken Gregory’s machines, to zoomorphise or anthropomorphise them – some of them anyway. There are two kinds of machines here, musical machines and mobile machines, and the conceptual axes between them are far too clear in my mind to be stable. Let’s test one and see if it doesn’t collapse.
(Continued)

January 21 – February 18

Ken Gregory

Critical Distance by Kevin Matthews

Salt of the Earth: Vanessa Eidse
January 14 – February 12, 2000
a response to the exhibition by Ellen Peterson

If given the opportunity, I would not revisit the garden where I spent my childhood. One magic acre of flowers, tire swings, and a treehouse across the road from a row of badly distressed houses and a smelly factory. I don’t go back there because I know it would be smaller than in my memory. I prefer to keep that magic place frozen in my mind. What surprises me is how often that garden visits me. I was not expecting to find it, full of flowers, on grubby McDermot Avenue.
(Continued)

January 14 – February 12

Vanessa Eidse

Critical Distance by Ellen Peterson

December 7 – December 11

various artists

Critical Distance by Doug Melnyk

Mourning: Barb Hunt
October 29 – November 27, 1999
a response to the exhibition by Sheila Spence

To mourn is to show sorrow or regret over loss as defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. Emotions surrounding loss are much more layered and complex than this definition. Sorrow and regret are magnified by visceral memories of touch, laughter, pleasure. Often what is no longer there becomes more real in its absence. A personal loss evokes for each of us the cycle of birth, growth, death, decay and renewal and calls upon us to engage in rituals or processes to ground us and comfort us.
(Continued)

Sheila Spence, Joanne Bristol, Susan Mills, April Hickox, Dagmar Dahle, Karilee Fuglem, Candace Savage

Designer: Angela Somerset
Curator: Marian Butler

October 29 – November 27

Barb Hunt

Critical Distance by Sheila Spence

1999

press run of 1000
ISBN 0-9696265-3-3
$10.00

(Continued)

1999

press run of 1000
ISBN 0-9696265-1-7
$5.00

Curators: Michael Dumontier and Tom Elliott. Artists: Ian Birse, Judy Bowyer, Joanne Bristol, Gail Brown, Hank Bull, Michael Drew Campbell, Elaine Carol, Cause and Effect, Shawna Dempsey/Lorri Millan, Michael Dumontier/T.R. Elliott, Marcel Dzama, Neil Farber, Michael Fernandes, Ken Gregory, Kip Jackson, Drue Langlois, Erika Lincoln, Todd Martin, Rita McKeough, Jennie O’Keefe, Jocelyn Robert, Adrian Shalom Williams, Kathleen Yearwood.

Published to accompany the cassette exhibition/lending library a relatively small collection, this publication features entries by the 24 participating artists as well as images from the exhibition and an essay by the curators.

1999

edition ongoing
ISBN 0-9696265-2-5
$20.00
Artists: Brenna George, Al Rushton, Richard Dyck

Published to accompany the group exhibition Working Space, How to Make Work is an interactive publication that requires audience participation and production, i.e., the “kit” require assembly through interaction with each of the works.

1999

press run of 1000
ISBN 0-9696265-4-1
$15.00

Artists: Judy Bowyer, Dena Decter, Lois Klassen, Jean Klimack, Catherine MacDonald, and Vida Simon; Curator: Marian Butler; Additional Publication contributors: Sylvia Legris, Angela Somerset.

Draw resulted from in/habit, a residency and exhibition (presented at aceartinc. in May/June 1999) that looked at issues of isolation and/or solitude, and the location and impact of artists’ production within various communities. Now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

1999

limited edition of 13

Curated by Marian Butler. With artists works by JoAnne Bristol, Dagmar Dahle, Candace Savage, Sheila Spence, Susan Mills, Karilee Fuglem, April Hickox. Designed by Angela Somerset. Critical Distance With Crow Energy by Jen Loewen.

Stories and Iyalogues: Visual Memories, History and Identity: Gomo George
September 24 – October 23, 1999
a response to the exhibition by Gerry Atwell

For a non-visual artist, the prospect of writing about visual arts is intimidating to say the least. After visiting Gomo George’s installation, Stories and Iyahlogues (Visual Memories, History and Identity) at Ace Art Gallery, however, I felt compelled to offer some personal impressions of his work. As a Black Canadian musician and writer, I have frequently written about race and identity, always with the hope of sharing perspectives, reducing obstacles and celebrating humanity. (Continued)

September 24 – October 23

sculpture / installation by Gomo George

Critical Distance by Gerry Atwell

RAPT: Kathleen Sellars and Susan Shantz
August 20 – September 18, 1999

a response to the exhibition by Jake Moore

Some of the elements that comprise the exhibition ,rapt: a correspondence of objects were originally solicited for a joint exhibition in Saskatoon at AKA Artist Run Centre “based on similarities in [the artists'] use of sculpture to articulate aspects of female sensuality. The artists decided to minimize verbal exchange and concentrate on making and maiing scuptural objects. Each object would be made in response to the last one received.”¹ The conversation continues here, as complex and nuanced as dialogue becomes between equals with affection for one another and the offerings that are presented.
(Continued)

August 20 – September 18

an installation by Kathleen Sellers and Susan Shantz

Critical Distance by jake moore

July 6 – July 30

Katharine Bruce, Mary Ferguson, Kathryn Jones, Erika Lincoln, Rene Joshi Sims

May 14

Miles Eldredge

May 3 – May 27

Judy Bowyer, Dena Decter, Lois Klassen, Jean Klimack, Catherine MacDonald, Vida Simon

curator: Marian Butler

May 3 – May 27

Judy Bowyer, Dena Decter, Lois Klassen, Jean Klimack, Catherine MacDonald, Vida Simon

Publication Contributors: Sylvia Legris, Marian Butler, Angela Somerset
curator: Marian Butler

April 10 – April 30

Students of the School of Fine Art, University of Manitoba

March 12 – April 3
March 18: Brenna George
March 31: Tom Elliott and Michael Dumontier
June 17: Richard Dyck and Alex Poruchnyk

Critical Distance by Susan Chafe

March 12 – April 3

Apartment by Richard Dyck
Flight by Brenna George
Tracking the Minotaur by Al Rushton

Degenerate Art: Bonnie Marin
February 12 – March 6, 1999
a response to the exhibition by Szu Burgess

In another place, at another time, Bonnie Marin would be sipping coffee at a sidewalk cafe discussing montage with Hannah Hoch and preparing new work for an exhibition of Berliner Dadaists. Marin would likely have been a key member of the Berlin Dada Club, which changed the face of art in the first decade of the 20th Century; a group united by an ironic cynicism and a desire to provoke. (Continued)

February 12 – March 6

Bonnie Marin

Critical Distance by Szu Burgess

MAN MADE: Evan Tapper
January 8 – February 6, 1999

a response to the exhibition by Jack Lauder

“Why me?” I cried, seeing my face in the mirror. One eye was swollen shut – my eyebrow had become part of my upper lip. What the hell happened yesterday? I remember an awful day spent dealing with inflexible people, then a pint or two, then Evan’s opening – I said I would write about the work. We’re supposed to meet this afternoon. I can’t – not today.
(Continued)

January 8 – July 10

Ian Birse, Judy Bowyer, Joanne Bristol, Gail Brown, Hank Bull, Michael Drew Campbell, Raylene Campbell, Elaine Carol, Cause & Effect, Shawna Dempsey / Lorri Millan, Michael Dumontier / Tom Elliott, Marcel Dzama, Neil Farber, Michael Fernandes, Ken Gregory, Kip Jackson, Drue Langlois, Erika Lincoln, Todd Martin, Rita McKeough, Jennie O’Keefe, Jocelyn Robert, Adrian Shalom Williams, Kathleen Yearwood

curator: Michael Dumontier and Tom Elliott

January 8 – February 6

Evan Tapper

Critical Distance by Jack Lauder

November 28 – December 12

Mary Louise Chown

November 27 – December 12

various artists

1998

edition of 3
$75.00
Artist’s book by Lori Rogers and curator Jennifer Woodbury.

Functioning as both objet and text, this piece distills some of the issues of desire and loss begun in the installation Captive and Absent (aceartinc., 1997). Authorship in the creation of this work is indistinct, as both artist and curator interlay their creative output within the thought and sensibilities of the other.

1998

press run of 500
$5.00

Artists: Ron Gorsline; Curator: Jennifer Woodbury.

Black and white and color reproductions of Ron Gorsline’s paintings and drawings along with a curatorial essay by Jennifer Woodbury are brought together in this publication in response to the exhibition Light/Shadow/Dark by Ron Gorsline.

1998

edition of 200
$20.00

Artist’s book by June Boyd. Co-Facilitators: Marian Butler, Angela Somerset

This book was made through a laborious process of excavation and creation involving photo reenactments of journal excerpts, assemblage of found/retrieved objects, installed situations, drawings and texts. The synthesis of this project (an artist’s book/residency) translates the place where June works and lives into a mobile and tangible form: a documentation /book /installation. Now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

1998

handmade multiples
made-to-order
$60.00

Artist’s book by Helene Dyck

In Flashpoint, a site-specific installation, Helene Dyck continued to reclaim materials from domestic environments, which metaphorically relate to qualities of endurance and renewal in the formation of identity. Helene drew on the layering of the various components in the installation, including plywood for the book’s cover, for this limited edition, handmade artist’s book.

1998

$5.00

Artists: Eleanor Bond, Sheila Butler, Aganetha Dyck, Larry Glawson, Wanda Koop, Kim Ouellette, Esther Warkov, Diane Whitehouse, Jack Butler, Doug Melnyk, Rosalie Bellefontaine, Michael Drabot, Grant Guy, John Gurdebeked, Chrisine Hawks, Karen Hoeberg, Vern Hume, Alex Poruchnyk, Leon Johnson, Grace Martini, Maureen Margaret, Paula Newman, Susan Peterson. (exhibition)

Artists in smaller centers “off the beaten track” like Winnipeg, join forces with artists in Edinburgh in producing authentic art coming not from the “centre” such as Toronto , but from geographically marginalized areas.

DANCE OF GAIA: Angela Luvera
October 9 – November 7, 1998

a response to the exhibition by Tricia Wasney

“It is clear that polarities loom large in human thought. All cultures note and deal with such oppositions as night/day (or darkness/light), male/female, sky/earth, life/death, and a host of others… the attractiveness of dualistic thinking lies… in the solution it offers to the problem of ensuring an ordered relationship between antitheses that cannot be allowed to become antipathies. It is not so much that it offers order, for all systems of thought do that, but that it offers equilibrium. Dualistic theories create order by postulating a harmonious interaction of contradictory principles.”¹ (Continued)

October 9 – November 7

Angela Luvera

Critical Distance by Tricia Wasney

THE BROWN SHOW: Scott Hadaller, Simon Hughes, Cathy Kuryk, Les Newman and Paul Robles
September 3 – September 26, 1998
a response to the exhibition by Blair Marten

Pre-linguistic universal truth ‘number one’: ‘Pinch a loaf’ too hard while defecating, and face the potential of a hemorrhoid-dappled event horizon.

Pre-linguistic universal truth ‘number two’: Give up and ‘go with the flow’, and meet the post-bathroom query “So, did everything come out all right?” with an affirmative response.
(Continued)

September 3 – September 26

Scott Hadaller, Simon Hughes, Cathy Kuryk, Les Newman, Paul Robles

Critical Distance by Blair Marten

August 26 – September 26

Susan Mills

SHUDDER: Rita McKeough
August 7, 1998

a response to the exhibition Deirdre Logue and Kim Truchan

As performers in Rita McKeough’s work Shudder, we experience the work as both empathic participants and as physical bodies. We are simultaneously corporeal elements and emotional recipients, existing within the layers and cycles of the work. Although the piece is most specifically about the realities and implications of fear, the experience of Shudder is substantially more complex, giving rise to feelings of dissonance, containment, anxiety and despair. We are performing bodies on the precipice of articulation, on the edge of language, on the tip of the tongue – both consumed and set free.

In flight there is the promise of escape. (Continued)

August 7

Shudder: Rita McKeough

curator: Grant Guy
Critical Distance by Diedre Logue and Kim Truchan

ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST: Sharon Alward
July 20 – July 25, 1998

a response to the exhibition by Stephen Phelps

In St. John the Baptist performance/ installation artist Sharon Alward is a sight to behold. Framed by a columned portico, she’s seated on a revolving stool, bare-skinned except for a diaper, a halter and the outlandish, surpassing fancy of a pair of neon wings. Her illuminated figure, marble-like in the neon’s gentle glare, presents a picture of grave incandescence on its motorized perch – a bio-luminescent angel bought to earth and put on display. From the axial centre at the base of her spine to the outer radius of her knees, she makes a perfect dial, strikingly in sync with the motion of the gears. As the perambulating skull meets the overspill of an angled spotlight, we glimpse a violent splash of red on blonde – the telltale drippings of an overhead tap whose mouth delivers a steady trickle of ketchup directly onto the head, like a Chinese water torture. The dribbling paste beats a remorseless tattoo as it plops, slowly hardening into a gelatinous clot that encrusts the scalp like glue. (Continued)

July 20 – July 25

St. John the Baptist: Sharon Alward

curator: Grant Guy
Critical Distance by Stephen Phelps

A Ferocious Longing: Connie Cohen
May 29 – June 27, 1998

a response to the exhibition by Joan Thomas

1: I dropped in at Ace Art before A Ferocious Longing opened, while Connie Cohen was still at work. Part of me said it was a mistake to s ee the installation in process (the part that knows art as a conjurer’s trick, and doesn’t want to see its inner workings). In fact, A Ferocious Longing had a meaning for me then that faded later.
(Continued)

May 29 – June 27

Connie Cohen

Critical Distance by Joan Thomas

HOT: Tanya Mars
May 14 – May 16, 1998

a response to the exhibition by Sheila Spence

Dressed in a floor-length black skirt and a lace vest, the artist, at a distance, appears formal and elegant. A closer look reveals a once conventionally beautiful woman with a full beard. Her fragile bones are on the outside. In the distance a voice repeats “Do you love me?”.
(Continued)

May 14 – May 16

HOT: Tanya Mars with the cooperation of Plug-In Gallery

curator: Grant Guy and Adhere And Deny
Critical Distance by Sheila Spence

Light / Shadow / Dark: Ron Gorsline
April 9 – May 16, 1998

a response to the exhibition by Derek Brueckner

Why Paint?
I would like to start this with a disclaimer. I do not consider this tex to be the initial charge of a long and lucrative writing career, nor do I consider myself to be a historian, critic, critical writer or any kind of competent writer for that matter. I am grateful, however, that Ace Art has facilitated a situation where a visual artist and studio teacher (or at least that is how I position myself) can have his say or little rant. Partly due to selfishness, I wish to emphasize some issues of painting that desperately need to be brought into focus, and it seems, after having taped an interview with Gorsline at Ace Art, that these issues are important to him as well. Also, Jennifer Woodbury has generously volunteered to write regarding the work in Light / Shadow / Dark and, I suspect, will do a far better job in ters of insight into the meaning of Gorsline’s paintings than I ever could. So here it goes!
(Continued)

April 9 – May 16

Ron Gorsline

curator: Jennifer Woodbury
Critical Distance by Derek Brueckner

Literally: Kelly Mark
March 6 – March 29, 1998

a response to the exhibition by Cliff Eyland

I have known Kelly Mark for a few years. Not so long ago, she ran the bar at an alternative gallery in Halifax called the Khyber, which was once as famous for its raves as its parallel art programming. The Khyber keeps up its alternative art credentials, but its bar is licensed now, and Mark has moved back to Hamilton. Meanwhile, her career has taken off: she is now represented by Toronto’s Wynick/Tuck Gallery; she will join a few other Canadian artists in the next Sydney Biennial; and she has just had a solo show at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
(Continued)

March 6 – March 29

Kelly Mark

Critical Distance by Cliff Eyland

Flashpoint: Helene Dyck
February 27 – April 4, 1998

a response to the exhibition by Erika MacPherson

chapter one I STEP INTO THE GALLERY
a quick survey. i’m in the reception area. it’s dark. in the background a warm pool of light spills onto a lone narrow shelf. two books on the shelf catch the light. they stand upright. they’re static but windblown, the bottoms of the pages pulling up, weathered. the hinged plywood covers of the book reminiscent of doors, a coffin, a cupboard, the proportions of a human body. i hinge open the doors of the book to the vellum paged rooms inside. the images are sensuous, soft photographic studies; tree bark, mattress, a faintly blurred image of a girl running in the grass… a personal archive, a photographic diary. images to trigger some memory, something that words can’t quite remember, like the smell of your grandmother’s house year after year always taking you back to your childhood. as with most books there is a dedication: for jake flashpoint, the bookwork.
(Continued)

February 27 – April 4

Multimedia Installation & Bookwork by Helene Dyck

Critical Distance by Erika McPherson

Exhalt Fax and Other Techno Sirens: Aurora Landin
January 16 – February 21, 1998

a response to the exhibition by Susan Turner

Even the title of Aurora Landin’s exhibition is arresting: “exalt”, implying wonder, religiosity, awe, and praise; “fax”, possibly a Latin word from the past and, therefore, distanced from us, but no – it’s “fax”, the abbreviation for “facsimile”, an exact replica of an original, but of lesser quality – not as valuable or durable; not as precious. Machine-made, accessible, dispensable. FAX. Something quick, technological; but then equally as quickly, from the digitally altered, computer generated print at the entrance to the exhibition, I infer that a joke is also implied. A toy store with the name EXALT and which offers FAX services is on the route that Landin takes to the University of Manitoba where she teaches printmaking; window signage has placed the two words in humourously inappropriate syntactical contiguity.
(Continued)

January 16 – February 21

Aurora Landin

Critical Distance by Susan Turner

Glass Armour: Fragile Shields: Karen Justl
December 6 , 1997 – January 10, 1998

a response to the exhibition by Susan Chafe

TITLES: Soft Target; the dimming vision; oh terrible language; long in the tooth, ribs removed to identify position in the cavity of the chest; a ghost pain; articular motives; disarticulation; mask to identify virtue; not listening; a thing that hinges hold; sentimental resignation; slitting my memory on a poetry of glass shards; dislocated pressure; if you were oyster and your teeth pearls; can you see, a pool of frozen water on the moon, intention exists before language.
(Continued)

December 6 – January 10

Karen Justl

Critical Distance by Susan Chafe

Photogenic and Lost: two performances by Grant Guy
November 27 – 29, 1997

a response to the exhibition by Sharon Alward

“To learn truly what each thing is, is a matter of uncertainty.” ( Democritus 500 BCE)

Democritus, the laughing philosopher, suggested that the soul is a form of fire which animates the human body and that pleasure along with self control was the goal of life. His statement that we know nothing truly about anything, but that for each of us, opinion is an influx conveyed by the influx of idols from without is at the heart of the evening of performances by Winnipeg artist Grant Guy.
(Continued)

November 27 – November 29

Grant Guy

Critical Distance by Sharon Alward

Captive and Absent: Lori Rogers
October 29 – November 22, 1997

a response to the exhibition by Vera Lemecha

At the end of this century, technology is taking the place of what we have defined previously as nature. It is the environment in which we are situated and against which we measure ourselves. Rogers’ use of nature speaks not of a desire for reconciliation with the natural, but investigates our situation in the late twentieth century in which the technological has become the natural. Many of us engage daily with technology – automatic bank machines, voice mail, cel phones, electronic mail, the Internet, computer games, word-processing, and so on. In a very short time the use of these technologies has become so much a part of our daily lives that it is difficult for us to fully comprehend our relationship to them and to the way our relationship to the world has been mediated through them. Allucquére Rosanne Stone, restating Marshall McLuhan’s pronouncement, “the medium is the message,” indicates that it is hard to see what technology does because what it does is silently and pervasively restructure seeing.¹ Rogers’ investigation has to do with a venture Stone describes as “not into the heart of ‘nature’ in search of redemption, but rather into the heart of ‘technology’ in search of nature – and not nature as object, place or originary situation…[but] as a continual reinvention and encounter actively resisting representation.”² (Continued)

October 29 – November 22

video installation by Lori Rogers

curator: Jennifer Woodbury
Critical Distance by Vera Lemecha

1997

Artist: Susan Turner

Essay: Andrea Philip

1997

handmade multiples
made-to-order
$250.00
Artist’s book by Susan Chafe and Donnelly Smallwood.

Observing journeys to the beaches and rivers as places of reflection where time expands into history, the artists have created Name This Bird – Winnipeg Beach, an image/text ‘notebook’ comprised of a poetic thread of impressions about language and memory.

1997

edition of 200
Artist’s book by Jake Moore

Moore’s to sow was originally presented as an off-site exhibition in September 1996 at 284 William Ave. Moore used an unbound book format comprised of images and texts to convey the relationship between culture and environment and the precarious artifice of history, identity and economics. Now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

1997

press run of 200
$20.00
Artist’s book by Brenna George.

Drawing on the lives of two manic depressive people, the artist explores the effects that personality/mood swings have on others and the environment around them. Now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

1997

press run of 200
$20.00
Artist’s book by Tom Elliott.

This work has emerged from Tom’s insterest in making and recording music. The bookwork brings together images, texts and musical notation as means of negotiating particular ‘landscapes’ and what one might encounter in these places.

October 10 – October 12

Anthony Kiendl and Louise Wilson

part of Floating Gallery Festival

October 1 – October 16

Marian Butler

curator: Marian Butler

September 27

interdisciplinary workshop with Jean Randolph

A Bird in the Hand: Alex Poruchnyk
September 19 – October 12, 1997

a response to the exhibition by Grant Guy

On Opening Night. . .

A Voice In The Dark: “It is too much to take in all at once.”

Tricia Wasney Wrote In The Guest Book: “I liked (and didn’t like) being distracted, wanting to see everything, not wanting to miss anything.”

Is this not Life, in both serenity and in panic?
(Continued)

September 19 – October 12

Alex Poruchnyk

Critical Distance by Grant Guy

August 1 – June 31

Michael Dumontier and Tom Elliott

July 28 – August 15

Catherine Kirouac

June 19

The Global Stairwell Humming Choir – Rotterdam and Winnipeg Choirs via telephone

Wanda Koop, Erika McPherson, Simon Hughes, Val Klassen, Susan Turner, Reva Stone, and more

co-sponsered with Video Pool / Buhne de Bovenlucht / Picos de Europa

June 19
Wanda Koop

co-sponsored with Video Pool

June 12

Dorothy Penner, Diana Thorneycroft, Robert Hamilton, Dana Cooley, Melinda McCracken, Vanessa Eidse, Sharon Bajer, Tate Shimozawa, Kevin Ferris

co-sponsored with Video Pool

Burning Bridges: Jarod Charzewski
May 30 – September 27, 1997

a response to the exhibition by Alison Gillmor

The first and probably the most accessible way to see Burning Bridges is as a series of ten wooden doors that are either rising triumphantly or falling into despair, depending on your viewpoint (physical and emotional). Taken with the work’s site – a scrubby open field in Winnipeg’s North End – the doorways act as a striking metaphor for a community in uneasy transition. But it’s important not to stop there, at that intellectually comfy construct. Artist Jarod Charzewski, blindsides the paradigm of public sculpture as monumental, untouchable, timeless product, looking instead at processes – weather, decay, human interaction, and most of all – time and what they do to materials. Responses to his work need to do something like that too, not worrying about neat conclusions but enjoying uncertainties, unresolved tensions – the practice of thinking about art and not just the final results.
(Continued)

May 30 – September 27

Jarod Charzewski

Critical Distance by Allison Gilmor

May 23
Brenna George, Gilles Herbert, Reva Stone, Susan Turner, Sheila Urbanoski, Nelson Henricks

co-sponsored with Video Pool

May 14 – May 24

coordinated by Alex Poruchnyk

Not What We Are: Susan Turner
April 18 – May 10, 1997

a response to the exhibition by Robert Sauvey

entry #1

I was down at Ace Art today meeting with Jennifer. Susan Turner was there. I told her that I was writing the Critical Distance for her upcoming show at Ace Art. She was really pleased when I told her that I was looking forward to writing it. We made plans to meet at her studio for a pre-exhibition visit. Susan offered to serve lunch – a bonus. She phoned later to set a date.

April 18 – May 10

Susan Turner

Critical Distance by Robert Sauvey

The Pretender Series: Patrick Hartnett
March 21 – April 12, 1997

a response to the exhibition by Al Rushton

With six minutes of every TV half hour devoted to claims of commercial quality, it’s refreshing when someone comes along and says, “Hey, this isn’t the Real Thing.” Patrick Hartnett’s recent Ace Art installation: The Pretender Series does just this. Using computer photo manipulation, Hartnett flies in the face of vainglorious advertising claims and frowningly serious contemporary art, both presenting themselves as Gospels of the moment.
(Continued)

Solo Groping in the Dark: Sharon Raynard
March 21 – April 12, 1997

a response to the exhibition by Jennifer Stillwell

In the automatic age we have not ignored the love-machine — we physically have become a mechanical competitor, and we have the desire to perfect not only our environment but also ourselves and our bodies. We are finding we are not living up to the capabilities of our bodily extensions. We alone survive as a kind of mushy love-machine proficient in thrills we attempt to define and control, and our culture tends to reduce sex to a question of mechanics, hygiene, and fashion. (Continued)

March 21 – April 12

Sharon Raynard

Critical Distance by Jennifer Stillwell

March 21 – April 12

Patrick Hartnett

Critical Distance by Al Rushton

March 10 – March 15

Pedro Mendes

The 49th Parallel Project: Gregor Turk
February 14 – March 8, 1997

a response to the exhibition by Douglas William Lewis

Maps, or even more specifically, boundaries are often defined within the physical realm by two or more intersecting regions of space, mass or time; the sociological and psychological metaphors of boundaries are, of course, of an unparalleled importance. Maps have a tendency to appear to take the abstract world and reformulate it into something humanity can digest, in other words, helping us locate our periphery. According to Websters’ Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary a map is “1.b. a representation of the celestial sphere or part of it”. This may convincingly assist in our perception of our corporeal situation, even though cartographical history has shown us that maps can be biased, inconsistent and often antiquated. Yet, somehow we still live with them as one of the methods of defining ourselves as ‘regions’. The 49th parallel, being one of the longest straight ‘lines’ or boundaries, was the premise for much of Gregor Turk’s exhibition at Ace Art. (Continued)

February 14 – March 8

Gregor Turk

Critical Distance by Doug Lewis

evolutio: by Karen Spencer
January 10 – February 1, 1997

a response to the exhibition by Marian Butler
(Continued)

January 10 – February 1

Karen Spencer

Critical Distance by Marian Butler

Myths of Work/Rules of Thumb: Leslie Thompson
November 29 – December 21, 1996

a response to the exhibition by Sheila Spence

The exhibition by Toronto artist Leslie Thompson is made up of two separate pieces: Myths of Work and Rules of Thumb. In the photo installation Myths of Work Thompson begins the journey back from the patriarchal beliefs of business towards some form of matriarchy.
(Continued)

November 29 – December 21

Leslie Thompson

Critical Distance by Sheila Spence

Emergence: Wendy Wersch
November 12 – November 23, 1996

a response to the exhibition by Catherine MacDonald

November 13, 1996.
Standing in silence she begins to sway as if responding to the subtle shifts of energies and wind currents, lulled by the rattling of the steam heaters and the banging and clanking rhythms of old pipes contracting in the cold.

Her silence is strong and determined, she is primordial woman standing naked, cocooned in her memories and in the bits and pieces of her guilt.

She is standing in the echo of her voice… the silence explains. The echo reaches through eons of time…her head is surrounded by the fear and terror of her own thoughts.
(Continued)

November 12 – November 23

Wendy Wersch

Critical Distance by Catherine MacDonald

1996

press run of 200
Artist’s book by Angela Somerset to sow A six month living/art making residency in rural Manitoba community provided both the context and content for an installation entitled navigating by falling stars and this bookwork, presented at aceartinc. Now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

footnote: by Stella Meades
October 18 – November 9, 1996

a response to the exhibition by Heidi Eigenkind

In footnote, Stella Meades pays homage to the circumstances of her own childhood and to those children still affected by war and ethnic hatreds.¹ Taking as her starting point, a 1995 UNICEF statistic that 6,000,000 children have been disabled or killed in the last decade, Meades handbuilt 1001 shoes. Each one of the first 1000 represents 6000 injured or dead children. The extra shoe moves the installation beyond the statistic’s timeline, into the present and the future.
(Continued)

October 18 – November 9

Stella Meades

Critical Distance by Heidi Eigenkind

October 11 – October 12

The Oneiric Girls with special guest performance by Sisterboots: Carla-marie Powers, Catherine McGrath, Joanne Bristol, Marie Bristol, Tanya Lester and Janine Tschuncky

to sow: Jake Moore
September 13 – October 12, 1996

a response to the exhibition by Susan Chafe

September 13 – October 12

jake moore

Critical Distance by Susan Chafe

Drag City: Curated by Robert Sauvey
September 6 – October 15, 1996

a response to the exhibition by Cathy Collins

Once my mother convinced my Dad to wear her Aunt’s black cut velvet and silk flapper dress to a Hallowe’en party. This was a significant accomplishment in light of my Dad’s origins in Presbyterian and Tory rural Ontario. Underneath his silky, cut velvet, black dress, Dad wore the usual Stanfields. It was a safe masquerade, the way Milton Berle played comic female roles as the host of Texaco Star Theater in the early days of television. Existing gender stereotypes were reinforced. Dad’s cross-dressing wasn’t drag because he wasn’t creating a new identity either in his mind or in his behavior. Clearly drag is a state of mind driven by fantasy and desire. How else would a muscled, tattooed boy with a badly fitting blonde wig manage to look thoughtfully girlish in a photo-portrait by David Rasmus?

(Continued)

September 6 – October 15
An exhibition of fifteen gay and lesbian artists: Antoine Tempe, David Rasmus, Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan, G.B. Jones, Hamish Buchanan, Larry Glawson, Mark Beard, Maxine Henryson & Hunter Reynolds, Nina Levitt, Pierre Dalpe, Hugh Steers, The Boor Sisters, Steven Arnold, Sheila Spence, Catherine Opic PERFORMANCE: Greg Campbell, John Kelly, Diane Torr, Lori Weidenhammer

VIDEO: Sharleen Boudreau, David Gyrwinski, Sheila Urbanowski

curator: Robert Sauvey
Critical Distanceby Cathy Collins

August 17 – August 24

Catherine MacDonald and Dana Kletke

August 2 – August 19

Connie Cohen

July 5 – July 27

Carol Ramsay

July 5 – July 27

Racheal Tycoles

On the Skin: Diana Thorneycroft and Michael Boss
April 26 – May 18, 1996

a response to the exhibition by Tom Lovatt