Video clips of Julie Tremblay at the Gladstone's upART fair

It's taken me a while but here is a link to some video clips of Julie Tremblay's Reflections series works in situ at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto during the upART Contemporary Art Fair in early October. They are taken in the final pre-opening stages with the people moving in and out of the frame being hotel staff and other exhibitors. The first two are in the main staircase leading to the second floor and the rest of the shots are in the lobby. Note that the video is in the form of a basic documentation and not an edited film.

Images of Julie Tremblay Installation at the Gladstone's upART fair, Oct 2-5, 2008

Julie Tremblay at upART Contemporary Art Fair at the Gladstone; PREVIEW is Thursday evening

Craig Scott Gallery presents Julie Tremblay at upART Contemporary Art Fair @ The Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen West at Gladstone), Thursday, Oct 2 to Sunday, Oct 5, 2008

-- upART is an installation-based art fair --

Julie Tremblay’s upART public space installation greats visitors to upART. It consists of six life-size figures from her Reflections series sculpted from cast-off industrial sheet metal; aptly described by Gary Michael Dault as "airy personages" who "take up space even as they create it", five of the works soar just below the Gladstone’s ceilings in the lobby and up the main staircase to the second floor where all other public space as well as the room installations appear.

The Tremblay works were installed today, and attracted the wonder-struck attention of Gladstone guests, restaurant visitors, and staff, virtually to a person. This is a great opportunity to view these very special works in a non-gallery space that shows their great capacity to transform an environment, whether hotel, home, or workplace.

The PREVIEW is 4-8 PM this Thursday. The $7 admission fee includes a copy of the Fair’s catalogue.

The upART Fair continues Friday (12 noon - 11 PM), Saturday (12 noon - 7 PM), and Sunday (12 noon - 5PM).

After 7PM on Saturday, until Midnight, the upART Fair is open for no admission charge as part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche. (No catalogues are available during this period.)

Gord Smith's "Superall"

In 1982, Canadian artist and sculptor, Gord Smith, conducted analysis and experiments with a form called SUPER-EGG that had been discovered in the early 1960s by Scandinavian poet, engineer and artist, Piet Hein. Hein’s form contained two centres of gravity and was a combination of the sphere and the cube. Smith’s observations led to a geometric combination of the sphere with the tetrahedron. The results were a new form that had four centres of gravity. Smith named the form SUPERALL. See above a photograph of a bronze Superall, 7" diameter in an edition of 9. Expect to hear more about this unique form articulated by one of Canada's great sculptors of the post-war era.

This work is on display at the gallery.

Roving Eye: Jeremy Mayer

My first "Roving Eye" posting was about Doris Salcedo at the Tate Modern. As I was just reflecting on whether to do a second "Roving Eye" for today's post, this just in from Martin Mills, a friend of the gallery with not only a terrific eye but great knowledge about art history:

"Sculptures entirely made from disassembled typewriters - supposedly no welding or affixing involved, just 'cold assembly'...

I took a look, and, well, wow. That decided today's posting.

And the artist? One Jeremy Mayer.

Whence "an address to remember"?

Our young blog has attracted its first question. A correspondent asks about the context of the 'blurb' quotation included at the top of the blog: "An address to remember." - Lyne Boily, Host of Radio-Canada's Les arts et les autres.

Well, during Julie Tremblay's Reflections exhibition in May, Radio-Canada (the French arm of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) did a long review of the show on a weekly radio show called Les arts et les autres. The segment (both an English-language transcript and a link to the audio of the show) -- called "The sculptures of Julie Tremblay" -- can be accessed from a News page on the Craig Scott Gallery general website by clicking HERE.

In the transcript, you can see at the start of the discussion chain that Lyne Boily says a couple of interesting things about the gallery in general:

Lyne Boily: In Toronto, there are the ‘official’ places where galleries are grouped but when we open our eyes wide, and look in corners and hidden places, there are others who have some extremely interesting propositions on offer. This is the case of Craig Scott Gallery, located at 95 Berkeley, which is currently presenting the quite fascinating work of the Québécoise Julie Tremblay. Marjorie Murphy was attracted by the siren-chanting of her mermaids.

And, in closing the exhibition review:

LB: Well you give us the desire to go dance with them. Reflections, of Julie Tremblay. It is presented until June 1st so there is no time to waste. There are only two weeks left now. And it is at Craig Scott Gallery, located at 95 Berkeley. And I think that this is an address to remember as there are often interesting and pertinent offerings there. Thank you very much, Marjorie Murphy.

****

The photo at the start of this posting is an in situ shot of Tremblay's Reflections No 5, 7, and 8. Below is a close-up of the recycled industrial sheet metal she creates her works from: look closely and you might be able to guess what the metal has been used for, before being cast off.


Coming soon: a report on an exciting new project for Tremblay in Europe, involving the creation of 23 new works.

Gord Smith in summer issue of MAG

As regulars at the gallery will know, I firmly believe that Gord Smith "is unquestionably one of the great sculptors of post-war Canada." (quoting myself on Gord's artist's page). From his first welded bronze work completed at age 21 for the Frazer-Hickson Library in Montreal, he had completed 37 commissions by the mid-1980s and seen his work acquired by major institutional and private collectors. He may be best known for the “Canada Screen” work commissioned by the Government of Canada for the Canadian Pavillion at Expo ’67 (seen just below); this Cor-Ten steel work measured 110 feet by 12 feet, and won him Second Prize for the entire Expo ’67 in the Monuments and Fountains category.

This past year, he took on two new large-scale commissions in a new medium that he has been working with for the past half-dozen years, wooden dowels. Each is now in buildings owned by the Atria Development Corporation. To the left is Smith's life-size "Inspiratrice", currently being exhibited at the gallery.

For its summer (July & August) issue, MAG/Mass Art Guide gave Smith's dowel work its cover and feature editorial essay, which is well worth a look.

Alongside a special display of some eight dowel pieces at the gallery, we also have a cross-section of figurative works in metal by Gord as part of our Go Figure Summer Salon. To the left is one work from his fantastic "Nuclear" series of 1961-63: "A People."