Public displays of art-fection

Opinion

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This article was published 17/08/2016 (2807 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

From bus shacks to billboards and construction barricades, tacking up some art has become a popular, inexpensive way for business-improvement types to class up our urban spaces. While I’ll always take an artwork over a tacky ad or PSA about chlamydia, there are other, artist-led public displays that you may have overlooked.

Billing itself as “Winnipeg’s only 24-hour artist-run centre,” Window occupies one of the Artspace building’s street-level display cases facing Old Market Square. Since 2012, the space has hosted projects by 26 artists, and since February it’s been guest-curated by local artist Divya Mehra.

Back in April, Shimby (Hagere Selam Zegeye-Gebrehiwot) installed a pair of Amharic phrases, “Buli: beso: bela:: Buli: khaki: leka::” in blue vinyl text. “Simple sentences about everyday things,” recalled from weekend language classes at the Ethiopian Society of Winnipeg, their content is less important than the encounter itself. Presumably banal (if out-of-context) for Amharic speakers and illegible to other passersby, the texts quietly but forcefully reveal the normally invisible contours of a community in diaspora, touching on themes of continuity and loss, identity and displacement.

Striking similar chords, last month Toronto artist Mark Clintberg transformed the window into signage for a fictional, members-only gay bar, Détournement, “est. 1968,” a year before Stonewall. The name references both Detour, a long-defunct establishment formerly around the corner on Albert Street, and détournement (“misappropriation,” “hijacking”), a term for satirical, anti-capitalist protest used by French artists in the 1960s.

Advertising a dance club, nail bar, crisis centre, library and vegetarian barbecue, the piece teases a fleeting queer utopia while commenting on the real, ongoing loss of LGBTTQ* spaces. Going up just weeks after the shootings at Pulse in Orlando and days before the inaugural Steinbach Pride, the piece carried added emotional weight.

Also text-based, the current display by excellently named Toronto collective Bonerkill, Because it’s 2016, offers responses to the question, “Why do we need feminism?” While many answers resonate, including the nod to Justin Trudeau’s quippy rationale for a gender-balanced cabinet, the piece stumbles into a tricky spot between art and activism. It’ not an especially compelling example of either, but its intentions are good. Next month’s instalment by pioneering Vancouver conceptualist Ken Lum, however, is definitely one to watch for.

While many of Window’s best works blend seamlessly into their Exchange District surroundings, another active artist-run is even easier to miss.

For the second year running, the Box Gallery has been popping up all over with new exhibitions every Sunday since July. Works shown so far have included mathematically derived abstractions by artist and teacher Derek Brueckner, a biological assemblage by Heather Komus, and a mobile zine distro by Dany Reede.

Last Sunday, the Box materialized on the back fence of esteemed Winnipeg artist Bonnie Marin’s Spruce Street home, debuting a new work, People in Your Neighbourhood. A box within a box, miniature double doors mimic the wooden gate itself, piquing the curiosity of people walking by. Inside they’ll find one of Marin’s distinctive collage works, an ambivalently gendered figure and two pairs of watchful eyes embedded in black beeswax, a seeming reflection on gender identity and neighbourly scrutiny. The vintage ads and pulp novel graphics that Marin prefers create a sense of film-noir intrigue, but in the sunny back lane, the gesture felt like one of openness and hospitality.

There are still three Box openings to come. The next, by Candice MH, is this Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Orioles Community Centre garden at St. Matthews Avenue and Burnell Street. For remaining times and locations, find The Box Gallery on Facebook.

 

Steven Leyden Cochrane is a Winnipeg-based artist, writer and educator.