TODD A C DAVIS
CURATORIALS
Curatorials have been a part of my art production since 1977. I learned the initial aspects of curating through the many Art History classes of which I participated in as a student at the Nova Scotia Art & Design taught by Historians, Artists, visiting Artists and excellent Art History staff at the school between 1974 and 1977. Classes ranged from Introductory Art History through the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Century classes; to Canadian Art History across several centuries including Aboriginal Art studies; to Video and Media Art History, Performance Art History and Music Art History from the mid-1800's to contemporary music. Studies were informative to each other as a whole and set me on a path to working within cultural institutions in Vancouver, Victoria and across Canada. I thank those instructors and NSCAD who hired them, allowing the sudy of art to expand my concepts of art history and the ideas necessary for curatorials that came into being.
I appreciate the work, ideas and participation of the artists involved. A short-list of curatorials over the past 30 years follows. Please contact me at toddacdavis@gmail.com or this website for a complete list and or copies of monographs or catalogues.
Below are the two most recent curatorials I have put together for viewing publics in Vancouver.
IPS offered the opportunity to curate an exhibition in a Vancouver ‘Pop-up’ gallery for a short period, I decided to ask several artists to create a work from a conceptual point-of-view: artwork with an ‘idea’ in mind that relates to Piero Manzoni’s short period as an artist, curator and gallery owner. The basis for this curatorial came from a Piero Manzoni print (lithograph) in my personal collection that presents the letters ‘A’ through ‘G’ in vertical rows of 7 letters creating a square image and a circular concept. Manzoni elucidates the idea of ‘self-identity’ for the viewer which is the concept throughout the print portfolio 8 Tavole di accertamento_8 Tables of assessment_1958 from which this work emanates. This print also provides art relating to the initial ideas in European art of the 1950s: non-objectivity combined with language and concepts. The curatorial idea attached itself to the Manzoni and I contacted several artists hoping that the seven, ‘A’ through ‘G’, as in the print image. The artists took the idea of conceptualism, a short production period, a provided strangely odd architectural space and it’s anomalies: lighting, hanging and sound characteristics, as well as my intention as curator to pay homáge to the Italian conceptualist. Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility (IPS) is the result. Art about concepts and architectural space to create the seven works by David Khang, Glenn Lewis, Vincent Trasov, Keith Higgins, Kennedy Telford, Karen Kazmer, Henry Tsang.
The Performed
Object
The Performed Object: Against a Fallacy looks at the art object, since the death of painting in the late 1960s, might admittedly be living in the uncertainty of a true pedigree and unsettles any ranking of the fine arts. This small exhibition will continue this lineage while viewing art objects in relation to performance art. Time-based performance art is informative, otherworldly, sensuous, outrageous, sometimes unscripted and at other times, in the words of some people, “just plain weird”.Performance art and its peripherals are based in presentation concepts which evoke ‘time’ and ‘body,’ often losing much in translation through documentation: “You just had to be there!” Not so with these artworks. The object, or the art object, is not what comes to mind in relation to performance. These works extend the idea of performance and allow the viewer an intimate interaction. While the term ‘props’ extend to the performed object, these objects can be considered a tool of the performance concept: an object which extends the idea; an object which takes on iconic territory resulting from the performative work; objects which could be considered an artwork endowed with the artists’ individual reflections created through the performance act. Performance artists many times utilize ‘objects’ during the event, integral to the development, and execution, of the performance. This exhibition bridges the “having been there” of performance art and the critical discourse around object making – art works in their own right. Artists: John G. Boehme, Gathie Falk, Jason W. Fitzpatrick, David Khang, Glenn Lewis & Kate Craig, Glynn Davies-Marshall, Eric Metcalf, Oraf Orafsson, Randy & Barenicci, Ikbal Singh, Victoria Singh http://www.helenpittgallery.org/exhibitions/past/archived-events/the-performed-object/
I'm another title
2005-1996 (short list)_
Shapeshifter. Hotspot. Now. Group Exhibition, featuring 16 artists from Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands: Suzanne Bessette (Victoria), Bob Brown (Nanaimo), Jo Cook (Mayne Island), Donna Eichel (Victoria), Chris Gillespie (Victoria), Ken Hudson (Victoria), Karina Kalvaitis (Victoria), Wesley Mulvin (Mayne Island), Rick Raxlen (Victoria), Ron Rudge (Victoria), Shawn Shepherd (Victoria), David P. Smith (Victoria), Christoper Starkey (Mayne Island), Ben van Netten (Victoria), Wendy Welch (Victoria), Woodpile Collective (Victoria)
Voice ++ New Music Voice Festival offers a forum for performance, reflection and practice of the voice in contemporary music, including cultural, mythological and therapeutic perspectives.
...and uncertain light Brenda Pelkey (Saskatoon), Holly King (Montréal) and Tamsin Clark (Victoria) with writer, Clint Hutzulak (Victoria) an exhibition of large-scale photographs, is intended to present an exploration of landscape as psychic, fantastical, mysterious and uncertain space in which cultural politics of landscape, identity and spatiality are investigated.
Museum of Metaphors by Hadley Howes (Vancouver) and Maxwell Stephens (Vancouver) As a special commission to celebrate Open Space’s 30th Anniversary, Hadley and Maxwell decorated the foyer of the gallery as a Rococo ‘ode to the patron’ titled Museum of Metaphors. They specifically referenced singerie, a satirical style of decorative painting from the 18th century in which monkeys are depicted performing human activities. The history of Open Space was spread across the wall a'la Rococo.
PLOT by James Carl (Toronto), this nouveau Pop-artist works with images from life to build complex installations which reverberate across the gallery. ‘CorPlast’, or corrugated plastic is a favorite material as the artist builds multiples of everyday objects such as home (plastic bottles), studio (table saws) and school office (file boxes). Larger than life images wallpapered across moveable walls provided visual manifestations of a graphic language we see everyday on packaging, as well as providing a backdrop, and companion pieces for the 3-D work.
Laiwan with Lori Freedman produced Quartet for the year 4698 or 5760, a multi media installation that uses film with audio, live performance, music improvisation, computer media and the internet. The work purports to be an analysis through the “machine” of the improvisational musical body, spontaneous time and space, and the presence/absence of cultural histories within a critique of the limitations of said machines. An exhibition catalogue with introduction by Todd Davis; preface by Scott Watson; texts by Jessie Lacayo, Adrienne Lai, Tamara Bernstein, and, Laiwan; chronologies by Brice Canyon; edited by Steve Bridger. This 36-page publication thoroughly brings together installation photographs, essays and articles, including chronologies illustrating the multifaceted practices of both artists,
Systems Systems Crush, with Kennedy Telford and Charles Gardner and Caitlin Lewis (Victoria) This installation draws its inspiration from a long history of pilgrimage paintings. mini-catalogue. Open Space 25th Anniversary, Twenty-Five, works by 25 artists which were comprised of twenty-five sections; Eleanor Bond, Small Cities,paintings (Winnipeg); Mowry Baden: A Choreography of the Ordinary:New sculpture with catlogue essay by Robert Hullot-Kentor; Jerry Pethick (Hornby island), Eight Works, The proverbial bricoleur artist brought sculpture, kinetic sculpture, renticular lens works, drawings and a newly created sound piece for Open Space’s massive room. This mini-retropspective saw the artist’s work presented for the first time as a solo exhibition in Victoria. (monograph with essay by the artist)
Christopher Pratt: Prints (in conjunction with Memorial University, Newfoundland, Simon Fraser University Art Gallery, Malaspina Printmakers Workshop, Vancouver, and Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto) The complete print output of this venerable Newfoundland painter of realism and the Newfoundland landscape. catalogue Burnaby Art Gallery.