? IS THAT PAINTBRUSH LOADED, HOMBRE
Local artists get a chance to find their inner Viking
Will the strategies prescribed in The Art of War be useful in the war of art? Art Battle 52 is coming to Ottawa for the first time, after 51 skirmishes in other cities. The onstage events, with local painters “battling” on canvas in front of an audience, are held monthly in Toronto, Vancouver and Halifax, and could soon become a monthly event in Ottawa, Montreal, Hamilton and Saint John, N.B.
Here’s how it works: a card of artists — at the Arts Court studio in Ottawa on May 5 they’ll include Hamid Ayoub, Erica Taylor, Margo Bennetto, Andre-Marc Pierre, Omar Hopkinson, Lukasz Bober, Mark Stephenson, Cristian Alaus and Peter Akiki — all take to the stage simultaneously to paint. There are three, 20-minute rounds.
Members of the audience — everyone’s a judge — can move among the working painters, and at the end of each round they vote. By the end of round three only one painter remains to claim the title of champion. At the end of the year-long season across the country, there’s a national championship.
“I signed myself up, and I instantly had almost like an anxiety attack of, what have I got myself into?” says Mark Stephenson. “I’m going to be painting with all these amazing artists, and 20 minutes is a lot of time pressure, and a whole bunch of people are watching you.”
He could consult The Art of War, the 2,000 year-old battle guide by the Chinese general Sun Tzu, but Stephenson has his own plan. “I’m going to try and solicit somebody from the audience to be my model, and I’m going to do a 20-minute, real fast portrait,” he says.
That strategy is allowed, says Simon Plashkes, who launched the Art Battle tour with Chris Pemberton in 2009. “We do as little as possible to restrain the creativity and the focus of the artists,” Plashkes says.
Artists can use brushes or other nonmechanical applicators — no spray painting, for example — and they’re free to improvise, even wildly. “We had a painter who ripped the canvas to shreds and hoped for the audience vote,” Plashkes says.
Stephenson says he’s over his initial qualms and is viewing it as more a brotherhood than a battle.
“I love art in a public context. I like life drawing, and drawing with a group of people,” he says. “I’m trying to look at it that way, and less of a competition.”
Plashkes says that competition, as energetic and exciting as it is, is not the end goal.
“One of the purposes of our battle is to foster and grow a national discourse on what is good art. This is, at the micro level, a very, very good practice for that, because it means that somebody has to say to their friend, ‘I like that about this painting, and I don’t like this about that painting.’ It causes them to grow their esthetic language, and we hope to be able to continue that throughout the country.”
Tickets are $10 advance (artbattle.ca/art-battle-52-ottawa/) and $15 at the door. Remember that Sun Tzu said, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
KING FOR A MONTH
The debut of Andrew King’s new paintings was covered by the Citizen’s city desk last weekend, when the Ottawa artist duped the Wellington Street neighbourhood into believing that a 48-storey condominium tower was going up.
He filled the windows of his rented exhibition space with promotional posters for the “Wellboron,” and built a website. It may all seem a mere marketing prank, and it was — a brilliant one. But that’s not all it was.
King’s ploy vividly demonstrated the tense dichotomy of desire and anxiety that burns around the neighbourhood’s condo-ization. He had numerous inquires for condos from eager buyers, despite the absurdity of the features of the “Wellboron,” including a valet for baby strollers.
Meanwhile, the owner of the building in which King has his exhibition was getting outraged calls from citizens who weren’t so keen on another condo blighting the skyline of their quaint neighbourhood.
It all proves the truth of King’s newest works, in which he takes his signature motifs and injects them with a sharp shot of local commentary. King’s houses aren’t just flying away now, they’re being torn out by giant backhoes, and those flying nuns he loves so much? Now they’re in a painting called Nuns on the Run. “After selling their convent to Ashcroft Condo Developments,” the wall card says, “the last of the cloistered nuns take to the skies to find a new home.”
In the painting Recycled Neighbourhood, a large crane loads small, cosy houses into a huge bin “for processing and recycling into condo materials.”
It’s all evidence of a necessary change in King’s work, which had to evolve somehow lest his style become overly familiar or even tiresome. The turn into a hot public issue, and an increased darkness in some other works, is a refreshing development.
King’s works have been extremely popular in recent years (three hang in Big Beat Central), but the new works are perhaps his biggest hit to date. When I visited late this week, more than 35 pieces — priced from a couple of hundred dollars to more than $6,000 — had little red “sold” stickers on them.
Honestly, I haven’t seen so many red dots since the night some guy punched me in the head outside a Charlottetown bar 30 years ago.
King’s exhibition, titled District 15, continues to April 30 at 1304 Wellington St. West.