The entertainment stories that dominated our feeds this week.
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Hi, Art!

Sunday, April 21, 2024

Hi, Art!

Sunday, April 21, 2024

Hi, art lovers!

 
Still from the 2024 film, Civil War. Actor Kirsten Dunst appears in a medium shot. The lighting is dark orange, like lit by flames. She stares grimly at the viewer and is dressed in a cargo vest. A camera and camera bag is slung on her shoulder.

(Elevation Pictures)

 
If you’re off to the movies today, you might be considering last weekend’s box office champ, Civil War. Or maybe not, if you’ve been puzzled by all the contradictory chatter about the picture. The film is the latest from writer-director Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation), and it’s set in an alternate (?) version of America that’s on the brink of collapse. Kirsten Dunst stars as a veteran photojournalist who’s trying to make it to D.C. before the (third-term) POTUS is captured, but the specifics of who’s fighting whom — and why — are largely a mystery, and that's surprised some viewers in good ways and blah. The movie’s earned a few raves, like this CBC News review. But it’s also been (thoughtfully) blasted for its “resolutely incurious” analysis of American politics and the history of war. (Heck, people even have a problem with the movie posters.) CBC Radio’s Commotion had its own quibbles with the story; listen to the Group Chat panel discuss the film’s “fiercely apolitical” stance, or better yet, hear from the person who made it. Q has an in-depth conversation with Garland, which may reframe your hot take on the movie, and when you’re done with that extensive interview, the filmmaker also spoke with CBC News about the project. (The most intriguing review I’ve read so far, though? This one from a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist.) 

More cinematic-ish links: Another new release dominated our feed last week: HBO’s The Sympathizer. Find an interview with co-creator Don McKellar in the featured links below. There’s another one on CBC News — and Q talked with the show’s Fred Nguyen Khan. Plus, author Viet Thanh Nguyen spoke to CBC Radio about bringing the novel to the screen. Remember this mind-blowing doc about forged Norval Morrisseaus? CBC News has an update on the massive art-fraud case.
 

And because we promised you eye candy ...

 
Installation photo of Kapwani Kiwanga's piece for the Venice Biennale. Room seen is the Canada Pavilion at Venice. Colourful beaded curtains hang on the walls, creating a pastel gradient. Large minimalist forms are spaced throughout the room.

Artwork: Kapwani Kiwanga/Adagp Paris/CARCC Ottawa; Photo: Valentina Mori

The Venice Biennale opened last week, and this is a glimpse inside the Canada Pavilion, where Kapwani Kiwanga unveiled her site-specific sculptural installation, Trinket. Kapwani’s used glass seed beads throughout the piece, and oh, how I wish we could zoom in to get a closer look! For more on the ideas behind the work, read this.
 
Pop art style painting hanging on a white wall. The painting background is a deep marine blue. A female figure stands in the centre of the composition. She is the height of the frame and wears a dark diving suit and face mask, her hand (blue) on her hip. She is framed by a red rectangle.

Erica Rutherford

The Venice Biennale’s main exhibition also includes work by a few Canadians, notably the late Erica Rutherford, a trans artist who was born in Scotland and eventually settled in P.E.I. Five of her paintings from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s are appearing in Venice, and dang, I struggled to pick a favourite. (Pictured: The Diver, 1968.) CBC News ran this feature on the pioneering artist last month, which includes event info worth highlighting: the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown will be opening an Erica Rutherford retrospective in June.
 
Photo of a framed abstract painting in shades of pastel pink, purple and aqua.

Maude Deslauriers

Waiting for the Sun by Maude Deslauriers … a Montreal artist who made us this (timely) tutorial video way back when.
 
Abstract painting. A realistically 3D tangle of colourful tubing. It is shades of pale pink, for the most part, but one segment is iridescent reflecting oil-slick colours and images of distorted faces, as if reflecting classical paintings.

Vickie Vainionpää

If you’re itching to get out of the house this week, the Canadian Art Hop runs April 25 to 28, and the event encourages folks to pop into participating artist-run centres, museums and galleries (both commercial and public). In Toronto, you can look upon Vickie Vainionpää’s Gaze-Paintings at the Olga Korper Gallery.
 
Abstracted riverside forest landscape, rendered in pastel-adjascent tones.

Meghan Hildebrand

Way out west in Victoria, Madrona Gallery is also jumping in on the Art Hop action. It’ll be showing new paintings by Meghan Hildebrand. 
 
Mixed media artwork in black and white. The centrepiece appears to be a graphite drawing on a keyhole-shaped canvas. Background is black. Focal point is a heap of stalactite-like forms wrapped in a shawl, suggesting a human figure seen in closeup. The composition is surrounded by cut-out forms. Below are two squiggly legs wearing black shoes. Surrounding it are cut-outs of grey skeletons, humanoids and a bird with its wings outstretched.

Sean Taal

And in Calgary, see a new exhibition from Sean Taal at Norberg Hall. (Find more Art Hop events near you.)
 
 

You've got to see this

 
 
 
Production photo from The Sympathizer. Three men stand in a row. The one at centre, Don McKellar, is a bearded white man wearing headphones, a scarf and a dark jacket. He points to something outside of the frame as the men flanking him look in that direction with mild smiles on their faces.
Hopper Stone/SMPSP

Don McKellar on his ‘dizzying’ HBO spy series, The Sympathizer

 
The Canadian filmmaker (Last Night) talks to CBC Arts about The Sympathizer, an audacious comedy about a Vietnamese double agent. He created the limited series — starring Hoa Xuande, Robert Downey Jr. and Sandra Oh — with Oldboy’s Park Chan-wook.
 
Medium close-up of the actor and writer Bilal Baig. A trans person of colour, they smile slightly at the camera. They wear a dark blue patterned blouse and bronze patterned pants and hold a transparent umbrella.
CBC

Nurturing the next generation of trans artists

 
Writer Bilal Baig and dancer Sid Ryan Eilers are leading programs that help gender-diverse kids get involved in the arts.
 
Photo of a young man of colour reclining on a white chaise lounge in a white-walled room. He wears a black longsleeve, white pants and black sneakers. The lighting is harsh, as though taken with a lot of flash on a digital camera.

Eden Graham

 

This TikTok star’s secret to success? ‘Be delusional’

 
Toronto comedian Boman (Bomanizer) Martinez-Reid landed his own TV series after blowing up on social media.
 

Follow this artist

 
 
 
Instagram

Laura Moore

@lauramoore.ca
Photo of a sculpture in the shape of a mossy rock with an embedded fossil of a microchip.

Laura Moore

Some of Laura’s Future Fossils are on display at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery in southern Ontario, and today is your last chance to see them. Read more about the exhibition, Erratic Behaviour.
 

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I’m Leah Collins, senior writer at CBC Arts. Until next time!

 
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