Week 15: November 18th
Approximately 760kg of public property, the return of Expozine, a retrospective of an apartment-turned-motel, and more.
Welcome to Community Service, a biweekly newsletter featuring a curated selection of art and design events in Montreal. It’s officially winter jacket season and the sun sets at 4pm, so this issue is a real i-promise-it's-worth-getting-off-your-couch list. It covers events happening in Montreal during the end of November.
Vernissage: approximately 760kg of public property by Pedro Barbachano
November 18th (5:30pm) - Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery
We’re starting right away this week with a show opening on a Monday. Curated by Julia Eilers Smith, approximately 760kg of public property follows Pedro Barbachano’s thesis dealing with the displacement of monuments in Egypt.
A wooden crate with shipping labels from the British Museum contains a stone of black granite of approximately 760 kilograms. A document states “all Arabian manuscripts, statues, and other collections acquired by the French Republic in Egypt shall be considered public property and subject to the disposal of the generals of the combined [British and Ottoman] army.” When the language of the other prescribes a reality which contradicts collective perception, can the document contain the collapse of the law?
Vernissage: A Kin to You by Super Boat People
November 21st (5:30-8pm) - La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse
The Super Boat People collective returns for the final phase of their project at La Centrale, concluding a research-creation residency that brought together seven artists of Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese origin. Curated by the collective, the exhibition explores their diasporic narratives through various artistic practices, offering insights into themes like kinship, intergenerational transmission and collective memory and healing.
Vernissage: The Fire, The Flood and all the Feelings by Simon Hughes
November 21st (5-7pm) - Blouin Division
Simon Hughes returns to paper works after having spent the past several years working with other media. The Fire, the Flood, and All the Feelings features three multi-panel pieces each consisting of four paintings. Seen together, these three pieces are an overall statement regarding the environmental chaos, both terrible and beautiful, that is western Canada in these times, along with the sense of powerlessness artists feel in the face of these forces. It is also an extended meditation on the evolution and language of landscape. The project continues the ongoing dialogue with the history of Modernism and the absurd/surreal in the artist’s work.
Vernissage: Night Ship by Scott Mcfarland
November 21st (5-7pm) - Blouin Division
In Night Ship, McFarland attempts to capture the mood and psychological considerations of moments in prolonged isolation that permeated at the time the images were taken. Though the ship in his exhibition sits abandoned, contemplated by the viewer in its icy solitude, it also conjures a history of life at sea and a crew risking their lives, withdrawn from civilization. The shipwreck remains a powerful allegory, just as it was in the art of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Vernissage: Brain Storm
November 23rd (2-6pm) - Galerie Cache
This duo presentation of the work of self-taught artists June Gutman and Mo Lode highlights their shared history. It is, of course, a love story. Their initial attraction can be attributed to mutual recognition of their capacity to use art to negotiate the perpetual gap between consciousness and reality, which explains their aesthetic affinities.
In June's drawings, avatar bodies, haunted by their presence, participate in anatomy lessons involving art history, psychiatry, and religion. She subjects her body to the scalpel of incisive humour, which underpins, not undermines, the spiritual aura in her images.
Mo's cryptic drawings evoke a different version of Moebius's crystalline surrealism, which has turned towards visions of fantastic metamorphoses. The story is about an identity constantly redefining itself at the tip of a virtuoso pencil, pen, or brush.
Open Studio: Complexe du Canal Lachine
November 23rd (11am-3pm) - 4710 Saint-Ambroise
This coming Saturday, over 75 artists will open the doors to their studios at the Complexe du Canal Lachine and let you peek inside. Of special interest is Christine Marlow, brilliant artist in her own right and mother to Harrison Shewchuk of Montreal restaurant fame. Christine will be showing her latest paper works, printmaking using linocut and white line woodcut techniques. Studio 235 at 4710 St. Ambroise.
Fair: Expozine 2024
November 23rd (12-7pm) + 24th (12:30-7pm) - Église Saint-Arsène
Y’all know I love independent publishing! Expozine is back with their fair at Église Saint-Arsène this weekend. A lot of independent magazines that have previously been featured in Community Service will be there for you to see, support, and/or discover. Besides, I hear all our bookshelves are looking a little bare…
Vernissage: Pluriel et unis by Coop Établi
November 27th (6pm) - Centre de Design de L’UQAM
Coop Établi returns to where it all began to celebrate 10 years of design, craftsmanship, and the sharing of a common vision. For this occasion, they have curated a retrospective exhibition which celebrates a decade of achievements.
This exhibition offers a chance to gain a deeper understanding of how it all started and how Coop Établi works. It invites viewers to think about the future and aims to inspire new generations to get involved in a project whose future remains to be created together.
Vernissage: Imposed Alphabet
November 28th (6pm) - Produit Rien
Presented in Montreal by Supersystème, Imposed Alphabet is a project and exhibition by Fraser Muggeridge Studio. If you have an interest in graphic design, typography, print production and print process, this is the spot for you next Thursday.
Vernissage: Qui Habite le Môtel? By Asa Perlman
November 29th (5-10pm) - Espace Loulou
In 2020, Perlman had the opportunity to rent a "shoebox" house built in 1910 for about $700 per month. The building, slated to be demolished after a year, became for him a space for possibilities and reflections focused on the forces that influence agency and home "ownership." Perlman decided to transform the house into a performative habitat—a place questioning the utilitarian quality of "home." With the help of artist Gabriel Scott-Séguin, the "Môtel Drolet" gradually took shape through a bar-cabaret, a tropical lounge, a budget hotel room, a commercial kitchen, and a concierge service. Over time, the Môtel became the main occupant of the house, and Perlman walled off his belongings, reducing his living space to the concierge area, where he slept on a camp bed. Through these varying transformations the artist gave the space, destined to disappear, one last breath of life.
Now that the building is no more, Perlman presents here a fragmented and fragile vision of it, offering us a chance to visit a life-sized version of the Môtel Drolet room. This ephemeral reconstruction points to the multiplicity of connections that tie individuals to their private living spaces, whether through simple paper agreements or through complex, mutually transformative relationships. (Text by Mégane Voghell translated and edited by Chloe Latour).
Vernissage: Soul Manifest by Dexter Barker Glenn
November 30th (6-9pm) - Espace Maurice
Soul Manifest follows the psychedelic fungus Ergot through various moments in history, exploring the importance of altered consciousness to revolutionary change. Some historians argue that the hallucinatory aspects of ergotism contributed to the Great Fear, a mass panic in which peasants burned and raided the manor houses kick-starting the french revolution. Ergot is also the main active ingredient in LSD, which was viewed by many counter culturalists in the 60s and early 70s as an important tool for raising one's consciousness and questioning traditional values. The sculptures in this show project this history into the future, reimagining ergot as not only a psychedelic drug but a metaphor for altered consciousness and desire for new relations.
This show is inspired by the final and unfinished book Acid Communism by Mark Fisher, in which he attempts to forge a model for a post capitalist desire by taking critical inspiration from the 60s counter culture. In this series the artist indulges their desire to reminisce on these moments of history, not to wistfully pine over the past but as lessons for our future. (Text by Matt Colquhoun, edited by Chloe Latour).
Just so you know, Community Service will be taking a brief hiatus from mid-December until the end of the year. We’ll see you again in January. In the meantime, if you have an art or design-related event you would like to include in future editions of the newsletter, you can send us a DM or email communityservmag@gmail.com
See you around.