Gardiner Museum – annetteandquebec

December 28, 2022

The lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have heightened anxiety over matters largely out of the control of the individual. It’s hard to even know what to believe these days. I have the sense I am being manipulated by propaganda coming from many directions. Here’s my latest mantra in trying to cope: STOP DOUG FORD!

Karine Giboulo at The Gardiner Museum

( FYI: The Gardiner Museum is open until 9:00 pm on Wednesday nights, and after 5:00 pm it’s Free!)

From March of 2020 to March of 2022 Covid-19 was in full control. Karine Giboulo spent those distressing years confronting the unfolding catastrophes she saw all around her. She did so by creating a sculptural approximation of her own living space and the mental minefield it contained. Her exhibition at The Gardiner Museum, titled Housewarming includes the layout of a typical North American home with a kitchen, living room, bedrooms and so on. It also contains over 500 individual clay sculptures, mostly figures of tiny, expressive humans.

We quickly get the sense Karine Giboulo can’t escape the misery just outside her door. Entering the kitchen, we see on the counter, a long, bedraggled line of hungry humans, waiting to retreive something to eat from the local food bank.

Detail of Housewarming by Karine Giboulo

At the other end of the counter, an open oven door displays a ghastly tableau of “death by global warming,” i.e. an animal carcass embedded in baked earth.

Want a sandwich? Looking around for a jar of mayonnaise in the fridge, we are reminded of the horrors of factory farming, via a scene tucked into one of the crisper drawers.

Details from Housewarming by Karine Giboulo

In the psyche of Karine Giboulo no aspect of our lives are free from suffering and attendant guilt. The top drawer of her innocuous pink dresser reveals a soul-destroying shift at H&M in Kolkata, or some other distant locale, where young women can be hired for the low wages that make fast fashion possible.

A pup tent in the backyard loses its innocence and becomes a grim reminder of the those who endure homelessness.

The elderly suffered the most during the pandemic. In the bedroom of the Housewarming installation, Karine Giboulo arranged numerous belljars on shelves, airless isolation chambers, each holding a solitary patient or caregiver.

Details from Housewarming by Karine Gibouli

Some of the dioramas are more ambiguous and I like those the best. Is this elderly knitter, encased in the Zenith portable, seeking revenge like a contemporary Madame Defarge, who, during the French Revolution, used “yarn to measure out the life of a man, and cut it to end it?”

Or the ominous clock diorama, presumably containing a self portrait of the artist herself, poring over her phone as sleep eludes her.

Details from Housewarming by Karine Giboulo

Wandering through this fictional house we encounter environmental degradation, threats to wildlife through the climate crisis and tourism, exploitation of the vulnerable, the lure of addictive technology, greed and idiocy among the captains of industry, in fact the whole trainwreck of current human blunders is on display.

Texts that accompany the exhibition introduce Karine Giboulo with an emphasis on the fact that she is a “self-taught” artist. This struck me as peculiar, almost like a slightly apologetic explanation for her earnest engagement with the huge social problems that impact us all. The “self-taught” moniker felt like a wink and a nudge indicating that this isn’t quite typical contemporary art. There is no layer of obsfucation for intellectual play and invention. Karine Giboulo doesn’t want to risk losing her audience in obscure, abstract or metaphysical currents, so she plays it straight and lays it out as she sees it.

Maybe this idea is also there to let the viewer know that Karine Giboulo is not a global superstar just hitching a ride on the pain of others.

Ai Weiwei, for example, was slammed for posing to replicate the death of a three-year-old Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi who died on a European beach while attempting to flee the war with his family. The photograph shot around the world as a viral meme, but it wasn’t always received well.

Ai Weiwei’s controversial photograph that mimics the pose of a drowned Syrian refugee boy Aylan Kurdi

Opportunistic, careerist, callous, tasteless victim porn, crude, thoughtless and egotistical are some of the reactions to this piece by Ai Weiwei.

Of course, these artists — Ai Weiwei and Karine Giboulo — are different in so many ways it doesn’t make sense to compare except to note that Karine Giboulo approaches her subject matter with a sense of tenderness and humility and that is evident throughout the exhibition.

One of the workshops being held at the Gardiner, in connection with this show is called: Micro meets Macro: Taking Action on Food Insecurity and Housing Instability. The workshop will apparently explore a report by Daily Bread Food Bank “examining trends in food bank use and food insecurity in Toronto.”

It takes place on February 1, 2023.

October 24, 2015

The Gardiner Museum

Bone China is actually made from animal bones; specifically a minimum of 30% bone ash, mixed into a paste with calcium phosphate. Kent Monkman alludes to this fact in his installation entitled The Rise and Fall of Civilization at The Gardiner Museum, where he has created a diorama-like buffalo jump.

Detail from The Rise and Fall of Civilization by Kent Monkman

The bison approach the precipice as traditional taxidermied animals, shepherded by a glamorous Cher-like beauty of ambiguous gender. As they leap to their death they are transformed into cubist sculptures and their remains, below, are a heap of china shards (maybe referencing Julian Schnabel’s Plate Paintings of the late 70s?)

Detail from The Rise and Fall of Civilization by Kent Monkman

The walls of the installation are covered with large drawings approximating those rendered in the Lascaux caves during Paleolithic times. The mash-up of iconic imagery from art history next to the buffalo jump scene, (an activity that commenced more than 12,000 years ago on the North American plains) ties history and art history together. It’s a big subject.

Detail from The Rise and Fall of Civilization by Kent Monkman

According to Wikipedia, ” The Blackfoot Indians called the buffalo jumps “pishkun”, which loosely translates as “deep blood kettle”. They believed that if any buffalo escaped these killings then the rest of the buffalo would learn to avoid humans, which would make hunting even harder.^“ In Kent Monkman’s installation, the bison appear to be resurrected and trot away from the scene of carnage on delicate hooves; flattened, spindly, attenuated ideas of what they once were, appearing now in the style of 20th century sculpture.

Detail from The Rise and Fall of Civilization by Kent Monkman

A few years ago, while camping in Manitoba’s Riding Mountain National Park I came up fairly close to a massive bison. Maybe it was my imagination but it seemed to me this animal gave me a look of pure hatred. Is there such a thing as genetic memory? Did this creature recall that 50 million of his kind where wiped out by white people? (I also have the weight of global warming on my shoulder.)

In his article titled The Age of Exhaustion, Joshua Mitchell, writing about the current state of politics in the US, comes up with some very depressing conclusions. It doesn’t matter if we can trace our ancestry directly to “Buffalo Bill” Cody or not, in still Puritan America we are either pure or stained, guilty or innocent.

I am this or I am that; and therefore no reasoned discussion or argument you might offer need trouble me, for deeper than my capacity to reason is who I am, and who you are—‘white,’ ‘black,’ ‘male,’ ‘female,’ ‘heterosexual,’ ‘homosexual,’ ad infinitum

But Joshua Mitchell is writing about the USA. In Canada we shook off the politics of division and came up with a hopeful alternative. The US election is more than a year away. Soon enough Donald Trump may just blow over.

Donald Trump may blow over soon

Strolling through the Gardiner Museum I came upon another artwork with a subtle and graceful cultural mash up.

Mother Teresa Bowl by Carl Beam

Carol Beam’s 1982 earthenware bowl shows Mother Teresa in prayer surrounded by halo of a First Nation’s headdress. It is a beautiful sketch of Mother Teresa, someone I have always tried to emulate (and failed).

December 30, 2014

Clare Twomey at the Gardiner Museum

George Gardiner, a stockbroker and financier, adhered to the “buy low, sell high” principle in art collecting as well as business. He initially began collecting ceramics, with his wife Helen, as a hedge against inflation. The couple went on to amass a spectacular collection and together created the Gardiner Museum, which sits snugly across the street from the ROM at Bloor and Queen’s Park. Sumptuous, intelligent, preposessing, and optimally-sized are all adjectives that come to mind in thinking about the cultural edifice that is the Gardiner Museum.

Entrance to the Gardiner Museum with ceramic head by Jan Kaneko

On the third floor, in a very large, dimly lit room of the Museum is a current exhibition and ongoing performance, titled Piece by Piece, by British artist Clare Twomey.

Details of Piece by Piece by Clare Twomey

Over 2800 white ceramic figures, 2000 made by Clare Twomey in England and imported for the exhibition, and another roughly 800 produced over the duration of the exhibition by on-site “makers,” are arranged on the dark floor. This array of expressive figurines is bracketed by a spot-lit work table at one end; at the other stand the original 18th century commedia dell’arte figurines – vividly colored, glazed and brightly lit in vitrines – from which the 2800 ghostly replicas are cast.

Detail of Piece by Piece by Clare Twomey

My first impression of the art piece is of a swirling, emotive tableau, suggesting a replica of a battle or uprising like the dioramas at Gettysburg. The spotlights in the darkness create long shadows of the expressive objects on the gleaming floor, adding to the look of tangled narrative within which surely some monumental event is depicted.

Details from Piece by Piece by Clare Twomey

In fact Clare Twomey is not recreating an historical episode but is responding to a particular 18th century aesthetic as embodied in ceramic commedia del’arte figurines from the Museum’s collection and raising questions about the purpose of a museum and the difference between cranking out replicas and the exquisite perfection of a priceless original. The artist refers to this work as an “intervention.” This “intervention” is very well mannered indeed and functions not only as a striking visual work of art but also as an enhancer of the Museum’s role in society.

Clare Twomey has selected three figurines from the commedia del’arte pantheon: Scaramouch, the roguish clown; Harlequin, the witty acrobat; and Leda, the flighty love object.

On the second floor of the Museum a large collection of 18th porcelain commedia del’arte characters are on display including the following:

Pantalone and Dottore, c. 1740 Meissen, Gemany

In commedia del’arte performances intinerant acting troupes performed unscripted performances relying on their understanding of predictable character behaviour to progress the story line. This is similar to today’s soap opera actors who apparently are not given lines before the director yells “Action!” but are simply advised of what’s going on, for example: “Victor recovers from amnesia and turns up in Nikki’s bedroom.”

Victor and Nikki are reunited

The lower galleries at the Gardiner Museum were virtually deserted as closing time neared. It was a pleasure to stroll around and privately view these lovely objects made of clay.

Ballplayer from West Mexico, 500-300 BC

Apparently by Greg Payce, 1999

Dish commemorating John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, 1702