Posts Tagged ‘LOLA’
Elfin Saddle
Rogers Main Stage: Saturday, 4:15pm – 5pm
Artist Biography
Elfin Saddle is the evolved musical project of scavenger artists Emi Honda and Jordan McKenzie. Prompted by their need to downsize an accumulation of musical instruments and objects in their migration to Montreal from Victoria, BC, Elfin Saddle focuses on the creative use of a compact array of acoustic instruments, including prepared accordion, banjo, and guitars, musical saw, and ad-hoc percussion setups. Having collaborated for years on various visual art and sound projects, Elfin Saddle is a fresh culmination of the ideas and ideals shared by both artists.
Emi, originally from southern Japan, moved to Vancouver Island in the late 90’s and was immediately fascinated with the lush landscape and local flora. She began gardening and building visually complex, mechanical assemblage sculptures, which she began to exhibit in local galleries. Jordan, who was also living on the island and working a similar vein in art school, happened upon one of these sculptures. Recognizing the eerily similar themes in each other’s work and sharing an affinity for the natural landscape, the two quickly became friends, triggering an extended wave of collaborations.
Sound Stories, a musical project of Jordan’s at the time that incorporated homemade sound machines, prepared records, storytelling, and a revolving cast of friends, was eventually joined by Emi. The two also began playing frequently as a duo and made several recordings that were released on Westhome, Jordan’s own small imprint. They also began to collaborate on unique multi-sensory art installations, comprised of old motors, timers, organs, plants, and other found junk, carefully composed to create bizarre landscapes and dream-like atmospheres and to execute loops of movement and sound. Their series of exhibitions with fellow Victoria artist Scott Evans, received considerable attention.
Since arriving in Montreal in 2006, Elfin Saddle has been steadily gaining audience and acclaim for their original and emotive live performances. Having released Gigantic Mother/Wounded Child on Kill Devil Hills Records in early 2008, they are proud to be releasing their follow-up, Ringing For The Begin Again, on Constellation. A recent addition to their recordings and live performances is Nathan Gage (Shapes and Sizes, owner of Phonopolis record store in Montreal), rounding out their sound with thick drones and subtle bursts on double-bass and tuba. Emi and Jordan are currently working on an extensive stop-motion/time-lapse film, featuring the growth of plants and the animation of a large collection of scavenged objects.
Cailen Dye w/ Ed Matthews
http://www.myspace.com/cailendye
Heineken TransMedia Stage: Friday, 4:15pm – 5pm
Artist Statement
I have been composing and creating music with the use of computers for over 11 years. Though I am a multi-instrumentalist, the computer is my main instrument, one that allows me to gather, generate, organize, and structure the sounds, rhythms and melodies that become my compositions. One of the latent advantages of working in this way is that the resulting compositions can be heard immediately- without having to translate my ideas through notation. My fluency with my instrument and the immediacy of the compositional response allows me to also develop works in real time. During the past five years I have been developing a series of live performances with collaborating musicians. Often improvisatory, these live works have allowed me to develop new directions in my work as well as reach new audiences.
Tim Hecker
Heineken TransMedia Stage: Saturday, 9pm – 10pm
Artist Biography
Tim Hecker: is a musician and sound artist, born in Vancouver. Since 1996, he has produced a range of audio works for Kranky, Alien8, Mille Plateaux, Room40, Force Inc, Staalplaat, and Fat Cat. His Harmony in Ultraviolet received critical acclaim, including being recognized by Pitchfork as a top recording of 2006. Radio Amor was also recognized as a key recording of 2003 by Wire magazine. His work has also included commissions for contemporary dance, sound-art installations, minimal techo works under the name ‘Jetone’, as well as various writings. Hecker, has presented his work in a live settings around the world, including performances at Sonar (Barcelona), Mutek (Montreal), Primavera Sound (Barcelona), Victoriaville (Quebec), Vancouver New Music Festival (Vancouver), and Transmediale (Berlin). He currently resides in Montreal.
Laura Kikauka
Project Description: Guided by voices
Guided By Voices: Illuminated Still Lives is a group exhibition of small discrete light emitting artworks. In Guided By Voices light doubles as a material presence and as a trigger for meaning, suggesting purity, knowledge, and the shifting play between light and darkness. The exhibition features works by Tony Matelli (New York), Wyn Geleynse (London), Laura Kikauka (Berlin/Meaford) and Ooma Haru Mooma (London). Guided By Voices is curated by Jason Schiedel and Paul Walde.
Forest City Gallery: September 11 to October 16, 2009
Gallery Hours
Tuesday to Saturday, 12:00pm to 5:00pm.
Opening Reception
September 11, 2009, 7pm to 10pm
Contact:
Jason Schiedel, Director
Forest City Gallery
258 Richmond Street,
London, Ontario,
N6B 2H7
(519)434-5875
forestcitygallery@gmail.com
http://home.golden.net/~fcg/
Artist Biography
Laura Kikauka’s body of work over the past twenty-five years encompasses various mediums including site specific installation, mixed media, electronic sculpture, drawing, photography, video, performance, music, text and costume creations. Kikauka’s installations establish a highly specific visual (and often audio) language that blends the increasingly overlapping worlds of high and low art forms. In general Laura’s ‘excessive aesthetic’ is comparable to urban archeology and addresses issues of consumer culture, and the question of good and bad taste. It also celebrates failure in a humourous and ironic manner.
Kikauka’s work is inspired and derived from decades of on-going collecting of found objects. Employing the formal strategy of meticulously sorting and organizing these objects, as well as modifying or transforming them, she then creates specifically themed and coded installations that transform gallery and exhibition spaces into densely packed, highly detailed installations.
Laura’s categorization speaks of similarities and differences. The Funny Farm studios in rural Meaford and in Berlin are living and working spaces treated as on-going installations that exemplify, through a density of detail her interest in low class consumer culture. It is with a sense of sarcasm and empathy that she explores this reoccurring theme.
In addition to Kikauka’s long term ongoing projects recent solo exhibitions include: Celebration of Failure at SpaceX in Exeter, England, FOR THE LOVE OF GAUD/ Damien’s Worst at gallerie DNA, Berlin, Exactly the Same, but Completely Different at the Power Plant in Toronto, and M.A.N.I.A.C. at MAK (Museum fur angewandte Kunst) in Vienna, Austria. Her performances and studio work have been the subject of numerous texts and group exhibitions, and garnered many accolades including awards from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
Laura Kikauka lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Meaford, Ontario.
Jonathan Coe
Call The Office: Saturday, 10pm – 2am
Artist Biography
Having DJ’d since the early 1990s, Jonathan Coe’s taste in music has been influenced and inspired by broad and diverse experiences. Not one to dwell on the past and cling to nostalgia, Coe is always looking for the newest and next thing, but is mindful of the rich and long history of underground dance music. His time living in Berlin in 2008 gave him a fresh perspective on the newest trends and directions of underground house and techno music. Coe showcases his latest discoveries on his weekly radio program on 94.9 CHRW every Friday from 1:30 – 3:30pm, EST (www.chrwradio.com).
Coe made his mark in London playing at venues like the Shot/Base, Lush, DV8, the Bacchus Lounge and the Alex P. Keaton, and has worked closely alongside Andycapp, Rod Skimmins, Jeremy Glenn and Patrick the Bunny organizing and promoting events. Coe has shared billings and promoted notable parties featuring, among others, John Acquaviva, Kenny Glasgow, dj Heather, Kevin Yost, Richie Hawtin, Trevor Walker, Roger Sanchez, Jason Palma, Andrew Allsgood, Paul E. Lopes, Noah Pred, Kristian Beyer (Ame) and Mr. Scruff.
Underground music is closely tied with his “real job” as a motion graphics designer and Flash website developer, counting Definitive Recordings, Minus, John Acquaviva and Richie Hawtin among his clients.
Gordon Monahan
Project Description: Two Pianos Talking to Each Other
Several long piano strings are connected to two pianos standing approximately 100 feet apart. Audio signals are fed into the long piano strings using vibrating coils attached to the wires. The piano string vibrations are amplified by contact to the piano soundboards. The sounds heard coming from the pianos, which originated as audio signals, are amplified entirely acoustically by the piano soundboards and strings, so that we are able to listen to audio recordings without using loudspeakers.
Artist Biography
Gordon Monahan’s works for piano, loudspeakers, video, kinetic sculpture, and computer-controlled sound environments span various genres from avant-garde concert music to multi-media installation and sound art. As a composer and sound artist, he juxtaposes the quantitative and qualitative aspects of natural acoustical phenomena with elements of media technology, environment, architecture, popular culture, and live performance.
Since 1978, Monahan has performed and exhibited at numerous performance spaces, galleries, and festivals. Recent activity includes: Bilbao International Film Festival ‘Zinebi 49′, Bilbao, Spain (performance with Txuspo Poyo, video)Western Front, Vancouver (installation)Royal Conservatory of Music and Open Space, Victoria, BC (installation and performance) Macdonald Stewart Art Gallery, Guelph (solo exhibition) Voxxx Galerie, Chemnitz (solo exhibition) Galerija Kapelica, Ljubliana, Slovenia (solo exhibition) Ars Electronica, Linz (performance) Taktlos Festival, Bern, Switzerland (performance), Klangraum Krems, Krems, Austria (performance)
Nicholas Longstaff
Project Description
ShadowD is an interactive generative art projection-based installation which encourages play, as participants move, dance and laugh as they lead, and then follow each other and their shadows. Shadows are transformed into colours that reflect back onto the faces of the participants and onlookers, bringing the whole room alive with light and dark shapes. ShadowD grew out of Longstaff’s interest and research into the ancient folkloric character of the Trickster. There are rules governing its behaviour, but the rules seem to change the longer you play with it, making the whole experience get richer as you spend more in the installation.
Artist Statement
SHADOWS have danced through my artworks and theatre pieces for years. From my early workings-out of how silhouettes could be painted to express character, to my experiments with shadow theatre, to the darker issues on which I like to shed light through my music and storytelling, shadows have become just as important to me as the sun.
Artist Bioghraphy
Nicholas Longstaff creates music, theatre, video and art installations that grow from collaboration and play. His work as a director, performer, and film composer brought him awards including both the Bravest and Most Daring productions, and Best Original Music. His Kastner Award-winning work “I’s and You’s” mixed video with live performance. ShadowD is a new digital video installation in which you – the participant – are the live performer.
Installations, radio artworks, music and plays by Nicholas travel far – from communities like Petawawa, Ontario, to Chicago, USA including Deep Wireless on Toronto Island for New Adventures in Sound Art’s festival. Now he facilitates, educates and produces across all media. He is an Associate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, and alumnus of the Canadian Film Centre Media Lab.
Robert Youds
www.diazcontemporary.ca/Artists_Youds.html
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 17, 7pm, artLAB, John Labatt Visual Arts building, UWO
Project Description: Jesus Green Tofino Sunset
What if every life had only five episodic markers and everything else occurred in relational links to these events? And what if we called these markers X,Y,Z,A,B? It turns out that X,Y,Z,A,B can be digitally captured and replayed in a continuous repeating six minute cycle. A dull alternating Orange-Rose light of morning followed the darkest Phalo-Blue ever experienced as night. Mid-day is always Turquoise until it changes to afternoon Purple followed by an evening Green.
X: Sleeping took place in two minutes, but it was all you needed. Y: Work required two minutes, but seemed twice as long. Z: Pleasure is more difficult to measure because of occurring in nano time, but it came with such irregular synaptic frequency it most always totaled thirty seconds. A: Gaps here and there where episodes of Mash run non-stop, Curb Your Enthusiasm is much harder to locate, Sonic Youth play another art opening, fifteen seconds. B: Experiences of icebergs the size of your cat, arriving home to dinner, not naming, describing something you had never seen before, faking interest, shaking hands, sounds not music, air, water, love, death… the time separating you from everything else, one minute and fifteen seconds. - Robert Youds, 2009
artLAB: John Labatt Visual Arts Centre, University of Western Ontario: September 17 to September 30, 2009
Gallery Hours
Monday to Friday: 12pm to 6pm
Thursdays: 12pm to 8pm
Contact
Susan Edelstein-Gallery Director
John Labatt Visual Arts Centre
University of Western Ontario
Perth Drive,
London, ON N6A 5B7
(519) 661-2111 x85855
artlab@uwo.ca
Artist Biography
Originally positioned as a painter, by the mid-nineties Victoria-based artist Robert Youds shifted his practice of translating light and colour to what he describes as “light paintings.” His large three-dimensional works, while maintaining a playful edge, absorb the viewer into meditative ruminations. Aglow with colour, they are assemblages on a human scale that take an initial attraction and hold it until it becomes an extended philosophic moment. The artist layers light and matter to create experiments in perception and transparency.
Robert Youds’ recent work includes a combination of light pieces and visually active objects. Youds’ art situates itself beyond the conventions of sculpture and painting, resulting in what he refers to as structures. These built structures utilize architecture, design, and picture vernacular in a way that is intended to complicate the beholders’ subjective experience of the real. The material specificity of his structures opens up into sites for the illusory and poetic which extend beyond the object. This can be evidenced in one of Youds’ new light works, For Everyone a Window, which takes us through a six-minute cycle of shifting colour and time sequences that suggests a much longer durational period.
Victoria-based Robert Youds completed his MFA from York University and he holds a BFA from the University of Victoria. Recent solo shows include: TIME MUST HAVE A STOP or look out your window, at the Ministry of Casual Living; beautifulbeautiful artificial field, at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; small artificial fields, at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery; and Our Raum Licht at Diaz Contemporary. Selected group shows include: PAINT: a psychedelic primer, at the Vancouver Art Gallery; Abstract Painting in Canada, at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; Through the Looking Glass, at Glenbow Museum; and The Shape of Colour: Excursions in Colour Field Art 1950-2005, at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
His work is represented by Diaz Contemporary in Toronto
Concert Series – Raster Noton
The 3rd and final show in the 2009 LOLA Concert Series took place June 2nd at Museum London. Alva Noto and Byetone from the German label Raster Noton graced London with their presence and put on an amazing show. You can see some video below:
