Press (2009)
The revolution starts here, but it doesn't always end
Written by Christine Redfern
Published in The Gazette (Montreal), November 20, 2009
The exhibition titled The Work Ahead of Us by Memphis-born, Montreal-based artist Grier Edmundson is a diverse mix of mediums, styles and subjects. There is an oil painting of Thomas Paine, one of the founding fathers of the United States. There is also a painting of the Concorde, the supersonic airplane that flew from 1969 to 2003, and two paintings of Ronan Point, a 23-storey apartment tower outside London that was part of the trend in the 1960s to provide affordable, prefabricated housing. Drawings of Václav Havel and Russian artist Kasimir Malevich’s famous Black Square are among the other seven pieces hanging on the gallery walls. Standing in the centre of these works is a large wooden sculpture: a replica of an architectural maquette of a tower designed by Vladimir Tatlin in 1919. I spoke with Edmundson last week about this collection of artworks that remind us of failed revolutionary ideas, which were at one time or another indicative of so much hope.
See complete text: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/revolution+starts+here+doesn+always/2247448/story.html
Related Exhibition: The Work Ahead of Us • Le travail qui nous attend
Related Artists: Grier Edmundson
Remixing Art History
Written by Tania Mohsen
Published in The Link (Concordia's independent newspaper), November 10, 2009
By remixing the work of his forefathers, artist Grier Edmundson hopes to create something visionary enough to make his own mark on history. His new exhibition, The Work Ahead Of Us, is not about conveying a message. Edmundson’s work sprouts instead from his interest in the past.
See complete text: http://www.thelinknewspaper.ca/articles/1830
Related Exhibition: The Work Ahead of Us • Le travail qui nous attend
Seeing Double
Written by Ali Rahman
Published in Hour, November 5, 2009
Oftentimes, representational painting culled from archival photography is perceived as a snapshot, a carefully selected moment that evokes and encapsulates a larger narrative, famed through the lens of the modern bricoleur. Grier Edmundson's exhibition _The Work Ahead of Us_ seems to be drawing not from the centre of a narrative but from its periphery; the images don't necessarily tell a story as much as they suggest one...
See complete text: http://www.hour.ca/visualarts/visualarts.aspx?iIDArticle=18645
Related Exhibition: The Work Ahead of Us • Le travail qui nous attend
Bucolic Battlegrounds
Written by Lori Callaghan
Published in Rover: Montreal Arts Uncovered, September 22, 2009
"Muddy, confusing and ominous, the war images in Amy-Claire Huestis’s latest exhibit Landscape with Bombers are an examination of the intrusion of battle on the pastoral. These are not the fields where generals clash or trenches are yet to be dug; this is where the forces of combat push back the barriers of common life to make room for warfare. It is a look at calamity in the making.(...)"
See complete text: http://roverarts.com/2009/09/bucolic-battlegrounds/
Related Exhibition: Landscape with Bombers
Related Artists: Amy-Claire Huestis
Joe Battat's Playhouse
Written by Cameron Skene
Published in Canadian Art, September 16, 2009
Things are changing for Montreal, the perennial little brother of North America's big cities and big art scenes. In a review of last year's Quebec Triennial, the Globe and Mail asked, "Is Montreal the real art capital of Canada?" It's now a fair question. The city's art scene has seen a number of new spaces rise up to stake a claim in the community in the last decade. (...) Among these new galleries is Battat Contemporary, which is tucked away in Montreal's Little Italy, in an old industrial building shared by manufacturers and painters. Opened in April 2009, it is the brainchild of the toy magnate Joe Battat. (...) "The idea is to be a conduit," says Battat. He views his gallery as a combination salon/school/exhibition space, a catalyst for a network of support that will help develop a critical mass for Montreal's contemporary-art market. (...)
See complete text: http://www.canadianart.ca/art/features/2009/09/01/joe-battat/
Haunted: The Uncanny in the Drawings of Sophie Jodoin
Written by James D. Campbell
Published in Etc Montreal, September 1, 2009
If drawings can be hanunted by old memories, even primordial ones, then Sophie Jodoin's installation made for a replete haunting at the inaugural exhibition of the Battat Contemporary art space. Seventy-five black-framed drawings, mostly of monstrously expressive, mostly human heads (with some notable exceptions), might have had an impact far greater as an ensemble than separate drawings if the subjects of those drawings were not such powerfully individualistic personae in their own right. (...)
Related Exhibition: Headgames: hoods, helmets & gasmasks
Related Artists: Sophie Jodoin
Sophie Jodoin - Headgames: Hoods, Helmets & Gasmasks
Written by John K. Grande
Published in Vie des arts (english edition) No 215, Summer 2009, p. 9., July 7, 2009
"As part of her ongoing War series, Jodoin's Headgames are arresting, not only for the paraphernalia of war these black conte on Mylar heads wear, but equally because they look seemingly innocent in many cases." (...) "The 75 dramatic drawings seen at Battat Contemporary have a processional beauty, in that each individual images is part of an ongoing sequence, and we read them within the continuity of the series, as an entity conceives of. Jodoin breathes life into age-old themes of war, social anomie and media's influence on our perception of truth with grace, talent and humility."
See complete text: www.viedesarts.com
Related Exhibition: Headgames: hoods, helmets & gasmasks
Related Artists: Sophie Jodoin
Allison Katz: Ruthless in Chalk Farm at Battat Contemporary
Written by Christina Kee
Published in artcritical.com, June 20, 2009
Ruthless in Chalk Farm, Allison Katz’s solo exhibition at Battat Contemporary, is a collection of handmade pieces - a yellow wooden snake, a wheat-sheaf-laden funeral cloth, a still-life executed in sand - and several exceptional paintings. With a strength of execution that overpowers any complaint of arbitrariness, Katz conjures forms and images that are at once beautiful and funny, familiar and strange....
See complete text: http://artcritical.com/kee/CKKatz.htm
Related Exhibition: Ruthless in Chalk Farm
Related Artists: Allison Katz
Ruthless at Battat
Written by Sacha Jackson
Published in Montreal Mirror, April 30, 2009
Operating outside of the usual gallery hotspots, Battat Contemporary (7245 Alexandra, #100) has set itself apart by setting up shop among the industrial complexes of Jean Talon Street. Having opened just a little over a month ago, they’re one of the newest galleries in the city and they celebrate the opening of their second show, Ruthless in Chalk Farm by Allison Katz tonight, Thursday, April 30 at 6 p.m. The exhibit, which is Katz’s first major solo show in the city, serves as a homecoming of sorts, as she was born and raised in Montreal but now lives and works in New York. The works featured in Ruthless are not easily pinned down to a single style or even a single medium, and the accompanying press release leaves much to the imagination. Written in a Q&A format incorporating Yves Saint Laurent’s answers to the Proust questionnaire, it gives hints as to the personality of the work and the artist, but invites viewers to see the work as a mystery to be explored.
See complete text: http://www.montrealmirror.com/2009/043009/artsweek.html
Related Exhibition: Ruthless in Chalk Farm
Related Artists: Allison Katz
Win, lose or draw
Written by Robyn Fadden
Published in The Hour, March 19, 2009
Seventy-five black-framed drawings of faces half-hidden, half-merged with gas masks and helmets line a three-walled space at the sunlit Battat Contemporary gallery. Patterns emerge among them, but they never lose their lonely individuality, lined up as they are, an emotionally overwhelming, alienated armada. Such regimen coupled with fragility is a theme Montreal artist Sophie Jodoin has explored for many years....
See complete text: http://www.hour.ca/visualarts/visualarts.aspx?iIDArticle=16892
Related Exhibition: Headgames: hoods, helmets & gasmasks
Related Artists: Sophie Jodoin