April 19th to 21st, 2013, Halifax, Nova Scotia. – Last weekend, I attended the Atlantic Symposium: New Directions for Art Writing that took place at NSCAD and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Besides all the obvious perks of travel, these brief trips, chosen for their resonance with current agendas at ARCA, provide an essential ingredient for connecting our network by putting faces to names, mental images to places, hearing testimonials of past events, and sounding out ideas, in person, about upcoming projects.
The day-long symposium organised by Visual Arts Nova Scotia, in collaboration with C The Visual Arts Foundation (publisher of C Magazine) brought the local community of art writers to mix with writers from elsewhere in the Atlantic region as well as people from away, invited to weigh in as panelists, including Kegan McFadden, Richard Hill, Sylvie Fortin, Leah Sandals, Gaby Moser, Amish Morrel. The symposium was organised in response to the observation of a local academic concerned that few curatorial and publishing proposals were emanating from the Atlantic provinces. Considering how the region is also perceived as being among the least well funded in the country, could it be a case of the chicken or the egg? On the other hand, this is also where one finds Halifax Ink, a consortium of independent art publishers made up of university galleries and artist-run centres – a strategic, affinity based group created to facilitate participation at the New York Art Book Fair. Leah Sandals, one of the guest panelists and online editor at Canadian Art magazine, provides a thorough recap of the meeting in her feature article.
I arrived on the Friday and made my way to Eyelevel gallery on Gottingen Street where I found Michael McCormack removing wood panelling from the front vitrine of their street (eye)level space. A narrow shop vitrine that goes all the way to the front door. Facing the vitrine, on the other wall, Michael had just uncovered a panel painting of a nature landscape by local painter Mitchell Wiebe. Revealing this painting raised many interesting questions that became a conversation piece among myself, Michael, the new owner of the building, and a neighbour. The conversation touched on ethics, judgement, conservation, authorship, economy, identity etc. I’m confident that the membership of Eyelevel will make the right decision concerning the future of the hand painted (decorative) panel. Eyelevel exists since 1974 and has been the location of many memorable experimentations including the famous 35 Days of Non-Organized Art, in a recreated gallery/office space organised by Eryn Foster and then members, to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the centre. For the duration of the role play, all proposals were considered, regardless of who had submitted them. The local communities were encouraged to organise events and activate the space daily as a way to reconnect with the original mission of the centre.
On the Saturday evening at a reception held at the Khyber Centre for the Arts , Eyelevel launched their most recent publication titled « I Participated in the World Portable Gallery Convention 2012 (and all I got was this lousy t-shirt) », produced by Michael Eddy, Michael McCormack and Elizabeth Johnson. The small black and white 154p book documents the seventeen portable gallery projects, a series of self-initiated projects “that had come into their own formats and modes of operating” presented in September 2012. A long list of thanks acknowledges the personal contribution of many individuals in the different projects.
With an introductory essay by Michael Eddy and Michael McCormack and a main essay by Eddy, the book provides an insightful contextualisation of the project starting with the current local socio-economic climate of Halifax, the impetus for the project and ample grounding evidence of this art form’s relevance. Eyelevel, a more stable, yet still flexible space, has much of the same feel as a portable gallery if one considers it has moved nine times in 39 years? Eyelevel has a small gallery space (next submissions deadline is October 31st, 2013) and a residency program (deadline just passed) for the creation of printed work drawing from archival material recovered from their three-part archive system: Eyelevel’s archives at the Dalhousie Archives and Special Collections, Eyelevel’s A is for Archive online archives, and their newly formed in-house archival laboratory The Inventions Library and Archives.
It was my very first time at NSCAD, a pilgrimage to this institution whose reputation is a monument onto itself, maybe at the expense of other significant micro events and places located elsewhere in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick such as in Antigonish, Sackville, Moncton, Sydney, and Saint John, host of the next ARCA, AARCA, APAGA meetings that is also planning to hold a forum on independent art writing and publishing as well as a workshop on the new e-artexte online document repository.
Last but not least, ARCA also learned that John Murchie, long time Director of Struts and Faucet in Sackville will be retiring this spring and that Michael McCormack will be leaving Eyelevel to do his MFA. They both deserve to get a very special lousy t-shirt!
Anne Bertrand, April 2013
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