Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Big Show

We've been working on the Big Show space. Imagine a 10,000 sq ft room, very rough, with no interior walls. This place used to be a pool hall, and the landlord stripped it down in preparation for a renovation. We're building walls using movie 'flats', kindly loaned and donated to us by some good folks in the movie business. The layout will have a temporary, skeletal feel about it. The show will have a few sculptors, but the majority of the 20 artists are painters. As I like to tell the sculptors, sculpture is what you back into when you're trying to get a better view of a painting.

If the universe unfolds just right, we'll have all the walls up by the weekend, leaving us painting and clean-up, and electrical to accomplish before the work comes in on Wednesday. Michelle Jacques, assistant curator at the AGO, will decide where to put what work. She also came up with the wall design. Thursday, we put everything up, and light the show. Friday, we relax and have a beer, ready a day ahead of the opening.

At the opening on May 7, there will be a silent auction and a raffle for collections of small works by artists in the show available. This fundraiser will help offset the costs of the exhibition, which we have fronted so far. We do not seek any government funding for these shows. Hope to see you all at the opening - click the link for more details.

4 comments:

Great White Bear, said...
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Great White Bear, said...

Congratulations! Sounds like everything is coming together nicely! Hope it is a huge success! I'll be looking forward to hearing all the stories when the show is under way!

greatwhitebear

Anonymous said...

"sculpture is what you back into when you're trying to get a better view of a painting"

It was Ad Reinhardt that said that back in the sixties (or seventies).

Good luck with the show. We rarely have shows like that here in Montreal.

mister anchovy said...

thanks! I don't recall where I first heard the comment about sculpture and painting...it may have been from my friend Ron Bloore. I am not at all surprised that it was Ad Reinhardt who said it first.