Sometimes it feels like there’s too much going on all at once. Over the past two days we had two excellent visiting artists’ talks. Last night Mona Hatoum give a comprehensive, thoughtful talk on her work from over the past thirty years starting with a provocative video of her walking slowly through the streets of Brixton barefoot dragging a pair of Doc Martin boots tied to her ankles behind her.
She’s here in Vancouver for an exhibition of her Collected Works at Bob Rennie’s new Wing Sang Building Gallery which opens Saturday. Seeing one of her early video works was a good segue into an overview of her sculptures from the mid nineties focussing on the material aspects of her practice. She was very direct about the importance of maintaining a studio practice and was also very generous with questions from the audience, answering each one with thoughtful consideration.
Today at lunch, the Canadian illustrator Seth, also gave an amazing talk- with great illustrations and self-depricating humour, while appearing shy, he was very witty and charming. He read a series of auto-biographical vignettes each punctuated by a desk clerk’s bell. He is in town for the Writers Festival which is featuring his new book George Sprott 1894 – 1975. Seth was also very generous in answering questions with care and thought.
I was lucky to have been able to attend both these talks. I’m again reminded what an amazing place an art schools is, and how generous many public figures can be to students in this context. What a rare opportunity and generous gift it is to be able to hear artists talk about their ideas in a small room filled with strangers.
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