THIS IS PARADISE at MOCCA (Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, 952 Queen West), to August 21. Pwyc. 416-395-0067. See listing Rating: NNN
This uneven show of Toronto art from the early 80s – the fertile period when the Queen West art district and many artist-run galleries and art magazines were born – takes as its focus the Cameron House, the tavern that was scenesters’ hangout, patron, studio and home. Unwisely, it’s curated by insiders Rae Johnson, who also has paintings in the exhibit, and Cameron co-owner Herb Tookey.
For those who were there, This Is Paradise serves as a class reunion (MOCCA had to turn people away from the opening), jogging memories of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll just before the AIDS epidemic changed everything.
Stronger work includes paintings by Joanne Tod, who inserts a sense of moral ambiguity into seemingly ordinary scenes, exuberant cityscapes by Brian Burnett and Sybil Goldstein, and powerful drawings by John Scott, Stephen Andrews and Sandra Meigs. Tim Jocelyn‘s pieced textiles could be the work of a homoerotic Matisse.
Videos of bands at the Cameron and performances by the irrepressible Tanya Mars, General Idea and Tom Dean display the jumpy editing and unfocused photography of the pre-digital era. Portrait photos by Isaac Applebaum and others document scene personalities.
Absent amidst the nostalgia is any analysis of why representational painting resurfaced after decades of abstraction and conceptualism, or any re-evaluation of the artists’ place in Canadian art. Explanatory text concentrates on who posed for what rather than providing background about artists’ intent and careers. (The National Gallery offers more informative tags for its section, which Johnson selected from its collection.)
And some work has an unformed, student quality.
As a director does for a play or an editor for a book, a curator should bring a dispassionate perspective to an art show. Maybe someone with more objective distance would have brought a more critical eye to this material.
art@nowtoronto.com
