m MIGRATION PATTERNS
and JUSTICE FOR DR.
CHUN!, at A Different Booklist (746
Bathurst) until May 7. Rating: N
the walls of a different book-
list are stunningly bare when we go to check out the tiny-but-mighty bookstore’s official Mayworks Festival Of Working People And The Arts! show.
What gives? When it isn’t participating in something that calls itself a labour-oriented arts fest, the compact bookstore (owned by local author and activist Itah Sadu) can be counted on for an optical hit with a selection of original works by Haitian artists.
A Different Booklist’s ever-gracious staff laughingly haul out a couple of plastic-encased corkboards covered with newspaper clippings (we suspect but cannot confirm that this is Justice For Dr. Chun! by Oriel Varga) that they’ve stuffed behind a bookcase — with justification. They were expecting art. This is not art.
A single small, experimental mixed-media collage that makes up the Migrations Patterns portion by Po Yee Thom (identified as Karen Thom in the Mayworks brochure) gets much more respectful treatment, and if Mayworks had delivered more pieces of this calibre, this could have been a decent show.
