Winnipeg Revisited
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"The Collage Party Pavilion"
Paul Butler, "The Collage Party Pavilion," 2011, co-designed with Craig Alun Smith, wood and steel, 10’ x 8’ x 12’.
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"Osborne Village"
Osborne Village. Photo credits: Osborne Village BIZ.
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"Osborne Village"
Osborne Village.
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"Osborne Village"
Osborne Village, a popular area for artists. Photo credits: Osborne Village BIZ.
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Winnipeg Art Gallery
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Photographer: Leif Norman
"Untitled (Schooner and Fireworks)"
Visitors look at Sarah Anne Johnson’s work, "Untitled (Schooner and Fireworks)," at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
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Photographer: Leif Norman
"Winnipeg Now opening"
From Winnipeg Art Gallery, four images of opening for Winnipeg Now. Courtesy of Winnipeg Art Gallery.
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Photographer: Leif Norman
"Winnipeg Now opening"
From Winnipeg Art Gallery, four images of opening for Winnipeg Now. Courtesy of Winnipeg Art Gallery.
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Photographer: Leif Norman
"Winnipeg Now opening"
From Winnipeg Art Gallery, four images of opening for Winnipeg Now. Courtesy of Winnipeg Art Gallery.
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Photographer: Leif Norman
"Winnipeg Now opening"
From Winnipeg Art Gallery, four images of opening for Winnipeg Now. Courtesy of Winnipeg Art Gallery.
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Photo: Cassidy Richardson
"Image of Plug In and WAG"
Image of Plug In and WAG.
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"There’s No Place Like Home"
Viewers check out "There’s No Place Like Home," part of the My Winnipeg series at the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art.
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Photo: Cassidy Richardson
"One Night Stand"
Guests at "One Night Stand."
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Photo: Cassidy Richardson
"One Night Stand"
Guests at "One Night Stand."
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"ARTlab at the University of Manitoba"
ARTlab at the University of Manitoba.
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"ARTlab at the University of Manitoba"
ARTlab at the University of Manitoba.
WINNIPEG REVISITED
Just what is it that makes Canada’s coldest Big city such a happening place for artists?
By Richard White and Cassidy Richardson
“We’re going to Winnipeg,” was the punch line of a commercial a few years back that suggested Winnipeg was the Canadian equivalent of Siberia. But for emerging artists and curators, Winnipeg is no gulag. While young professionals gravitate to Calgary and empty nesters flock to the West Coast, creative types are taking their mojo to the ’Peg, lured by affordable studio space and the excitement of the city’s lively arts scene. Support from major arts institutions helps explain the city’s growing buzz, both nationally and internationally, but it’s not the full story. Artists and curators with a strong do-it-yourself ethos are also pitching in and working together to create new opportunities for themselves.
The city’s vibrant arts community was in the spotlight last fall as the Winnipeg Art Gallery celebrated its 100th anniversary with a landmark exhibition, Winnipeg Now. The gallery, which dates back to an era when Winnipeg was one of Canada’s largest and wealthiest cities, holds over 26,000 historical and contemporary works, including the world’s largest public collection of Inuit art.
Another important institution is the University of Manitoba’s School of Fine Arts, formerly the Winnipeg School of Art. The school, also marking its centenary, is like a family, where one generation of students becomes the next generation’s teachers. And while graduates may leave to pursue opportunities outside Winnipeg, they often return. For instance, 2002 graduate Sarah Anne Johnson earned her MFA at Yale. But she came home and taught for a time at the school, which recently moved into ARTlab, an impressive 70,000-square-foot building with state-of-the-art facilities for 400 students.
There’s also no questioning the contributions of the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, which started as an artist-run centre in 1972. One of the first venues on the Prairies to focus on contemporary art, it has evolved into a major exhibiting gallery with an international presence that helps artists network beyond national boundaries. In celebrating its 40th anniversary last year, Plug In collaborated with two French institutions to create the My Winnipeg project in Winnipeg, Paris and Sète, a port city in the south of France. All told, the project has created opportunities for more than 100 Winnipeg artists to exhibit their work.
But as important as institutional support is, Winnipeg artists are also remarkable for their can-do attitude. Wayne Baerwaldt, a former director of Plug In, says artists find ways to show their work in other cities and to attend major international events like documenta and the Venice Biennale. “The airport is like the artists’ living room as there is always someone heading to another city,” he says. “Winnipeg artists understand the importance of networking nationally and internationally.”
It’s also common for artists, teachers, writers and patrons to join forces to organize their own exhibitions and events. For instance, despite their busy schedules, Johnson and Meeka Walsh, editor of Border Crossings, a Winnipeg-based art magazine, found time to organize Out of Nowhere, a 2011 show of Winnipeg artists at the Julie Saul Gallery in New York. It was followed by The Undesirables, a Winnipeg exhibition by five of Johnson’s recent students. When Michael Nesbitt, an avid art collector, was told of the project’s financial challenges, he provided funding to allow the artists to produce new large-scale works without restrictions. “Seeing how hard Johnson and the artists worked to develop their ideas was inspiring and was one of my proudest initiatives,” he says.
Winnipeg has a strong cohort of artist-run centres, including Urban Shaman, a leader in aboriginal programming, and various artist collectives. Such groups give emerging artists camaraderie and support as they exchange ideas and develop their practices. Two of the three artists who formed Canada’s legendary counterculture collective, General Idea, a mainstay of Toronto’s art scene from 1969 to 1994, studied at the the University of Manitoba. More recently, attention was focused on the Royal Art Lodge, known for intimate and surreal collaborative drawings that launched careers for its members. Active from 1996 to 2008, it was founded by Michael Dumontier, Marcel Dzama, Neil Farber, Drue Langlois, Jonathan Pylypchuk and Adrian Williams. Other notable Winnipeg collectives include the Student Bolsheviks, the Abzurbs and the 26ers.
In Winnipeg, grassroots art parties and shows seem to pop up almost spontaneously. For instance, artist Collin Zipp recently created an exhibition model with a cheeky name: One Night Stand. The first show, which opened and closed the same night, was held in a friend’s photography studio and included work by various Winnipeg installation technicians. “Many artists, curators and art professionals flock to Winnipeg because of the city’s history of creating artwork for the sake of producing art,” says Zipp. “Artists embrace the idea of taking any opportunity to show their art. It doesn’t have to be in a traditional gallery space.” Another artist, Paul Butler, dubbed a “collage wunderkind” by the National Post, is famous for his parties. A decade ago, he started inviting friends to his studio to make collages with him. He has gone on to organize collage parties at galleries, schools and other venues across Canada, Europe and the United States.
While some think Winnipeg’s long cold winters mean there is little to do but hang out making and talking art, the same could be said for Edmonton, Saskatoon or Regina. Cultural guru Marshall McLuhan, who grew up in Winnipeg and attended the University of Manitoba, thought the city’s isolation shaped its need for communication and interaction with the outside world. In many ways, Winnipeg’s arts community exemplifies both McLuhan’s concept of the “global village” and the current obsession with being connected.
Will Ferguson, in his travel memoir, Beauty Tips From Moose Jaw, talks about Canada’s outpost mentality. To him, outposts are geographic, but also linguistic, political and cultural. “Canada has no single central city,” he writes. “It has scattered metropolises of various sizes, regional outposts each with their own sphere of influence. There is no London, and that is not necessarily a bad thing.” Winnipeg, an outpost for some 150 years, has developed its own culture – a synthesis of European pioneer sensibilities, aboriginal spirituality and storytelling, and the international ideologies of contemporary art. Culturally as well as geographically, Winnipeg occupies a unique space in Canada – it is where east meets west and north meets south. Far removed from other urban centres, Winnipeggers have always created their own culture. Perhaps all that’s new is that the world is starting to take notice.