Art Spin Hamilton, July 17, 2017 Various Locations, Hamilton, ON
By Tor Lukasik-Foss
Photo courtesy of ArtSpin Hamilton
Let me fully declare that I write this review from the vantage point of an artist participant, not a patron or a critic. I have what I feel to be a deep, affectionate and fruitful relationship with Art Spin Toronto, a project that has been connecting contemporary arts projects and cycling for the last seven years. My arts collective TH&B (Ivan Jurakic, Dave Hind, Simon Frank, me) was in its infancy when it exhibited at Art Spin’s 2nd annual show in 2011; Art Spin has since grown, its projects include last year’s ambitious in/future exhibition encompassing the western leg of what was once Ontario Place. And now it has now branched into Hamilton and launched its first event here, this July, curated by area artists Jordyn Stewart and David Trautrimas
It’s funny what goes through your head, when you take part in an event in its inaugural year, when you don’t know what or whether you might be paid, or how many if any people might participate. It’s a purifying position in a sense, as you are thus obliged by the circumstances to deliver a work that serves your own practice, as that might be the only reward to be had. And because the structure of the event allows only for a single, brief moment of connection—cyclists arrive, spend maybe fifteen minutes with your piece and then move on—there is also no pressure to invest in the material nature of the work; it can be as fleeting as you wish.
Photo by Don Gleeson
TH&B delivered a performance action called Desire Line built around an intentionally futile task—relocating a chunk of grass from the north side of a rail corridor to the south, moving it over an aged Birge Street pedestrian bridge with participants’ help, and then returning via the illegal foot path that cuts right across the tracks.
It would be arrogant of me to postulate on the impact of this action or its aesthetic value. I kind of don’t care. For me, the aesthetic worth of the moment wasn’t centred in our action at all. It happened just after Ivan Jurakic received the text that the tour group was on its way and I scrambled up the Birge bridge to be a lookout. There I saw a stream of, I’d say, close to a hundred bikes crossing a rail intersection and then pouring around the corner into a parking lot on Emerald. Bikes were then leaned and dropped and strewn about, a crowd assembled, participated in our obscure performance assignment, then remounted and departed. It was beautiful.
Photo by Don Gleeson
Cycling is an action that fully engages the body; cycling is its own culturally distinct community; cycling has a potential to form swarm-like entities. The experience of a such a swarm moving and alighting on artworks, engaging with them collectively as opposed to individually, asserting a context for each work based less on its geo-specific site and more on its placement within a route—seems game changing to me. It made me consider that Art Spin has effectively invented a new kind of art patron, with an entirely complex and distinct set of behaviours and tastes.
After our performance action finished, I joined the throng and rode down to Burlington Street to view Lunch Lady by Hamilton collective (F)NOR, (Donna Akrey, Andrea Carvalho, Margaret Flood and Svava Juliusson). Atop a square, relatively unblemished concrete pad, the collective had amassed a dispersion of tiny sculptures rendered in vegetables, skewers and candy. The flat grey concrete background gave Lunch Lady the quality of a Miro painting, of delicate playful forms interacting on top of a droll, slightly menacing surface. It was to me the most perfectly engineered contribution to this event. Cyclists descended, lay their bikes in a pile, viewed the work, hovered over it, disassembled and devoured it, all in seemingly one fluid transaction.
Photo by Don Gleeson
I also loved watching Art Spin grapple with Matthew Walker’s Device for the Emancipation of the Landscape installed within a spacious vacant lot near Pier 8. The work is a gargantuan sound cannon expertly constructed from concrete and wood. It blasts out field recordings in order to juxtapose dissimilar environments, usually the sounds of a natural environment penetrating into an urban one. My understanding of Walker’s work has always rooted itself in the heft and authority of the object itself. However, it looked to me that Art Spin riders were relatively disinterested in the physical part of the work, many of them choosing to cruise in circles in and out of the field of sound, well away from the object.
Photo by Don Gleeson
The final stop was Brandon Vickerd’s Challenger, a flawlessly construed fiction of a space shuttle door crashing into a Canada Post box.It was installed in the courtyard of the Hamilton Artists Inc, which served as the event’s final destination and after-party. It was a strange end to the tour, possibly because all the bicycles had to be dismounted and secured outside the courtyard, thus robbing Vickerd’s work of the same kind of interaction. It was then that I realized that I was no longer looking at the art, I was looking to see how the riders would change the art.
Photo by Don Gleeson
All in all, it made me imagine contemporary art occupying a slightly altered future role, one wherein it still provides an inspiration, but where the audience—collectivized, activated, and enhanced in their abilities—becomes the focal point.
Tor Lukasik-Foss is a visual artist, performer and writer. He is a founding member of the artists collective TH&B and currently works as the Director of Programs and Education at the Art Gallery of Hamilton.
