Sobey Art Award, National Gallery of Canada, Oct. 6, 2016 to Feb. 5, 2017

by

Vancouver artist Jeremy Shaw, who now lives in Berlin, is often billed as someone who creates art about “altered states.” That phrase certainly fits his video, Quickeners, a darkly humorous sci-fi adventure in which aliens experience the ecstasy of backwoods American religious cults. Actually, “altered states” is a phrase that might be applied not just to the work of Shaw, this year’s winner of the Sobey Art Award, but also to the predilections of the other four regional artists on the shortlist.

Quickeners is part of their multi-media exhibition, which shows at the National Gallery of Canada until Feb. 5. The works were selected by Josée Drouin-Brisebois, the gallery’s curator of contemporary art and the chair of this year’s Sobey jury. Shaw, who represents the West Coast and Yukon region, takes home $50,000 from this prestigious competition for artists under 40; each runner-up gets $10,000. The prize is for a recent body of work, not simply what’s on display.

The most audacious offering in this showcase of rising Canadian talent belongs to Charles Stankievech, an Alberta native currently carrying the Ontario flag. He, alone, created a new work for the show. It’s a site-specific faux exhibition about Anthony Blunt, an infamous British-Soviet double agent who convinced Canada’s National Gallery in the 1950s to purchase a Nicolas Poussin painting, Augustus and Cleopatra. Alas, it was unmasked in 1971 as fake. Stankievech also offers documents, videos and other paraphernalia that take viewers to an alternate world in which people and objects can simultaneously be fake and real. It’s a brain-teasing funhouse adventure for those titillated by paradoxes.

Cree artist Brenda Draney from Edmonton, representing the Prairies and the North, seems the odd woman out in this show because she does not engage in the trickery, humour and technological whiz-bang other contestants used to seduce the jury. Instead, Draney is represented by a roomful of stark oil paintings in which the emotions of aboriginal characters have been altered by natural disasters and bad laws. Draney’s characters seem relentlessly grim and perplexed.

Another Alberta native, Hajra Waheed, now represents Quebec. Her major work in the exhibition is called The Cyphers and it brings viewers to an altered universe in which stories and events exist only when they are registered and recorded. This notion is exemplified by a large, low platform filled with mysterious, misshapen objects that can only be identified by examining nearby fictional written records. Without the right papers, these objects are like stateless migrants.

The most eye-popping work belongs to Halifax artist William Robinson, whose high-definition video, Sun Ship Machine Gun – Metallurgy I, takes viewers on a journey in which church bells are transformed into military weapons and then saxophones.

This is the first year the National Gallery has managed the 14-year-old Sobey award. So will this permanent switch from the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia meet the goal of making the competition better known nationally and abroad, possibly with travelling exhibitions? It’s too soon to say. But Rob Sobey, chairman of the Sobey Art Foundation, seems optimistic. The Sobey Art Award just may be headed for an altered state of its own.

NationalGallery2.png

National Gallery of Canada

380 Sussex Drive P.O. Box 427, Station A, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 9N4

613-990-1985

Visit Website