Hermès had a small party to feature a special film installation called Foot Ball created by artist Marcus Tomlinson. The fall 2010 Hermès shoe collection was the inspiration for the film. There was a preview of the upcoming Fall 2010 accessories collection also.

Every shoe has a thousand and one tales to tell, and Marcus Tomlinson believes each one, following them step by step. In his enthusiasm for Pierre Hardy’s designs at Hermès, the artist, photographer and maker of animation films has become their messenger: “His shoes strike a perfect balance between design and craftsmanship, between tried and trusted skills and what seems to me is a very limpid form of inspiration.”

Patiently and passionately, the artist has composted FOOT BALL, the film of an imaginary day in the life of a part of shoes. And so there are, filching fragments from our own lives – step by step, with measured tread, from a standing start, or dragging their feet.

The installation will be available for public viewing in the Hermès Bloor Street store until July 31, 2010. I took some video of the installation.

Foot Ball by Marcus Tomlinson from Anita Clarke on Vimeo.

Then I found a link to the complete video online so that if you can’t visit the store you can still see what the Marcus Tomlinson installation is about. View the film here at Hermes – Window display on Moonwalk Films.

Repping with the Hermès scarf - image: Dwayne Evans

This was my first invitation to an event at the Hermès store. I was very excited as I’m such a huge Hermès fan. It also gave me an excuse to go wild with the Olympus E-PL1 in the store without question. I have tons of photos from that I will be sharing in other posts. I could stare at the scarves forever in that store, they are so vibrant and beautiful. The prints are so intricate that I’m just amazed at the craftsmanship and time required to make one. They are works of art. There was a little photobooth set up so you could play a little dress up in Hermès with photographer Dwayne Evans. Dwayne took the shots of me in Polysh Magazine and it was good to reconnect with him.  I have some other shots I have to track down from him to post.  They are fun too.

The riding boots were my favourite shoes of the fall collection. They are perfect. New to fall are the lacquered wood bracelets. They are fun, stackable bracelets in a variety of colours and sizes. They are a lower price point than most other bracelets in the Hermès family. Some of the new scarf prints that caught my eye are Cent Plis des Miao and Ex Libris en Camouflage. I also have my eye on a proper scarf ring and I’m loving the Bolduc ring in Palladium.

A New Song By Izzy Ohiro, Mother By Garett Campbell Wilson, Soul Cry By Sonia Farquharson

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) joins in the excitement of the Scotiabank Caribana Festival and presents From the Soul: Caribana Art Exhibit, July 23 to August 13, 2010, Canada’s largest ever single juried display of works of art by African Canadian artists. Curated by renowned African Canadian artist and activist, Joan Butterfield, the exhibition is produced by the Association of African Canadian Artists, in conjunction with Scotiabank Caribana and the ROM. From the Soul will be on display in the Museum’s Bronfman Hall, Level 2 during the citywide festival, which takes place from July 15 to August 15, 2010.

More than 160 works on canvas, several Caribana parade costumes, three dimensional bronze sculptures and award-winning ceramic pieces by 49 artists will be on display. Ms. Butterfield said, “This collection of works will arouse the conscious, still the mind and soothe the soul. Our goal is to attract a new and expanded audience to this exhibition with the hope of inspiring others with the message of courage, love and respect prevalent throughout the displays. Art is an expression of life around us and a powerful way to bring difficult topics of discussion out in the open.”

Jason’s work regularly depicts “pin up” style girls with elements inspired by both the beautiful and ugly parts of the natural world.
“Aquatic life” is a collection of underwater, deep sea inspired illustrations with fashionable flare.

Please join us for the opening reception on August 5th.
Plastik Wrap boutique, 2235 Dundas st. West
From 7.00 pm till 11.00 pm

The Douglas Coupland x Roots collaboration is now on sale at the Bloor Street Store.

The ROOTS X DOUGLAS COUPLAND collection includes apparel for women/men/children, accessories, leather goods, design items, furniture, limited editions, original art and a series of pop-up stores. This is the first time Douglas Coupland has designed fashion wearables. He is best known as the internationally best-selling author of “Generation X”, “JPod” and “Generation A”.

I like a few items of the Douglas Coupland x Roots collaboration.

The ROOTS X DOUGLAS COUPLAND collection includes apparel for women/men/children, accessories, leather goods, design items, furniture, limited editions, original art and a series of pop-up stores. This is the first time Douglas Coupland has designed fashion wearables. He is best known as the internationally best-selling author of “Generation X”, “JPod” and “Generation A”.

“For more than 10 years I’ve been intimately exploring what it means to be Canadian,” says Coupland. “This partnership with Roots is an amazing opportunity to keep that dialogue going with an even wider, more diverse audience.”

The theme created for the ROOTS X DOUGLAS COUPLAND collection is “Canada Goes Electric” and brings together Douglas Coupland’s recognizable perspective with the Roots reputation for quality goods and craftsmanship.

“For the first time in our history, we stepped back and left the design to an outside designer,” explains Don Green, Co-founder of Roots. “Visually the collection is strong but beyond that, Douglas Coupland has once again shown his trademark humour and brilliance in exploring a new medium, in this case fashion. He has put forth a hopeful and positive message about this great country of ours and the results are impressive.”

The Holy Grail is this duffle bag that I spotted on Lisa Tant’s twitpic stream. I can’t find it on the website so it must only be in the pop-up shops that are happening in Vancouver and Toronto until July 24th. The collection will be available to all stores after the 24th.

EDIT: I found out details about the Toronto Pop up Shop
Toronto Location: 680 Queen Street West
Date: July 8th until July 25th
Open: Thursday through Sunday
Hours: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 11am-7pm, Sunday 12pm-6pm.

images: roots.com, twitpic.com

I had to check out the super cute installation by FriendsWithYou at Queen’s Park for Luminato. It was like an acid trip came to life; floating mushroom and pill shaped objects with happy faces.

Magic, luck, and friendship are the qualities that FriendsWithYou, a visual arts collective based in Miami Beach, seek to spread throughout the world. Now, in an unprecedented spectacle created just for Luminato, they invite Toronto to come out and play.

FriendsWithYou turns Toronto into Rainbow City, a delightful explosion of colour and jubilant energy. Led by the Rainbow King, Luminato 2010′s Festival mascot, a host of celestial characters transform Queen’s Park with larger-than-life dimensions of giant totems, bounce houses, and inflatable friends. Meanwhile, emissaries from this magical world fan out across Toronto to spread their universal message.

The trusty Olympus E-PL1 was there to record some video

Luminato 2010 – Wish Come True Festival from Anita Clarke on Vimeo.

I wish random installation like this were more common in the city.

Todd Selby (aka The Selby) came to Toronto to promote his new book, The Selby is in your House.   Holt Renfrew hosted a public book signing session in the Bloor street store.  A party in his honour at was held at Parts & Labour the night before. It was at this party I would learn about Todd’s site and why I was always hearing his name in fashion circles. Yep, I was that ignorant about the man. I don’t follow interiors that much and since he loves to photograph homes I can see why I never really bothered to check him out.  I knew he was important, the why was never that important to me. For those of you not familiar with The Selby, he takes photos of people’s homes. These people are usually creative types and many big players in the fashion industry.

My first exposure to The Selby was on the walls of P&L. Holt Renfrew had printed all the pages of his book on these panels that lined the walls.  There were also two white walls that the guests wrote message to Todd on in sharpies. I learned that he liked the visuals so much that he got them delivered to his home.

I even talked to Todd at this party. I wasn’t able to fawn over him and his work since I was ignorant to the subject so I made small talk. He was wearing this cat t-shirt, a crazy cat lady kind. I ask if he liked cats. He replies that he doesn’t like cats but loves their imagery. I found that answer interesting as people who dislike cats have never claimed any interest in their imagery.  He was a pleasant guy who talked to many of the guests over the course of the party. I didn’t get a picture of us but you can see his photo in a post called Todd Selby book launch at The Globe and Mail.

A couple of days later I received a signed copy of The Selby is in your House from Holt Renfrew. It was a nice surprise because I after seeing the book on the walls I wanted to buy it. Todd’s combination of photos, stories and drawings were very compelling.

The book features some of Todd’s favourite shoots. He traveled all over the world to photograph these people and their homes. It’s a very personal book and voyeuristic.  There are a few cats represented in the book too.

Mark Fast returned to Canada to be part of the Luminato festival of Arts and Creativity.  He has the honour of presenting in the one of the best installation venues in the city, the Brookfield Place Allen Lambert Galleria.  It was two years ago that myself and some friends were part of the Toronto’s Mille Femmes installation during Luminato.

Luminato, Toronto Festival of Arts and Creativity will present a free landmark installation in partnership with Lancôme by London-based Canadian knitwear designer Mark Fast. Commissioned by Lancôme in celebration of their 75th anniversary, The Ascension of Beauty will be presented in Toronto’s Brookfield Place Allen Lambert Galleria throughout the 10-day festival from June 11th to June 20th.

Fast welcomes the challenges of such a largescale project, which will see him outfit architecture in rope sculpture and fashion a dress of lycra, viscose and SWAROVSKI ELEMENTS. Said Fast, “The knitwear I have created is symbolic of the elegant structure of the rose and I have derived my inspiration from its delicate confidence. Its layers extend off the body emulating the delicate petals held together by the stem. The exhibition will encompass a rope structure that represents the emotion the Lancôme woman evokes. In my mind and my design, she encompasses the whole space and she is an inspiration to all people who behold her.”

The installation was beautiful. It did a great job of using the length of the atrium.

Mark Fast is available at The Room (The Bay Queen Street).

I came across this food images taken by Fulvio Bonavia. They are so inventive that I had to share some of them with you.

You can see more images at A Matter of Taste by Fulvio Bonavia at TrendLand.

images: trendland.net

Join us each Saturday afternoon in May for the Heineken Behind the Lens Tour, an exclusive interactive tour of Scotiabank CONTACT. Go behind the scenes with top photographers and other culture mavens as they share curated insights on fascinating photography from an insider’s vantage point. Each tour, located in one of Toronto’s unique neighborhoods, will end at a local watering hole for discussion, snacks and the opportunity to enjoy a cold Heineken.

I chose the City Centre tour which took us to the AGO for Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (It), U of Toronto Arts Centre for The Brothel Without Walls and Probing McLuhan, the ROM for Creative Commons and the Boss Store for Glen Baxter.

Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (It)
At this stop in the tour we had one of the curators talk about various aspects of the installation. This piece covered the entire length of the façade. It’s the first time the façade has housed an installation. It’s a combination of words and images using her signature font and stock images chosen from her personal library. It’s slightly ambiguous where you ponder what this “IT” is. You also wonder which words accompany the photos. It looks like advertising, which is deliberate in order to get people thinking. We were told it’s one of the biggest pieces she’s created. We also learned a bit about the installation. It’s vinyl attached to glass and took 10 days to install. Check out this Barbara Kruger Installation Video on the AGO Art Matters blog.

Art Gallery of Ontario
May 1–August 30, 2010 (This goes till August so there is plenty of time to see it)
317 Dundas St W
Toronto

Probing McLuhan

As CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival recognizes the influence of Marshall McLuhan on the 30th anniversary of his death, this biographical exhibition hosted at the University of Toronto’s Art Centre’s art lounge supports the adjoining The Brothel Without Walls exhibition by examining Marshall McLuhan’s life and thought in relation to photography. Utilizing archival material, this exhibit looks at McLuhan’s reflections on the photographic medium, while examining representations of this influential scholar in art and media.(source)

Probing McLuhan was in the lounge area of the University of Toronto’s Art Centre. It felt like a museum display and I didn’t think it was part of Scotiabank CONTACT for some reason. Unfortunately, I didn’t spend much time taking in all the information from it.

The Brothel Without Walls
The Brothel Without Walls was a group exhibition featuring Susan Anderson, Evan Baden, Douglas Coupland, Jessica Dimmock, Marina Gadonneix, Clunie Reid, Stefan Ruiz, Joachim Schmid and Christopher Wahl. It was the most disturbing of all exhibits I’ve been too. It’s a definite must see in my book! There were many photos that produced strong reactions from me. They were wonder or unease.

The exhibition title is derived from McLuhan who in 1964 wrote of the photograph as “The Brothel without Walls”. McLuhan described photographs as “dreams that money can buy” which could be “hugged and thumbed more easily than public prostitutes.” Co-curators, UTAC’s Matt Brower and Scotiabank CONTACT’s Artistic Director, Bonnie Rubenstein have brought together 9 Canadian and international photographers whose works give form to McLuhan’s concepts helping us to grasp the cultural role of photography, not in isolation, but in relation to our general media culture, and more specifically television and the internet.(source)

Evan Baden’s Technically Intimate series of photographs is a look at teens and internet pornography. Evan recreated the scenes of young women making taking photos and using webcams to show them having sex or showing off their boxes. The room settings in the photos clearly evoke the world of a young teen girl with lots of pink, stuff animals and posters of Britney Spears.

Susan Anderson photographs child beauty pageants in the U.S. This exhibit featured images of young pageant girls that were taken before or after the competition. The photos included the ages of the models. It was very disturbing and creepy looking at these doll-like children. They didn’t seem human. Well, that’s not completely true, the girls that looked clearly pissed off looked human. That was about the only amusing thing about the photos.I don’t understand the obsession with pink frosted lipstick and these kids. All the clothing was sequined and blingly to the hilt. My sense of general unease for the photos increased when I discovered that the girls were not posed by Susan. They chose the poses themselves.

Jessica Dimmock’s brilliant series of photos turns the camera on the Paparazzi. She makes the hunters the hunted and documents their strange habits and relentless stalking. I love that each photos includes the name of the actors each paparazzi was stalking when the photo was taken.

Stefan Ruiz’s Factory of Dreams is a series of photographs taken at the Televisa Studios in Mexico City. This is where many Spanish language soap operas are created. This series takes a look at the show Amarte es mi pecado (Loving you is my sin). The photos are fascinating. I’ve never seen a television studio and didn’t realize the scale and complexity of it all.

University of Toronto Art Centre
May 1–31, 2010
15 King’s College Circle, Main floor of Laidlaw Wing
Toronto
Creative Commons

Guillaume Cailleau’s Creative Commons grouped a bunch of television sets together in the Spirit House at the ROM. The TVs displayed flickr rotating images of the ROM from a small group of amateur photographers with photos licensed with the Creative Commons. That allows someone to share, copy, distribute and transmit the images. Each television focused on a specific aspect of the ROM like the exterior, a dome ceiling or a window. The users were given credit for the contribution. This exhibit immediately made wonder if any of my photos were used.
Royal Ontario Museum – Spirit House (No charge to see the exhibit)
May 1–31, 2010
100 Queen’s Park
Toronto

I covered Glen Baxter’s exhibit before you can read it at I want – I got goes to the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival – Right To Play – Azerbaijan, 2009.

The trip ended up at Hemmingway’s in Yorkville for some cold Heineken.

There is still two weekends to go before the end of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival. Plenty of time to get out and see some art.

Disclosure: This one is a series of posts about the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival. The organizers have asked me to share my experiences at the exhibits with you and get the word out about this event in exchange for fee. The Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival runs from May 1 – 31, 2010

CONTACT is an annual month long festival of photography with over 1000 local, national and international artists at more than 200 venues across the Greater Toronto Area in May. Founded as a not-for-profit organization 14 years ago, CONTACT is devoted to celebrating, and fostering an appreciation of the art and profession of photography. As the largest photography event in the world, and a premiere cultural event in Toronto, CONTACT stimulates excitement and discussion among a diverse audience that has grown to over 1.5 million and is focused on cultivating even greater interest and participation this year.(source)