Arts Review: Shades of Grace (Group Exhibition)

Shades of Grace
Group Exhibition
Main Space, Union Gallery
Queen’s University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
July 12 through August 8, 2008

Located in Eastern Ontario at the edge of what some must feel is a cultural wilderness, Kingston is a thriving centre of the arts. This is the home of many rising and current stars in music, in literature, in dance, in the visual arts, in drama, in every aspect of the arts. Innovative approaches to art are common in this, by surface appearances at least, very conservative city. Once the capital city of the united Canadas, Kingston may have held on to the cultural imperatives that came along with that position. The city’s location at the centre of a cultural triangle formed by Toronto, Montreal, and New York City may also influence the unique creativity to be found in Kingston. Another influence may be that Kingston is only a short drive from the nation’s capitol. Whatever the reason, Kingston has a vibrant and interesting arts community.

Queen’s University’s Union Gallery, a student gallery with a mandate to balance 70 percent student work with 30 percent from other artists, often presents some of the most thought-provoking exhibitions in this area. The group show Shades of Grace is exciting and innovative, bringing together artists from across Canada who work in diverse media and span the generations. Less a multi-faceted diamond, this is a hall of mirrors that presents a different view at each turn and new views each time you walk through. The effect is quite wonderful. The works in this show in turns please, provoke, calm, intrigue, and even amuse.

At the centre of this show rests the idea of grace as it presents itself to each of us from time to time. Conceived by artist, performer, and poet Donnalee Iffla, this show is based on a poem she had written and the words of which pervade this show. Over a short period of time, Iffla had seen three friends quite separately fall into peril from which they should have died but survived. One fell to the earth. Another was trapped in water. The third barely escaped a terrible fire. Around the same time, Iffla experienced a surreal, dreamlike scene at dusk in a local wood, where she observed a dozen or more owls gliding above the treetops in the circles of a delicate dance. For her, this represented the fourth element, air, to complete the circle of her three friends’ brushes with death by earth, water, and fire. These circumstances suggested the presence of grace which is all around if we will only see it.

Iffla wrote her elegantly crafted poem around these four incidents and their relatedness through the grace by which they and she had been touched. Seeking greater depth for her expression, Iffla approached a group of five other artists to work with her on an exhibition to be named Shades of Grace after the poem. She presented the concept to the Union Gallery and the project was off and running. The result is an exciting melding of ancient and contemporary art forms all circling like Iffla’s owls around the central concept of grace.

Michael Davidge, known for his work with installations and in video, and currently Artistic Director of Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre in Kingston, created a perhaps disturbing illusion. It sits dead-centre in the gallery, a plywood box perhaps the size of four refrigerator boxes papered on the outside with posters for various events. The ends are open and, at about four feet wide by seven feet tall, waiting for viewers to walk through the gauntlet the box presents. Davidge says the inspiration for this piece is an old Charlie Chaplin movie in which The Little Hobo unwittingly steps into a gaping hole just as an underground elevator rises up to stop him from falling in. Walking through Davidge’s installation is both interesting and a trifle disconcerting. The middle third of the path has been built upon a foam material that leaves one feeling more than a little off balance. The experience can be quite thought-provoking.

Montreal film-maker Alain Ambrosi created three video presentations which are placed at different locations throughout the exhibition. A well-known figure in the area of alternative and democratic media, Ambrosi has produced many documentary films and published numerous books and articles in his field over the past three decades. Ambrosi’s allusive videos are quite distinct from each other, each presenting a different aspect of grace but all touching on the idea that grace must ultimately come from within. The visuals and the sounds of these videos have a haunting effect that draws the viewer in and encourages deeper reflection.

Ted Rettig works in sculpture/installation, drawing, photo/text pieces, bookworks, multiples, and video and has been exhibiting nationally and internationally since 1974. For this exhibition, Rettig has created a variety of pieces that represent the concept of grace in form and in words. These are perhaps the most formal and traditional pieces in the exhibition.

The young Vancouver – now Kingston – artist Ayaz Kamani created a dramatic interactive experience. Two video players are set up with a chair facing them. Two sets of earphones are interconnected. On each screen appears an interview. With the earphones on and the two players running, the viewer will experience an interposition of the two interviews. Complex though this may seem, Kamani has made it work well and provided an interesting interactive interpretation of grace.

Painter Anna Emburg Wright created two large-scale fan-shaped works featuring lovely, elaborate floral images within which float almost hidden human figures. These paintings are exciting and thought-provoking yet have a Zen-like calm to them as well. The effect is quite dramatic.

On one wall, a set of earphones waits the casual listener. Several readings of Iffla’s poem by the artists bring slightly different perspectives to the words. To listen is to experience the poem in new and different ways. Besides organizing this exhibition, Iffla is an active participant. She has created a variety of ceramic tiles in different sizes and shapes to represent aspects of her poem and each bearing the words of different parts of the poem. Reading the poem in segments like that also adds new perspective and depth.

Shades of Grace is an intriguing collaboration among what may at first seem an unlikely selection of artists. As one explores the exhibition space, the connections become increasingly clear. This show is thought-provoking and illuminating, with depth that reveals itself in layers that seem never to end. It’s an experience well worth the time spent exploring it.

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Movie Review: Miami Vice

The Movie

Based on past experience, I usually tend to be leary of movies that are remakes of earlier hit movies and especially of movies that attempt to capture the essence of a popular television show in a single longish episode. Most of these productions fall into one of three categories: a slavish copy of the original, which doesn’t work because the original belongs in a past time; an attempt to update the characters and story, which doesn’t work for much the same reason; or a “remake” in title only with essentially a different story and cast of characters, which is a cheat. A few fall under a fourth category. They actually capture the spirit of the original while appealing to contemporary audience. Having watched all of the original Miami Vice back when it was the coolest program on television, I was intrigued to see just how well the movie version would stand up.

It probably helps this new Miami Vice that it was written and directed by Michael Mann, whose sensibility drove the original television series. All the elements are there: flashy camera work; vast surreal views of city, sea, and sky; very cool and very expensive boats, planes, and automobiles; characters that dwell just this side of caricature; and, of course a very driven rock score that drives the story forward. However, this

directorial continuity may also have harmed the “unrated director’s edition” that I viewed. At times, I felt the story begin to drag almost long enough to make me lose interest. I have to wonder if the included “footage not seen in theatres” is the cause. Is it wise to add back in footage originally excised, probably for good reason?

Increasingly over the past decade or two, moviemakers have shown an increasing reliance on elaborate special effects to compensate for otherwise weak story lines. Showing great restraint, Michael Mann has created a movie that is, over all, very low tech. Even in this surreal Miami, the action is low-key and realistic, with less of the overblown comic book feel that many contemporary directors seem compelled to create in their action films. There’s a dryness about the action in Miami Vice that’s more cool than hot, more of inevitability than chaos.

There’s no doubt that, some twenty years later, this movie captures the spirit of the original television series. There are many similarities between the two, but perhaps as important are the differences in style, in cast of characters, in the general ambience of the story.

Both in number and in style or quality, the cast of characters has changed. Colin Farrell’s Sonny Crockett seems world-weary in a way that Don Johnson’s had never been. There was a carefree sense to the old Crockett that doesn’t seem to exist in this new incarnation. Compared to the pretty, stylish, even slick Philip Michael Thomas character, Jamie Foxx presents Ricardo Tubbs as a hardened realist, a cynical down-to-earth undercover cop better fitted for true Film Noir than the trendy world in which the original character had lived. In spirit if not in name, some interesting characters from the original series are missing, especially James Edward Olmos’ dour Lt. Castillo, never quite matched by Barry Shabaka Henley in this movie, and Elvis, Crockett’s pet alligator. Elvis was a comedic set-piece in the original which might have helped save this movie from its mostly humourless ambience.

Like the television series, this Miami Vice features a variety of hot cars and hotter boats and even an eye-catching airplane. There are also two hot women, played by Gong Li and Naomi Harris, although I seem to recall seeing a lot more hot women in the television series. Once again Michael Mann brings us lush lighting and exotic settings. Even the most ordinary of places seems, under his direction, to take on a life of its own. There is a difference. In the series, I recall seeing a lot more buildings, interiors and exteriors revealed in contrasts of light and shade straight off an artist’s palette and Miami cityscapes galore shot from every possible angle. This production seems to focus more on panoramic shots of big sky and big sea with pretty much everything else shot in close.

Over all, this movie has very much the feel of the original series, but it’s darker and less personal. No longer do we see Crockett’s home in a boat with an alligator as watchdog. Only rarely now to we get glimpses into the personal lives of the two main characters, who in this production seem only to know or trust one another. Mann has entered the dark world of Film Noir and turned off the lights.

In the past, critics have likened the original Miami Vice series to an over-long music video, and it did have elements of that. In his new production, Mann has retained a lot of that same sense. There are echoes here of the music of Jan Hammer, Phil Collins, and a score of other artists who had filled out the soundtrack of the television series. The musical artists on this release are new, but the musical ambience remains the same, right down to a remake by Nonpoint of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.” On occasion, a line from a rock song of bygone days even sneaks in as part of the dialogue.

While several scenes of this movie do feel like a music video, the final shoot-out feels more like a video game. It’s filled with stock characters who appear from behind walls and obstructions at regular intervals. The camera angles and the lighting are very much like what is seen in a shoot em’ up video game and seem almost a set-up for the video game to come in aftermarket sales.

While a little slow-moving in places, Michael Mann’s Miami Vice is entertaining and does hold the viewer’s interest. The combination of lush, artsy visuals, abundant music behind the action and filling the spaces between, and minimal story-line make this an ideal movie for a quiet night at home. Darker and with less humour than the original series, this tale still captures Mann’s unique vision of Miami. Better than some recent productions in this genre, Miami Vice is worth watching at least once.

The Special Features

“Miami Vice Undercover” features Michael Mann, several actors, real-life undercover operatives, and others discussing the background to this story. Other documentary features include

“Miami and Beyond: Shooting on Location,” “Visualizing Miami Vice,” and “Behind the scenes Featurettes” that provide fresh insights into the making of this movie. There’s also a feature commentary with Michael Mann where his voice-over explains what he had been thinking as he wrote each scene. The movie can be watched in English or French and there are subtitles available in French or Spanish as well as English for the deaf and hard of hearing.

The Heads-Up

While I am very much against piracy or intellectual theft in any form, I am also against any copy-protection that installs itself on the user’s computer without letting the user know. User beware. This release of Miami Vice is copy-protected in just this way. To review this movie, I played the disc once in my DVD player. After that, for reference while writing this, I placed the disc in my DVD-RW. After the first time I referenced the disc, each of my three on-board players came up with a different software generated error message and I could no longer play the disc. Be warned that, if you plan to play this movie on your computer, then without your prior knowledge a copy-protection program will be installed.

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