Friday, Feb 10, our DSYTC-Carp clients spent the morning at the new Ottawa Art Gallery on Daly Street.

 

We were taken through three of the current exhibitions:  Karim Rashid: Cultural Shaping; Michael Belmore/A.J.Casson: Confluences and Tributaries; and Michele Provost: Everything Must Go/Liquidation Totale

Karim Rashid is a Canadian industrial designer.  Our guide explained that in product design, the companies are credited for the pieces since they would have paid the industrial designers to create something that meets their specifications.  Rashid is one such designer who has a number of distinctive shapes that are used in the vast majority of his works.  Our youth wondered how expensive it would be to furnish a house using pieces designed by Rashid but were told that he designs for mid-level companies as well, such as Umbra, and he has created many common and recognizable products.

 

The Firestone Reverb Gallery juxtaposes an artist from the Ottawa Art Gallery’s Firestone Gallery with a currently-practicing contemporary Canadian artist, in this case Michael Belmore.  Belmore is an Ottawa-based Anishinaabe artist who uses a variety of materials to create landforms which are shown in direct contrast to the landforms of A.J. Casson’s work from the Group of Seven.

 

Possibly the most interesting and engaging piece that we encountered was Michele Provost’s Everything Must Go/Liquidation Totale.  We entered the exhibit with many questions such as: “Are these things actually for sale?” and statements such as, “I would buy this!”  The installation work makes some reference to a 20th century Canadian painter (Jean Paul Riopelle) and is a commentary on consumerism and commodification of art.  It was stunning to think of the hours that that artist would have spent creating every artifact that filled those two gallery rooms.  Many of us would have happily taken home any number of the pieces created for the installation, which maybe goes to show just how much we are all a part of consumer society.