Will Munro: Total Eclipse
Until Sept. 26, Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas Street W., www.ago.net/toronto-now
Will Munro was my friend.
For the sake of transparency, I’ll state right off the top that I hosted his famous monthly Vazaleen party a couple of times, wrote about his art for various publications and shared space with him in a handful of group shows. More important, for me and everybody who knew him, Munro was a unique presence in the often bitter, fractious and insincere Toronto art world: He was a genuinely sweet, life-affirming person and a damned good artist.
I consider objectivity a myth, and this article would be the last place I would even pretend to see such unicorns. Munro’s death this summer – at 35, after a long battle with brain cancer – still hurts, and shall for a long time. Toronto misses him terribly.
Thus, I approached the Art Gallery of Ontario’s tribute show, Will Munro: Total Eclipse, with more than a little trepidation. The show faces an almost insurmountable number of tasks: to acknowledge the life of an important artist; to be an effective commemoration; and to give informed and uninformed viewers alike a reasonable understanding of the artist’s practice. That’s a lot of baggage to store in the AGO’s tiny Young Gallery, the cube perched atop Frank restaurant, and perhaps too much to ask of the AGO’s Toronto Now initiative. Kudos for bravery, if nothing else.
Happily, Total Eclipse works as both a brief survey of Munro’s vast output and as a respectful nod to his passing. And, just as he would have wanted it, there is plenty of punk-rock-infused furious creativity, a rough DIY exuberance and a few gleeful, anti-establishment single-finger salutes (made doubly powerful by being placed in the good old AGO). Given the fact that Total Eclipse was assembled in relative haste (Munro died on May 21), it is a far better exhibition than could reasonably be expected. Kudos again for this glittering wake.
Total Eclipse focuses primarily on Munro’s excellent, but not often shown, large wall pieces, including several of his deliciously bratty textile works celebrating queer music aesthetics. At the centre of these is an eerie masked figure made out of cleverly reconfigured men’s briefs and bright green sequins. There is also a huge printed mirror casting a lovely, spectral reflection on the gallery floor. Munro’s last formal exhibition comprised, among other things, printed mirrors arranged to reflect back on each other and create visual echo chambers, magical vortexes. It’s telling how mere months before his death, Munro was busy exploring yet another element in his already varied practice.
But my favourites are Munro’s felt turntable platters, because they combine so many of his obsessions – DJ culture and gay dance-club design, fabric art, hand stitching, wearable and/or practical art, and self-empowerment through tabletop creativity. Meant to sit atop spinning record players, the platters are decorated with bold, simple shapes and 1980s New Wave colours. One platter carries, in fabric cursive, the message “music is my boyfriend” – possibly the most succinct artist statement ever written.
Is it churlish of me to wonder why this beautiful, idea-packed exhibition didn’t take place while Munro was alive? Perhaps, but objectivity is for people who have no friends.
Multiple Coincidences
Until Sept. 19, York Quay Centre, 245 Queens Quay W.
Collaborations between artists are mysterious things. Most of the time, one artist’s sensibilities appear to dominate the other’s, or the final product boils down to little more than people agreeing to share wall space.
Lizz Aston and Johanna Schmidt’s Multiple Coincidences, however, is a near-perfect collaboration, a synthesis of two distinct practices, a frisky hybrid animal. Without the didactic panels, you’d be hard-pressed to figure out where Aston starts and Schmidt ends, or vice versa.
Johanna Schmidt's Eggshells to cracked earth grouping, 2010— Tom Bilenkey
