Scott Watson (Canadian, b. 1950) is Director Emeritus and Research Fellow at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia. A curator whose career has spanned more than thirty-five years, Watson is internationally recognized for his research and work in curatorial and exhibition studies, contemporary art and issues, and art theory and criticism. His distinctions include the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art (2010); the Alvin Balkind Award for Creative Curatorship in BC Arts (2008) and the UBC Dorothy Somerset Award for Performance Development in the Visual and Performing Arts (2005). Watson has published extensively in the areas of contemporary Canadian and international art. His 1990 monograph on Jack Shadbolt earned the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize in 1991. Recent publications include Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry (2015); Thrown: British Columbia’s Apprentices of Bernard Leach and their Contemporaries (2011), a finalist for the 2012 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize; “Race, Wilderness, Territory and the Origins of the Modern Canadian Landscape” and “Disfigured Nature” (in Beyond Wilderness, McGill University Press, 2007); and “Transmission Difficulties: Vancouver Painting in the 1960s” (in Paint, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2006).
The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the UBC Walter C. Koerner Library are pleased to announce the exhibition of Las partes que más me sudan cuando me pongo nervioso by Tonel.
Las partes que más me sudan cuando me pongo nervioso [The Parts of Me that Sweat the Most When I Get Nervous], a large, diptych drawing of a sweating male nude, is both a self-portrait and a fictional character. The work, installed in the main floor of Koerner Library evokes graphic humour while dealing with marginal aspects of human sexuality and the physical nature of bodies. Connotations of a day-to-day physicality, including scatological and psychological concerns come through in the image of a sweating, nervous man, whose placement leaves him open to inspection and scrutiny. Irony plays a role, as this peculiar personal moment subverts any common notion of male machismo. In the tradition of cartooning, a bare minimum of line and written text convey a simple message about bodily function that leads to a related question: what personal moments are occurring in our bodies when we are in public situations?
This project is a collaboration of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the Walter C. Koerner Library at the University of British Columbia, and is made possible by the generous support of the Audain Foundation. Art in the Library aims to open possibilities for interpretation and new perspectives on contemporary art by presenting art that questions and challenges our current perceptions.
Scott Watson (Canadian, b. 1950) is Director Emeritus and Research Fellow at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia. A curator whose career has spanned more than thirty-five years, Watson is internationally recognized for his research and work in curatorial and exhibition studies, contemporary art and issues, and art theory and criticism. His distinctions include the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art (2010); the Alvin Balkind Award for Creative Curatorship in BC Arts (2008) and the UBC Dorothy Somerset Award for Performance Development in the Visual and Performing Arts (2005). Watson has published extensively in the areas of contemporary Canadian and international art. His 1990 monograph on Jack Shadbolt earned the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize in 1991. Recent publications include Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry (2015); Thrown: British Columbia’s Apprentices of Bernard Leach and their Contemporaries (2011), a finalist for the 2012 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize; “Race, Wilderness, Territory and the Origins of the Modern Canadian Landscape” and “Disfigured Nature” (in Beyond Wilderness, McGill University Press, 2007); and “Transmission Difficulties: Vancouver Painting in the 1960s” (in Paint, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2006).
The Audain Foundation
Curators Tonel and Keith Wallace lead a tour of The Spaces Between: Contemporary Art from Havana. Click through for a video of the tour.
[more]Cuban artist Tonel carries the Cuban tradition of satirical illustration into an ongoing interrogation of the condition of the individual in contemporary Cuba, started by the American blockade and called to account by the revolution (now in its 41st year). Tonel has been active in the Havana art world since 1981, when he participated in the artist-organised exhibition, Volumen I. He was trained as a commercial illustrator (as were many of the Group of Seven, Andy Warhol and Ray Johnson), but in a communist country when illustration was directed toward popular images of political events, literature & film. For the Belkin Art Gallery, he is mounting an installation referring to the food crisis of the Special Period (1989-) in addition to drawings and sculpture, many of them self-portraits. Cuban curator Eugenio Valdes has chosen drawings that foreground the theme of a vexed and anxious, masculine self-image. The exhibition catalogue includes writings by Tonel. The exhibition will tour to the Wifredo Lam Centre, Havana, Cuba in January 2001. Curated by Scott Watson and Eugenio Valdés.
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