Articles

Corinne Carlson, Robin Collyer, Barr Gilmore, Jen Hutton, Sarah Lazarovic, Ron Terada

June 21 to November 11, 2012
Koffler Gallery Off-Site
at Honest Ed’s
581 Bloor Street West
Curator: Mona Filip

EXHIBITION HOURS
Monday to Friday, 10 AM – 9 PM | Saturday 10 AM – 6 PM
Sunday 11 AM – 6 PM

Summer Special, the latest project in the Koffler Gallery Off-Site series, takes its inspiration from the trademark signs and show bills of Honest Ed’s, Toronto’s landmark discount store. Building upon the store’s tradition of craftsmanship, Toronto artists Corinne Carlson, Robin Collyer, Barr Gilmore, Jen Hutton, Sarah Lazarovic and Vancouver-based Ron Terada create new works that explore the visual vocabulary of commercial and urban signage, infiltrating the iconic building and its façade with site-specific installations.

Drawing upon the realm of advertising, Corinne Carlson translates popular culture images and words-as-image through her idiosyncratic, autobiographical filter. For Summer Special, Carlson prints postcards that look like letterpress cards of days gone by. The cards, displayed for sale amongst Honest Ed’s merchandise, offer a souvenir of her personal conversations. Over several weeks, Robin Collyer took thousands of photographs inside the store, in the uncanny light and near silence before opening hours. The resulting stop motion film reveals the commercial machine at rest and highlights the hanging, hand-painted signs. Collyer also creates a window intervention of price tags bearing exorbitant figures never before seen at Honest Ed’s, where the highest value is the inexpensiveness of the goods for sale.

Having culled the word ‘Honest’ from the familiar store signage for his Nuit Blanche intervention in 2008, Barr Gilmore plays once again thedétournement game by scrambling the famous letters to spell The Son. While the evocative new sign allows for many interpretations, the artist conceives it as a self-portrait – an abstract representation of an only son, born with the Sun in Cancer. Placed atop the highest elevation at Honest Ed’s, The Son becomes a radiant beacon and a sign of hope. In her intervention for Summer Special, Jen Hutton references another historic Mirvish Village sign, that of Memory Lane Books, which used to be located at 594 Markham Street. The archway entrance of the store has long been painted over, but Welcome to Yesterday becomes an equally poetic idiom for Honest Ed’s today.

Sarah Lazarovic works with Honest Ed’s signboard artist Wayne Reuben to produce a series of hand-painted signs that capture Twitter musings on Toronto urban issues in the store’s unmistakable household font. The incongruity of transferring tweets – today’s most transient forms of expression – into the medium of hand-painted signage reveals its anachronism as a process intended for a time when things written were meant to last. Transforming some of the store’s slogan signs located in Honest Ed’s alley, Ron Terada overlays excerpts from the eccentric catchphrases unto abstract patterns referencing Frank Stella’s Black Paintings. His new signs evoke two interconnected histories within the legacy of the store’s owners as both commercial entrepreneurs and champions of the arts.

For more information visit: www.kofflerarts.org

Picturesque landscapes by day and fabulous entertainment by night, Eilat is an excellent base for tours to Petra (Jordan) and Cairo. You’ve got the underwater observatory, a zoo, camel rides to Beduin tents, mountain biking, archaeological excavation activities and exciting hiking trails at Timna Park.

Timna Valley Park was opened by the Jewish National Fund to share Rothenberg’s findings with the public, and there are around 20 different walking trails and some roads in the park to lead visitors to the various attractions. The Jewish National Fund, a non-profit organization that aids in the development of Israel, funded the creation of many of the non-historic tourist and family attractions and activities in the park.

One of the Attractions at Timna Valley is a life-size replica of the biblical tabernacle, a tent that God instructed Moses to build in order to have a transportable sanctuary during the Exodus from Egypt to the Holy Land. The Tabernacle replica, constructed in recent years, in the park does not use the original metals but is faithful to the biblical description in every other way.

The physical experience of the full scale replica really helps you appreciate its history and especially how it travelled with the Jews in the desert. The replica includes the laver (a ceremonial basin) and altar in the outer court, complete with the menorah, incense altar and table of twelve loaves of bread for Shabbat. The only object inside the tabernacle, known as the Holy of Holies, is the ark containing the Ten Commandments, the rod of Aaron, and the pot of manna.

Timna Mines of Time

The new Visitors’ Center houses a 360-degree multimedia experience called Mines of Time that uses computer simulation and state-of-the-art animation to introduce visitors to the Egyptian and Midianite culture, history, and copper mining before they enter the rest of the park. It shares stories, riddles, and mysteries of Timna Valley for visitors to learn about the rich culture of the empires that once ruled the area. The presentation continues as visitors walk through an artificial mining system, complete with life-like miners and equipment.

Timna Lake

The JNF built the man-made Timna Lake and its surroundings as a center for family activities. The initial cost and fundraising effort was led, a to a large part underwritten, by Avrum M. Chudnow of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  A handicraft workshop offers the chance to make sand pictures, fill bottles with colored sand, press copper coin replicas, make pottery, paint, weave, and watch a demonstration of copper production. The lake has a playground and offers paddleboat and bicycle rides, Nearby are hiking, rappelling, and rock climbing sites.

After you’ve filled your bottles with sand, relax and enjoy a falafel platter at the Bedouin restaurant and a souvenir shop on the premises. The restaurant also rents the space for parties and special events.

Photography by Esther Moyal