Results tagged “torontointernationalartfair”

MUSIC: We can't really think of a better way to nurse your Nuit Blanche hangover than spending an afternoon with Nardwuar. The Human Serviette himself will be performing at Trash Palace with his band, The Evaporators. He'll also be presenting clips from his "Video Vault," which feature interviews with Marilyn Manson, Iggy Pop, and Michael Moore. The 3Tards and The Weirdies will also perform. Trash Palace (89-B Niagara Street), 3 p.m., $6.

MUSIC: Today, War Child Canada is presenting "Busking For Change," a day-long busking event featuring a number of reasonably successful Canadian performers. Among those performing are Our Lady Peace's Raine Maida (a fervent supporter of War Child Canada), Chantal Kreviazuk, Zack Werner, The Waking Eyes, and Neverending White Lights. Expect to see lots of teenaged girls unable to control their excitement, and a slough of disgruntled buskers who've had their spots stolen by real musicians with stable income. Various locations in the downtown core, 8 a.m.–6 p.m.., FREE (plus the donation to War Child Canada you'll inevitably end up making).

Or maybe we're just being presumptuous in assuming that most Torontoist readers can't afford $80,000 paintings. If you can, give us a call: we're free for dinner next Saturday.

At Torontoist, we're so used to writing about certain niche genres of art—graffiti art, video art, comic art, participatory art, billboard liberation art, performance art, outdoor art, nocturnal art, transit art—that we tend to forget about the encompassing category of "fine art for the commercial market."

Toronto art lovers will have to make some tough choices this weekend with both the Toronto International Art Fair and the Toronto Alternative Art Fair going on.

The Toronto International Art Fair is just plain weird. People pay $16 to look at art in a dimly lit basement in the bowels of the Metro Convention Centre. Everybody looks a bit sallow, and time seems to stand still as you troll through the endless booths of $10,000 masterpieces. At 5 pm each day, Canadian Art editor Richard Rhodes gives a short talk and introduces an artist and his work, and, having missed both Alain Paiement's amazing overhead photographs and Allyson Mitchell's fuzzy wonders, we arrived on the day Mr. Rhodes was presenting John Dickson's Smoking City, a cardboard rendering of a North American metropolis, made up of buildings from cities all over the continent. Periodically, this jerrymandered metropolis would fill up with smoke, and the cardboard constructions would take on a new and frightening appearance. At the very least, we discovered that 9-11 art is not our thing. And that drinks in the convention centre are too expensive.

Two major art fairs in town this week mean that it'll be hard to wander around Toronto without hitting an artist, critic, art dealer, patron or hanger on of some sort.