Lara Favaretto at the Rennie Collection

It's a great time to duck into an art gallery these days - not only for some air conditioning relief from the blazing sun, but also for some wicked artwork that's graced the city.

Over at the Rennie Collection, they are showcasing the work of Lara Favaretto. This is the "first Canadian solo exhibition by Italian artist Lara Favaretto.  Based in Turin,  her work has been the subject of solo and group exhibitions at institutions throughout the world, including MoMA PS1, New York; Salon d’Honneur du Grand Palais, Paris; dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel; and Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Turin. She is the recipient of the 2011 Querini Stampalia Prize for Young Italian Artists and the 2005 Venice Biennale Young Italian Art Prize."

Whether it's a cube of degrading confetti, titled "Village of the Damned".... 

...or a room full of spinning car wash sponges, named after famous couples...

...or a room full of confetti blowing in the wind to create a unique landscape....

.... this exhibit is sure to bring a smile to your face.

Lara Favaretto's Collected Works is on now at the Rennie Collection until October 3. 

Symphony in the Park

"The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra performs its annual free outdoor concert showcasing the beauty of Burnaby’s Deer Lake Park. The crowd-pleasing program of light classics and popular favourites is always a coveted and not to be missed highlight of the summer!

Come early, bring a blanket or chair and a picnic and settle in for a wonderful evening with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Just a reminder that parking in the vicinity is limited, so alternate transportation is recommended."

For more info, check out the website.  Sunday July 12, 7-9pm. Free admission.

Geoffrey Farmer Exhibit at the VAG

I skipped right through the exhibit on Italian paintings and ran up the stairs to witness the exhibit that everyone should be talking about: Geoffrey Farmer! A local Vancouver artist, his installations have a wit and charm and whimsy to them. They are also completely overwhelming and it may take multiple visits to the Vancouver Art Gallery to really get a feel of everything. Here are some snapshots I took that don't do the exhibit justice in the least!

Geoffrey Farmer's "How Do I Fit This Ghost In My Mouth" exhibit is on now at the Vancouver Art Gallery until September 7th. It is a MUST SEE this summer!!

The Children's Hour

This summer, Ensemble Theatre Company will be bringing not one, not two, but THREE different plays to Vancouver in a repertory season. One of those plays is Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour.

"Revolving around a scandal at a girls’ boarding school, Lillian Hellman’s 1934 breakout hit play The Children’s Hour is a heart-wrenching cautionary tale.

Karen and Martha run a private girls’ school in a converted farmhouse in New England. When a young student spreads a fabricated story, the consequences are devastating. In a storm of gossip and prejudice, the teachers are forced to confront not only their community’s reaction to slander, but also the truth within themselves."

The Children's Hour begins previews July 7th with shows on July 16, 21, 24, 26, 29, and August 1, 3, 6, 2015 at 8 PM at the Jericho Theatre. For more info and to find out the other two plays, visit Ensemble Theatre. 

The Stonewater Rapture

Clockwork Theatre along with Stone's Throw Productions brings to the Vancouver stage The Stonewater Rapture.

Carlyle and Whitney are two Texan teenagers on the verge of their sexual awakening. Whitney, who has just been elected president of his church’s youth ministry, desperately tries to seduce Carlyle to avoid further bullying from the other boys at school for being a virgin. Carlyle, however, will have none of it, and she coyly refuses Whitney’s advances while making sure she berates him with the biblical knowledge and religious protocol they have been subject to their entire lives. Through a series of mishap and devastating downfalls, the two struggle to find common ground between their religious upbringing and the harsh realities of the world.”


July 8th – 11th, 2015 | 8pm Evening Performances, $10 at the Pacific Theatre.

For more information check out the Facebook page.

Iris

From one of the brothers who brought you the original Grey Gardens comes another documentary about another New York lady. It's IRIS, directed by Albert Maysles.

I had never heard of her before, and what an amazing person she is! Her sense of style and fashion are enviable. Her sweet demeanor and the love she shares with her 100 year old husband is adorable. At 90 years old, she is going strong and I hope to run into her the next time I visit New York just to say how fabulous I think she is.

I tried to go see the first few showings of this but they were completely sold out. I finally got to see an added screening of it, and even that was packed! Thankfully, there are even more screenings in July!

Here's the description of the film from the VIFF site:

Meet Iris Apfel, doyenne of New York fashion, and more importantly an indomitable and inspiring life force well into her ninth decade. Quick-witted and always flamboyantly dressed, Iris retains her enthusiasm for fashion, art and people. Despite the abundance of glamour in her current life, she continues to embrace the values and work ethic established during a middle-class Queens upbringing during the Great Depression. "I feel lucky to be working. If you’re lucky enough to do something you love, everything else follows."

"Iris’ creativity lies not in inventing anything new, but in her startling assemblages of found objects. Her illustrious career as an interior designer included consultations with multiple successive inhabitants of the White House (her unspecified “problems” with Jackie Kennedy are allowed to pass in charged silence), while offbeat items stored in a massive Long Island City warehouse reflect a long, varied history of catering to more adventurous upscale clients.

Carl’s 16mm footage and Nikon-shot still photographs document the couple’s twice-yearly globetrotting shopping trips to out-of-the-way bazaars, flea markets and assorted outposts in search of the eye-catching and off-kilter. A priest’s vestments, for instance, might be bought and repurposed as loungewear. Maysles captures Iris’ present-day shopping expeditions as, squired by designer Duro Olowu, she ventures into no less esoteric, off-the-beaten-path venues in Harlem, whose neighborhood churchwomen’s “Sunday best” she emphatically favors over the uniform black paraded in Soho.
Iris’ love of craftsmanship, which she sees disappearing under a flood of homogenization and conformity, led her and Carl to found Old World Weavers, a actory that reproduced unique 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century fabrics and designs — well known, as was Iris herself, within the trade. But it took a 2005 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, titled “Rara Avis: The Irreverent Iris Apfel,” spearheaded by fashion scholar Harold Koda, to transform her, in her own wry epithet, into “an octogenarian starlet” and to elevate her “improvisations” to the status of wondrous creations." Ronnie Scheib, Variety

"A joyous celebration of creativity and razor-sharp wit sustained into old age, as evinced by outspoken nonagenarian fashion icon Iris Apfel." Variety

IRIS is on at the Vancity Theatre on July 5, 11, 13, 15, 16, & 18! Don't miss out!!

15X At Night

The Dancing on the Edge festival is upon us, so why not go get a taste of what's going on by attending 15X At Night, a free outdoors site-specific event taking place now until July 11.





15X AT NIGHT
FREE. ON NOW! Each night til July 11 at 10pm. Check it out before the festival begins! Bring your friends and family.
Meet at Ocean Art Works on Granville Island


15 X AT NIGHT is a 30-minute site-specific solo created by one of Canada’s best choreographers, Paul-André Fortier, for the dancer Simon Courchel, performed outside at night every day for 15 days. The sites selected for the performance are atypical, integrated into the city and its nighttime activities, to offer a different type of contact with dance, audiences and the city itself. At night, cityscapes take on a distinctive, yet mysterious charm. It is this mystery that this work is attempting to explore by bringing dance to a less familiar environment. Bodies that shiver in the cool, silent night air; darkness that alters our perceptions. This unique outdoor performance follows in the footsteps of Paul-André Fortier’s popular Dancing on the Edge show Solo 30 x 30 (2009).