Jennifer Matotek’s favourite Canadian curated moments

[This list is part of an informal archive of Canadian curated moments put together by Canadian curators from across the country. Jennifer Matotek is an independent curator and videomaker based in Toronto. Formerly employed as the Assistant Curator of Exhibitions at The Power Plant, she now works at TIFF Bell Lightbox in the role of Senior Coordinator, Programme Administration.]

Okay, here are my thoughts. They don’t really go back further than 10 years because I’ve only seen around 10 years’ worth of exhibitions as a curator in the Toronto area.

Barbara Fischer – “General Idea Editions 1967-1995” (2003) and “Projections” (2007) both at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (traveling)

Two very important, if very different, survey shows.

Louise Dery – David Altmejd at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007).

Whether you like his work or not is irrelevant. It’s just really really nice to see a curator and an artist use the challenges of the Canadian pavilion in a way that also showcases its advantages.

The Power Plant – Glenn Ligon’s “Some Changes” (2005), co-curated by Wayne Baerwaldt and Thelma Golden, and the Royal Art Lodge’s “Ask the Dust” (2003), co-organized The Drawing Center, New York, the Power Plant, Toronto, De Vleeshal, Middelburg, and Plug In ICA, Winnipeg.

Two shows that really put the artists in question on the map and the radar of a wider audience (okay, maybe Ligon was already hot stuff but I still think the Power Plant helped showcase his practice in a way that took his career and international recognition to another level). In more recent years, I also really really liked “Auto Emotion: Autobiography, emotion and self-fashioning” (2007), co-curated by Gregory Burke and Helena Reckitt,  and “Universal Code” (2009), curated by Gregory Burke, as examples of strong group shows which took interesting twists (and risks) on predictable and broad themes. From Philip Monk‘s tenure, I also really liked “American Playhouse: The Theatre of Self-Presentation” (1996) and “Picturing the Toronto Art Community: The Queen Street Years” (1998), for showing me artists and histories that I had never seen before as an undergraduate art student.

The AGYU (Art Gallery of York University)– during Philip Monk and Emelie Chhangur‘s tenure there, I really loved both the Matthew Brannon’s “Try & Be Grateful” (2007) and Jeremy Deller’s “Retrospective” (2006) exhibitions, but they’re not Canadian. Oh well.

I am struggling to think of shows at the Royal Ontario Museum and Art Gallery of Ontario which changed my life and challenged my ideas about art. I have some guilt over this, so I’m wondering if anyone else has thoughts here? A lot of great projects there seem to have been staged by artists rather than curators. Given this, should the curators be congratulated for trusting the artists with their spaces and collections, then?