Claire Christie

The act of rendering can be understood as both additive and reductive. It can refer to a version of something. It might imply a transformation. read more.

David Merritt

For some time now I have been trying to take notice of things that appear just as readily forgotten. Those I can recall are noted in drawings. I call these drawings “notices”. read more.

Ben Portis

Step outside for a walk. An inverted plastic cup presents itself on the sidewalk, like a pylon. Step around it. Seconds later, unseen, it audibly scuttles into the curb. Fallen foliage reveals a previously hidden bird‘s nest, abandoned. Woven amongst its twigs and grasses, a strand of blue ribbon glints in the light. Its frayed tail dangles, dancing up with the breeze. Light overnight snow weighs on the bladetips of grass. In fifteen minutes, the sun will have risen sufficiently to sluff this burden away. read more.

Artforum, Jen Hutton

Since the mid-1990s, the meat of David Merritt's drawings has been written words--the lyrics and titles of popular songs, to be exact--and in his latest exhibition this material generates themes of presentness and loss. From a distance, the collective presence of the works on view here seems to add up to not much more than a whisper, so to appreicate Merritt's fine approach to the medium one must lean in closely. read more.

Carl Wilson

It was hearing about an application called Shazam that made me finally give in and buy an iPhone. Rumour had it that it let you point your phone at any music playing, say, on the radio or in a shop or bar and, with a swipe of finger over touchscreen, get the song's and artist's names. For a writer about pop music whose superpowers do not include total trivia recall -- and who, for great chunks of his life, didn't pay especially close heed to what was on the charts -- it was an irresistible lure: When "On the Loose" came chugging through the room, I'd be able to make a surreptitious consult and meet expectant questioning eyes with the answer that it was Saga who had to do it their way or no way at all, not any of the other 1970s Canadian chest-hair bands whose names might scissor-kick their way across my brain, like Triumph or Chilliwack or April Wine. read more.