Ars Ex Machina

The BFA grad show got a couple of similar reviews this week:

Each of the graduates demonstrates what they have learned over the past four years, an important part of an art education. There is nothing surprising here, nor anything disappointing. (Sarah Hamilton, Vue Weekly 30 April)

The reviews of this year's University of Alberta BFA show, Ars Ex Machina in the weeklies both come to the same conclusion. A few pieces are discusse, but they hardly seem important – Jill Stanton even says that they are not. Instead, we are left with some slightly positive remarks about how we can expect better things from these artists in the future. It seems a little disappointing to me.

Of course the show is a bit of a hodge-podge by it's nature, which is our excuse for having such low expectations of it. I remember well enough showing my own work with a significantly larger class in an even more cramped show, which was met with its own mixed reactions. But I also remember being excited about putting up my work for it, and I hope that this year's grads felt the same about theirs. If they do, then this noncommittal "let's wait and see what's next" is maybe a little bit insulting.

I have no problem with critics insulting art shows – that's the way things work. But this doesn't seem quite right. It seems, in fact, like it was done in a misguided attempt to avoid that insult. For some reason, this show isn't considered a real one, and these reviews try to gently deliver the message that it is unimportant.

But I don't think this is true.

I don't expect our anemic commercial galleries to be knocking down doors to get to these young artists because they are uninterested for other reasons (assuming that the work is good enough to provoke that kind of interest anyway), but this show should be tremendous. It is our first real chance to see what the kids have been working on, and although it isn't aggressively curated, if Sarah Hamilton can find themes to talk about then its about as cohesive as any other random group show, including those that these same artists may soon be participating in if we don't forget about them, or them about us.

Clearly, neither Mandy Espezel and Jill Stanton nor Sarah Hamilton feel really comfortable making any real statement about the show collectively, and why should they? But they still try. There is some bad stuff up in FAB and some better stuff. Can't we just get excited about the good works instead of packing it all into a big nothing? In both articles the authors try to highlight some of their favourite works but I think that the conclusions undermine their choices. How can we take their selections seriously when they go on to say that either the whole thing was good (despite the fact that there is unarguably some pretty boring stuff there), and further that even though they liked some things a bit, it still doesn't even really matter?