Public Parking
A journal for storytelling, arguments, and discovery through tangential conversations.
3rd Kamias Triennial
Monday, February 3, 2020 | Public Parking Staff
We are very excited to be bringing you some coverage of the 3rd Kamias Triennial from Quezon City, in the Philippines. Beginning February 7th through 22nd, the third edition of the triennial will unite a breadth of international and local artists in a series of exhibitions, performances, screenings and workshops across multiple venues in the city. Under the title of “Sawsawan: Conversations in the Dirty Kitchen”, this iteration of the triennial as the organizers and curators describe, “foregrounds [an] intention to gather [in a space] where we can engage in messy, complex and nourishing conversation generated by the many voices of our artists and audiences.” Please check back in as our local Quezon City correspondent brings us some highlights occurring throughout the two-week festival. We will also bring you our...
Body in the plural: in conversation with Camille Rojas
Thursday, July 26, 2018 | Public Parking Staff
At a time when we continue to be skeptical of spoken language and the written word grows desensitized, it becomes more imperative to look elsewhere for alternate ways of relating and moving through our surroundings. As dance and other rhythmic movement-based practices remain synthesized within an exhibition context, it also takes hold with the demarcations of the institution giving way to mutable potentials for establishing meanings.  If a number of rising practices today like Anne Imhof's and Angelica Mesiti's, are foregrounded by physically inscribed forms of communication, then there’s a case to be made about reaching beyond words and known language.  To a great extent, Toronto artist Camille Rojas’ budding practice leans towards these non-linguistic modes of communication adapting a shifting assemblage of sound, tone, resonance, sensing, and touch. Through...
Parking Lot: Casey Wei
Monday, May 21, 2018 | Public Parking Staff
Casey Wei might not use the word 'auteur' to describe herself or anyone word at all for that matter but I'll loosely reach for it in relation to her. Looking at Casey Wei's oeuvre over the last however many years, if it appears that she freewheels through a varying contrapuntal pallet,  that might be true to an extent but with a closer look, you'll also observe that she does this with a considerable degree of textured analysis and veneration. Seeing her shift confidently through her poly-directional efforts from text to sound to the visual; it becomes needlessly confining to reach for a single describing word. Among the many hats Wei wears, she organizes the exploratory series art rock?, she curates the serial book project Whitney Houston et. al, and she's...
2017 in retrospect
Wednesday, January 3, 2018 | Public Parking Staff
The meat world of the arts seem to increasingly become an endangered species. This is evident as most of us continue to be pinned to our screens and into the whirlpool of news, stories, memes, and whatever cultural artifacts that are flushed into the ether these days.  I mean, wouldn't it be nice to live in a more decentralized IRL world where we can save our sweat trekking to the usual cultural hubs? I suppose that is why centers like Contemporary Art Daily understand this desire and makes us complicit to our streaming wherever you want lifestyles. That said, we continue to hold on to the vitality of museums, galleries, theatre houses, and the like. Because they continue to legitimize and uphold these things we collectively agree as being aspects...
Parking Lot: Agnes Wong
Tuesday, February 7, 2017 | Public Parking Staff
Parking Lot is our lax interview series where we get to really know a creative. We get to learn about what they've been up to creatively, some random facts about them, some telling ones, and just about anything else that comes up. In this episode with got in touch with multi-directional creative, Agnes Wong. The Eindhoven via Toronto-based creative share with us her experience living in the Netherlands and how that is informing the way she thinks through her work, where she would like to see her creative pursuits go in the future, some of her earliest impulses, and what she's been curious about lately.    Public Parking: Are you currently in the Netherlands?   Agnes Wong: Yes! I am in Eindhoven currently, a smaller city in the southern part of the...
Parking Lot: Nathan Levasseur
Monday, January 23, 2017 | Public Parking Staff
Photo by Joshua Storie     Parking Lot is our lax interview series where we get to really know a creative. We get to learn about what they've been creating, some random facts about them, some telling ones, and just about anything else that comes up. In this installment, we had the pleasure of speaking  with Edmonton's Nathan Levasseur. We learned quiet a lot from Lavasseur as he shared with us how he thinks through his predominately design based approach to his practice, his thoughts on emotional labour, male vulnerability,  and bit on what he was like as kid among other talking points.     levasseur:       "it’s really interesting that people who produce most of the visual language we engage with are not trained or pushed to dismantle or reject harmful stereotypes— I wonder...
Parking Lot: Shellie Zhang
Tuesday, January 17, 2017 | Public Parking Staff
Parking Lot is our lax interview series where we get to really know a creative. We get to learn about what they've been up to creatively, some random facts about them, some telling ones, and just about anything else that comes up. In this installment we speak with Toronto based artist Shellie Zhang We first got in contact with Zhang right around the onset of US presidential elections late October into early November. In our chat we find out how the US's new presidential administration personally affects Zhang, her experiences growing up between China, the US and Canada, where she'd like to see her creative pursuits go, some of her earliest creative memories, and also we talk about her ongoing photo series that tracks the history of a Chinese delicacy...
Parking Lot: Alison Postma
Tuesday, December 6, 2016 | Public Parking Staff
Parking Lot is our lax interview series where we get to really know a creative. We get to learn about what they've been up to creatively, some random facts about them, some telling ones, and just about anything else that comes up. In this episode, we talk to Alison Postma. After spending the last couple years in Guelph finishing art school, Postma is out on her own, she relocated to Toronto, she's been experimenting with her work by push out of her familiar working conventions while also figuring out how/where to direct her own independent practice. Read our full conversation with the AIMIA AGO Photo Prize winner below.           "I really like photography’s ability to remove objects from their context, and I’ve been very conscious about everything I include in (and...
Portfolio: Danny Fox
Thursday, June 23, 2016 | Public Parking Staff
A couple things come to mind when looking at work by Danny Fox; it can range from at times being very unnerving and surreal to being intense and exciting when viewed all at the same time. He liberally plays with color like a happy sugar-high kid. Fox is a self-taught artist; he has never been to art school or had to sit through any crits offered in any formal studio art classes. In that, his paintings reveal a charming sense of inquisitiveness for form in painting. Though with that sense of childish naiveté to his renderings, he toys with reoccurring off-center motifs of strip clubs, cowboys, cowboys riding on horses, boxing matches, and sense of ruckus and sheer hedonistic revelry. What makes Fox's work interesting to us is his freewheeling...