Conservatives Cut Funding for Artists Touring Abroad

By Alison Brown

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“Even the Nazis liked art, what’s up with Harper?”(Anonymous: comment on a CBC forum)

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Now that the Conservative government has announced it will no longer fund a federal program that subsidizes international promotional tours of Canadian artists. Be prepared Canada because if things keep going in this direction the conservatives will see to it that Canada no longer has a face or voice on the world stage of art.

This cut is particularly close to my heart because as curator of “The Lisa Brown Project”. I am in the process of putting together a tour of artwork that will travel to Berlin, Germany, November 2009 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of The Berlin Wall, the unification of Germany and one of the most significant events of the 20th century. http://www.die-berliner-mauer.de/en/

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Many people don’t realize that before the wall came down artists from all over the world painted on it. My sister, Lisa Brown http://www.lisa-brown.com was an ex patriot living in Berlin. She is the only Canadian artist to have ever painted on the Berlin Wall. Working along side international artists like Thierry Noir http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thierry_Noir and Kiddy Citney http://www.artpark.de/

She was considered to be one of the fastest women painters in the world. Her work includes installations, action paintings and performances. She has created massive outdoor murals for events such as “The Love Parade,” the biggest techno festival in Europe, the “Arts Elecktronica” in Linz, Austria and her erotic “Peep Show” bunker at The Tacheles Arthaus in Berlin.

You may have seen her mural “Dog eat Dog” on the big wall of The Cameron House Toronto in 1995, or you may have heard about when she painted on the windows of Mitchell Gallery in Yorkville to promote her show “Wild Animals” and almost got arrested by Metro Police for displaying what they believed to be pornography (a naked dog and naked bird)

Saturday Night magazine did a full-page article on Lisa followed by a profile on CBC’s Fashion File, but most of Lisa’s press is in the European media as she was living there for so long.

Before moving to Germany in 1996 she lived and worked in Paris France for 10 years. Honing her craft and perfecting her art. She studied at the Beaux Arts in Paris and is a Graduate of The Ontario Collage of Art and Design where she studied in The Florence program in Italy. At this time she showed her work in France, Italy, Spain and Great Britain.

“The Lisa Brown Project” Is becoming a charitable foundation our main mandate is to fund opportunities for education in the arts. We have a scholarship at The Ontario Collage of Art and Design that is intended to fund artists who wish to enhance their creativity by studying abroad as she did. http://www.ocad.ca/home.htm

Lisa’s “group of seven paintings” was first shown at the Tacheles Art Haus in Berlin 99 with the title “Fast Gift”. This was the beginning of a large series of paintings about opposites. Love and Hate, Stop and Go, Light and Dark, Friend and Enemy.
Lisa intended to show that black and white statements only balance one another to find the truth somewhere in between. Representing extremes shows tendencies and similarities between the differences.

Radical thought calls for radical action. This show was to prove that once and for all we have a choice and that is all we really have. This is a recurrent theme in much of Lisa’s work. Lisa was a prolific creator whose work was greatly appreciated and created sensation in Europe and In North America. Tragically she was struck down in her prime, a victim of cancer.

It is our intention to put together a retrospective show of her art. We intend to accompany this show with a publication of her work and a limited edition of prints. The show will travel to Europe where we have recently learned that Lisa’s painting on the Berlin wall has been preserved and her portion of the wall will be incorporated into a new building in Berlin that will house the Ministry for Environment, which will be finished by 2009. Just In time for the 20th Anniversary celebrations!

Lisa Brown was an important contemporary Canadian artist who made an impact on the European art scene during the 90s and the tumultuous transition into the 21st Century. She is proof that Canadian talent has a place on the world stage. We send our athletes to the Olympics to show the world we can compete. We fund our soldiers and as a result Canadians are known as world peacekeepers. We finance our politicians in their travels to talk about policy with other world leaders. Why then shouldn’t we be supporting Canadian art on an international platform? It is what makes us a cultured society. Art, weather it is visual, music, film, dance or writing is the collective soul of a nation. It is through our thoughts and visions and our minds that we speak to the world. Without the arts we are just a nation of soldiers and drones with no identity.

At the moment not one of the political groups vying for election is speaking about their art platform. The arts community isn’t impressed with the conservative party. but many people who support the arts are conservatives, hopefully they will push for an arts agenda.

Be a proactive voter. Find out what the party you are interested in is going to do to promote the arts sector on the world stage!tiger s tail the movie

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