ice fishing in gimli : reviews + squibs (and an award)

award

"... it's like the Governor-General's award, the Giller and the Nobel Prize for artists' books all in one ..."

— excerpt from the author's acceptance speech

The Art Gallery of York University is pleased to announce the results of the first AGYU Artists' Book of the Moment award (ABotM). From the short-list of 30 books, the one that rose to top of the ABotM is Rob Kovitz' Ice Fishing in Gimli.

*please note: the "A" in ABotM is silent

Press Release

reviews

definitive edition, 2009

Brooke Ford, "Cut and Paste Fish Sticks: Brooke Ford follows Rob Kovitz's frozen odyssey." Broken Pencil, Issue 47 (Spring 2010), pp. 55-6.

Virginie Doré Lemonde, "Into Black... et pas blanc comme neige." Ciel variable, no. 84 (Spring 2010), p. 70-71. (Google Translation, French to English.)

Alison Gillmor, Plug In ICA exhibition text. Plug In ICA, Winnipeg, Dec. 11, 2009-Feb. 21, 2010.

2nd progress edition, 2006

Gary Michael Dault, “Ice Fishing in Gimli: Bibliographic Rapture in the Cold or Twilight’s Last Gleaning.” Border Crossings, No. 102, May 2007, pp. 76-82.

Peter Goddard, “Great Expectations in Gimli.” Toronto Star, 10 August 2006.

David Jager, “Fishing for Meanings: Rob Kovitz tries to hook into the Canadian zeitgeist in ambitious show.” NOW Magazine, August 3-9 2006.

Sigrid Dahle, “The Trials and Tribulations of an Ambivalent Every-Artist (The Great Canadian Novel Gone Awry).” YYZine, June 2006.

1st progress edition, 2004

Jeanne Randolph, “Rob Kovitz’s Ice Fishing in Gimli.” Fuse Magazine, June 2004, pp. 41-46.

the art of poetry

If an artist chose to join a human head

To a horse’s neck and to cover with many-hued feathers

Limbs assembled in one from all over the place,

So that what was on top a lovely woman, below

Ended ugly and black in the shape of a fish,

Could you, my friends, refrain from bursting out laughing,

If you were allowed a private view of the thing?

Take my word, you Pisos, a picture like that

Would be perfectly matched by a book whose meaningless fancies

Were shaped like a sick man’s dreams, so that nowhere within it

Could foot or head be assigned to a single shape.

Horace, The Art of Poetry

Musée J.-Armand Bombardier