It is essential that the giant pink knit bunny created by Austrian collective Gelitin that started the year off lying atop a mountain in Piemont be in the Art MoCo Top 10, at position Number 5. The idea alone makes this installation stand out as one of the best. We have no updated photos, aerial or otherwise, of the condition of the Coniglio Rosa, but Gelitin’s intent was that it remain alpine till 2025. If anyone does have any recent photos, we would love to take a look.

Some magical illustrations of the mysteries of the rooftops of Venice came our way and settled in, making Daniele Scarpa Kos settle into Number 6 position on our Top 10. This artist has provided gentle illustrations for a fable of his own making, combining the two elements to create a mythical rooftop landscape peopled by eccentricities come to life. The illustrations draw the viewer into the fable, the fable works its magic, and then the rooftops of Venice or Tetti Veneziani come to life.

Olivo Barbieri is our Number 7 this year, thanks to his ability to make our world look like child’s play. This artist gives us aerial photography that makes his landscapes look like something beside a train set, or cityscapes that look as though they have been carefully crafted by miniaturists. Barbieri makes our frantic world finally look manageable.

Wil Jansen makes it to Number 8 on the Art MoCo Top 10 because her paintings are so thick with paint that they are almost sculptures. But it is not the two-for-one aspect of Jansen’s work that makes this artist stand out, but her use of colour and texture that delights the eye and makes the hands reach right out.

A painter whose quiet skill caught our fancy is Tata Navia whose chairs come to life on the canvas. Each painting in this series can be considered a narrative in its own right and it is truly fascinating to watch these characters, while forgetting they started off as pieces of furniture. This artist has imbued her work with spirit and that’s why she’s Number 9.

Recapping the year at Art MoCo is no easy feat, but it certainly gives us a chance to look over some amazing work. It is almost impossible to narrow favorites down to a Top Ten, especially since aesthetic appreciation can change from one day to the next. But over the next ten days or so, we will share the pieces and artists that lingered, or meme'd, or really made it feel that this is what modern contemporary art is all about.

Alec Soth is one of several photographers that made an Art MoCo impact this year. His series Niagara was a glimpse into modern romance where the rose-coloured glasses have been tossed into the Falls.

To seventies-styled suburban basements everywhere:
Merry Christmas from Art MoCo.

Artist: Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Most people are familiar with the portrait photography of Annie Leibovitz, but her recent volume, A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005, provides more of an intimate view and works as a portrait of Leibovitz herself. Not only is this glorious book full of celebrity photos, and Leibovitz certainly has a way of making each glimpse seem awfully personal, but serves as a way of getting to Leibovitz as well. Her family and friends are well documented over the fifteen years covered in this book, especially her very close friend, the late Susan Sontag during her illness. Leibovitz’s travels are interspersed and help connect some of the details of the photographer’s life and work to a bigger picture. A beautiful book to leaf through, and to contemplate.

Hardcover, 472 pages. Random House, 2006, $44.99 at Amazon.

+A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005 at Amazon

There is too much to say about all the action at the Wooster on Spring project that took place last weekend, but there is terrific coverage of all the street and graffiti art at the Wooster Collective and the accompanying 3000+ shots at flickr.

And in Melbourne, there is a group project (on a smaller scale) in the works for late January and Ellen Benson is looking for submissions for the Artisan Bazaar at the Sleeping Pirate

Anne-Marie Kornachuk's series Airs Above the Ground is a study of contrasts with the focus on the figure between the air and the ground. Kornachuk says it best herself: “Is it fantasy or reality, clumsiness or grace, contentment or anxiety, playfulness or anger, need or independence? … The formal dress struggles with rigidity and confinement, perhaps societal expectations, internal pressures, as well as beauty, seduction, luxury and sophistication. It is my intention to create a narrative, allowing the viewer to explore in which state of being the figure falls. A transition through fantasy, longing, desire and what is real.” But on a purely visual level, the viewer is drawn to the play between the light and the folds, the movement and the implied crispness. You can almost hear the dress.

Artist: Anne-Marie Kornachuk
+ triasgallery.com

More blue in a box? Funny how these things happen … Except this time it is polymer clay in a wooden box, a piece called Adrift by Noah Nakell. This is from the Portable Disaster series, which plays on a common feeling of vulnerability in the face of something larger and more powerful than oneself. Fear, and the fragility that goes along with this disabler is something that we all go through, and this is so tidily symbolized by the tiny boat adrift on the rough, beautiful seas. Perhaps we can contain these in the boxes that Nakell has so thoughtfully provided. Would that we could pack it all up and kick it under the bed, or throw it away, when it all becomes too choppy, or when it feels like the quicksand will never release us.

Artist: Noah Nakell
+ noahnakell.com