This article appeared in Lola Magazine No. 13 - Fall 2002

Kenneth Montague’s WEDGE

Ken Montague is a sexy Caribbean celebrity dentist who lives in one of the chicest spaces in the city and throws great parties.  This makes him very popular with the ladies.  But more importantly, the 39-year-old is the founder of Wedge, a private gallery that has brought Toronto some of the world’s best black photographers. Si Si Penaloza sat down with Dr. Montague over butter chicken and a bottle of Shiraz.

Si Si Penaloza: Your name is pure silk.  Is it for real?

Kenneth Montague:  Let’s see, did the British rule Jamaica or not?  My father’s name is Spurgeon Garland Montague. And his father was Oscar Garland Montague. In high school it was always like, ‘Once again, we’ll have Kenneth Montague read the part of Romeo.’

SP: That’s quite a beginning.  I remember riding around in your car one time and noticing a copy of the Montague newsletter, the one featuring you and Nelly Furtado at your dental office.  What other famous teeth have you capped?

KM: A lot of music industry people like Jarvis Church. We’ve also worked on Lorraine Segato from the Parachute Club.

SP: So what got you interested in visual art?

KM: It’s been a parallel life of art and science for me.  I got into McGill’s school of music the same week I got into dental school. My family was really into the arts. I grew up in an era of black empowerment and civil rights, and culturally speaking, ran the gamut from Martin Luther King to blaxploitation, Malcolm X to Superfly. That really shaped my sensibility about art, pop culture, and the synthesis of the two.

SP: On a yearly basis, how much do you spend on art?

KM: Let’s just say I spend several thousands on art annually.

SP: You were at the opening of the international art mega-exhibition Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany. What kind of trouble did you get into?

KM: It was the ultimate schmoozefest on a level that I’ve never seen before. Over 5000 people were at the opening party. It was like, ‘Oh look, there’s Tracey Moffatt. Hey, it’s Destiny Deacon. Over there, Stan Douglas.’ I hung out with the crew from Black Audio Film Collective, New York photographer Lorna Simpson, and her good friend Thelma Golden, the curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem. It was fun and yeah, there was debauchery all right.

SP: Tell me about the after-hour parties.

KM: Let’s just say there were a lot of inhalable products. On more than one occassion I was mistaken for Okwui Enwezor.

SP: Really. Your mean the Artistic Director of Documenta?

KM: Yeah, you know, we’re about the same age, similar style, roughly the same height. I guess we’ve both got the same sort of look. This one hottie from Hamburg, an Okwui groupie...

SP: An Okwui groupie? Are they all blondes?

KM: Okwui definitely has groupies. I scooped up after him. Too easy. I just had to move in there with my pooper-scooper, scooping up after Okwui with those art world groupies.

SP: Oh my god.

KM: I took advantage of that. You know, said a couple of words in ‘Europa’ and suddenly I was this guy from Nigeria and hey, who am I to argue with logic like that.

SP: How did you initially meet the real Okwui Enwezor?

KM: In 1995 I went to London and visited the Serpentine Gallery. They were showing Seydou Keita, his first major international show which Enwezor helped produce. The work really spoke to me and I got fixated on finding out who found this stuff. Then I went back to New York and while I was at the Paul Smith boutique buying up my usual funky Japanese photography mags I came across two different features on Enwezor in publications I’d never seen before. He kept coming up in unusual places. In 2000, he wrote something for a show we did of Keita’s work at Wedge Gallery. I finally met him when he spoke at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

SP: And Documenta was good? Which works of art are still on your mind?

KM: People were expecting a developing world bent with this show because the theme was globalization. There was this sense that this wasn’t the typical Eurocentric thing Documenta has a reputation for. There were none of the usual suspects, and virtually no paintings. Lots and lots of video, film, and photo-based work. I really liked Isaac Julien’s new film, Paradise/Omeros.

SP: What did you like about it?

KM: I can’t help but love stuff that speaks to me directly. It was a story of immigration, revelation. Coming to Europe from Africa via the Caribbean and then a return, and liberation upon return. It was very much in-line with the broad theme that Enwezor was putting forward with this show, largely about isolation, displacement, movement of people, economic barriers.

SP: Any disappointments?

KM: People complained that Enwezor showed stuff from the 80s. I look at it more like being an innovative record producer or dj. You’re not just spinning the hottest and latest. To hear second hand that there was some work from 1986 by the Black Audio Film Collective that had to do with race riots in Britain isn’t going to do it. This was one show you had to experience. It was the way Enwezor put it together that made it matter.

SP: In a New York Times Magazine article Enwezor is described as being ‘adept at playing the part of the hyper-sophisticated expatriate African intellectual, a curator so demographically perfect, and so polished, that he would have to be invented if he didn’t exist already.’ That’s pretty heady stuff.  I’ve heard similar things said about you, in the sense that you’re also ‘demographically perfect.’ What do you make of this idea of looking at the impossibly brilliant, hyper-intellectual, super elite black man not so much as a real person but as a character of the times?

KM: For starters, I denounce that kind of classification. It’s such a hyperbole. There are Okwui Enwezors all over the world. I think it shows the press to be rather ignorant. They might not know any Okwui Enwezors, but they exist. We exist. There are people without a lot of art training or background who have developed a new way of interpreting the contemporary world. When I see Enwezor assuming his position with Documenta I feel like I’m going home, I feel I am home. Enwezor obviously knows how to play the game, how to position himself. I reject the ‘invention’ bullshit.

SP: Good point. I mean, no one asks Harald Szeemann if he’s a real person.

KM: Documenta is so much about the Eurocentric art system. For someone to come along like Enwezor, who is not even 40 yet, who’s black, and who has no formal art background, well you know. I hope Enwezor’s mark on Documenta will be indelible.

SP: Are you familiar with the artist-run centre A Space over at 401 Richmond Street?

KM: It’s not really on my radar.

SP: I’m mentioning it because I think Toronto’s art scene has really suffered from the kind of self-marginalization that A Space practises. For the most part they show artists of colour and politically engaged work that gets described as ‘alternative’ or ‘other’. My sense is this kind of thing does a bit of damage to every minority in the city and it insults anyone who’s got political thinking in their work.

KM: Yeah, because it ends up being seen as marginal, it loses merit just by being put in that category.

SP: Your appraoch at Wedge Gallery is far from apologist. You’re not presenting work and declaring it ‘exotic’ or ‘alternative.’ You bring in the goods and it’s just good.

KM: I never think of what I show as being outside the mainstream. It just floors me that we wre the first to think of bringing Seydou Keita or (J.D. ‘Okhai) Ojeikere to Toronto.  This is work that is in the pantheons of modern photography. James VanDerZee too, has been so influential. Even music video directors are incorporating his elements into their work.

SP: Are you trying to address a lack of contemporary black visual culture in Canada, or is your gallery more personal?

KM: It’s personal-however the name, Wedge Gallery, is meant to be a double entendre. The space is shaped like a wedge. It’s a narrow hallway in my loft that’s fifty-feet long. But the point is to show artists that are also wedging their way into contemporary art through indirect means.

SP: How do you think you fit into the Toronto art scene?

KM: I often hear sentiments like ‘Okay, this guy’s a dentist, so what’s he trying to prove by opening this gallery?’ They think it’s just a whim, or a way for me to show off what I have. Some people don’t get it, others do.

SP: I’ll admit I was at first suspcious you were one of those recreational types who dabbled in contemporary art as some sort of lifestyle; like the title ‘art collector’ goes well with the new loft.

KM: Let met tell you that Wedge’s co-director, Robert Osbourne, and I do it all, from mail-outs, to press releases, to installation. Some of it is real grunt work. Wedge doesn’t make great financial sense but I reached a critical point in my life. I’d been collecting this kind of work for so long, I had to start showing it.

SP: I see you around at all the A-list events, black tie and otherwise. You’ve turned art openings into sightings.

KM: Everyone thinks that you have to be exclusive to have the best events. Sharing is the ultimate philosophy of Wedge Gallery. I just open the door. You know, making it like a cool neighbourhood block party.