Toronto Free Gallery

On Saturday, totally exhausted after a crazy week at school and the super intense Museums and Galleries debate, Cait and I dedicated the day to wandering around our neighbourhood and environs and basically put the kibosh on any weekend work. We did some vintage shopping and then stumbled across the Toronto Free Gallery‘s new space at 1277 Bloor St West (just east of Lansdowne on the south side).

I’d never been to their old space, but I’d seen a lot of press material about the new “Creative Activism” show and had been interested but couldn’t for the life of me figure out where there was a gallery space on that part of Bloor.

I’m glad I found it and got a chance to check out the renovated digs. It’s definitely a great layout and a sizable space that totally has potential (although I wish their website had more images of current and upcoming shows).

The space felt a little crowded with the current show, but I think that’s partly the nature of this kind of processual, DIY-style work that reproduces itself easily in order to communicate to the greatest number of people. I really enjoyed the variety of methods artists had come up with to subtly or not-so-subtly make activist gestures.

There were the usual suspects, like The Movement Movement and The Mammalian Diving Reflex’s “Haircuts by Children” (whatever misgivings I may have about this project otherwise are always totally wiped from my mind as soon as I see the hilarious documentation of the event).

Documentation of “Haircuts by Children” from the Vancouver version
as part of the PuSH performance festival, 2008.

But I really loved the rearview-mirror walking stick and snowshoes in the corner of the gallery (by an artist whose name I can’t remember right now – anyone know?) and the documentation of the community mapping event in Saskatchewan that used blocks of ice to represent buildings, like “school,” “religion” and “shopping.”