Results tagged “art”

When we wrote on Monday about a cute sign made on behalf of the city's rat population, thanking Mayor Miller and the striking unions for the proliferation of garbage around the city, we wrote that the artist whose signature was at the foot of the image, "madame HAIR," seemed to be, "sadly, human." She is! After seeing her work on Torontoist, she emailed us to tell us the big news: more of her rats are coming.

As the city workers' strike lurches into its third week, there's been a lot of talk about who is and isn't benefiting from it. Suffering? The reputations of David Miller, the striking unions, and their members; some, but not all, residents; some, but not all, neighbourhoods; our collective fear that tourists will think us unclean; and the expanses of concrete currently doing time as temporary dumping grounds. Doing just swell? Private garbage pick-up companies; the City's wallet (well, maybe?); people who like photos of garbage; people who like over-reacting to said garbage, and, oh, rats.

Once a week, Vandalist features some of the most interesting street art and graffiti from around Toronto. You should contribute.

The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) launched their summer exhibition last Friday with a big party featuring “the smooth summer sounds of Toronto synth-rock-pop combo The D’Urbervilles” as live entertainment. Hopefully ironic press-release writing aside, "Pulp Fiction" brings together fourteen Canadian artists you might not usually see in a mainstream gallery.

There's a speed bump on Crawford Street, not long before the one-way road cuts through the northernmost edge of Trinity Bellwoods Park. After drivers lurch over the bump, explains Martin Reis, they often pick up speed fast, accelerating towards Dundas, through and past a small crossing that joins the isolated north-west tip of Trinity Bellwoods with the park as a whole, a crossing frequented by slow-moving seniors headed for nearby residences.

If you’re looking for Canadian content in non-permanent gallery collections this summer, you’re going to have to think outside the AGO—and the ROM, and just about everywhere else in Toronto for that matter. In fact, you’re probably going to have to visit Kleinburg, Ontario (yeah, we know: that's way north of Bloor) to witness Ian M. Thom’s latest guest-curatorial effort for the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. And trust us—it’s worth it.

Once a week, Vandalist features some of the most interesting street art and graffiti from around Toronto. You should contribute.

Sandwiched between Dufflet Pastries and Quasi Modo Modern Furniture on Queen Street West sits an art gallery in a sliver of a window. At nineteen inches wide, two feet deep, and more than eight feet high, it is the site of what may be Toronto’s smallest public art space. Called *QueenSpecific, this window gallery is programmed by Joy Walker and hosts a new installation every month or so.

We're going in another direction. Toronto's experiencing something of a regeneration, what with bold, new architectural shoots and plans for greener streetscapes threatening to upend our reputed preference for a staid, vanilla aesthetic. But these are stationary propositions—they will be built, rooted as a reef, and we will come. But what about the art of serendipity? Why not an accidental encounter with the sublime? Art on the Move is "a mobile community arts project," the purpose of which is to add a few drops of public, urban design into a street—into a life—near you.

Once a week, Vandalist features some of the most interesting street art and graffiti from around Toronto. You should contribute.

So, we know we were all abuzz about summer festivals just this morning, but time is tickin' along, and everyone's just so busy that we thought we'd skip right ahead to autumn. This morning organizers unveiled Nuit Blanche 2009, at a suit- and camera-happy press conference at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Another year's Luminato has come and now gone, raising the question of just how brightly this new(ish) festival's star is shining.

Unlike the divisive world of politics, the arts community embraces collaboration. Here in Toronto, it has inspired campaigns like ART ON THE MOVE, and has more recently brought downtown-based Art Metropole and the South Asian Visual Arts Centre (SAVAC) together to create REPLYall, an online visual dialogue.

Once a week, Vandalist features some of the most interesting street art and graffiti from around Toronto. You should contribute.

The ten-day celebration of creativity that is Luminato effectively strives to turn the city’s cultural potential inside out. To engage the community, experiences that are typically relegated to the galleries and theatres are taken into the public realm—and conversely, the perceived barriers that keep the wider public from entering many cultural spaces are tackled through invitational and innovative programming.

Last week, passersby at the corner of Queen and Ossington began to take notice of a curious wooden crate protruding from the side of a building. Some gathered around it with great awe and wonder, while others scoffed dismissively, thinking, “So what? It’s a frickin’ box sticking out of a frickin’ wall.”

Tying into the “contemporary communications” theme that forms a common thread through many of the projects in the festival, Luminato has organized a series of visual-art installations on the shared topic of Communication / Environment, and placed them in public thoroughfares in the downtown core. These works (says Luminato) “lend perception to the imperceptible elements that form the foundation of our communication technologies.”

Despite all that Toronto has to offer, it is not a perfect city. Operating under the assumption that Toronto is “unfinished and full of possibility,” consulting firm OpenCity Projects uses bold design in order to create more meaningful experiences for people in the city. Its most recent endeavour, fittingly titled “Icebreakers,” tackles the communication gap between people who live in, work in, and visit Toronto.

There is something undeniably joyous about a massive red ball. One that eases itself into unexpected public places is rather impossible to resist. During the course of this year’s Luminato festival, Kurt Perschke’s RedBall project is making a tour of six downtown locations. This giant, inflatable ball occupied spaces at Nathan Phillips Square and Old City Hall on Friday and Sunday, respectively, and will next appear at First Canadian Place at 100 King Street West on Tuesday.

Once a week, Vandalist features some of the most interesting street art and graffiti from around Toronto. You should contribute.

Summer festival season is about to begin in earnest, and kicking things off is that multi-disciplinary, multi-location, multi-day extravaganza known as Luminato. With everything from nine-hour theatrical epics to a giant red ball popping up where you may least expect it, Luminato is again sure to draw its share of fans and also its share of haters. (It's whimsical fun! It's heartlessly corporate! Stuff is free! Stuff is overpriced! Pick a point of view, and you're bound to find someone who shares it.) Ever your intrepid cultural emissaries, we'll be on the lookout for the wacky, the wonderful, and the just plain trying-too-hard.

After twenty-seven prolific years of defining quirky Canadiana with defunct hometown heroes the Rheostatics, Dave Bidini will be celebrating the release of his first solo album at the Horseshoe Tavern this Saturday, June 6. Not content with convention, however, he will also be celebrating in record stores, book stores, music stores, and right out in the streets earlier that evening, with guest musicians, authors, and comedians joining him along the way. Saturdays rarely look so musical (and literate and hilarious).

Earlier this morning at their head offices, the TTC announced changes to its Metropass fleet, with the aim of making counterfeiting, as Chief General Manager Gary Webster put it, a "tougher issue for the bad guys"—and with the not altogether unintended consequence of making the passes a little nicer to look at now, and a lot nicer to look at as of April next year.

On the second-last Sunday in May, Jack Layton and Olivia Chow picked up some cans of spray paint and some acrylic paint, strolled into a laneway in the Annex, and spent the day marking their territory—on the big aqua wall of their own home, previously littered with tags.

Children's songs can be depressing, really. It seems strange to lull small children to sleep with songs about babies falling from treetops, or have them sing about ashes and then play dead. But one of the most memorable and haunting lullabies speaks to a more viable fear―one of long-lost loves and stolen sunshine. It's a song that inspired a fun-lovin' spinoff nearly a decade ago, and now, something more sentimental.

If you’ve ever considered that it might be a fun idea to invite the local roller-derby girls to your next party, Thursday at The Power Plant cleared up that misconception. That night, the eleventh annual Power Ball art party fundraiser at Harbourfront’s contemporary art gallery filled every space with interactive installations. This included some unfortunately unavoidable interactions with some very determined girls on roller skates—determined to be noticed, to be outrageous. Fortunately, their grit was unnecessary. Power Ball 11’s sheer saturation of art upon art in every corner was a reminder of why the event is worth attending.

Once a week, Vandalist features some of the most interesting street art and graffiti from around Toronto. You should contribute.

Louise Garfield is taking her love of art to the streets. As executive director of Arts Etobicoke, she is collaborating with Lakeshore Arts, her sister organization, to display new works across Toronto. But these pieces won’t be seen on billboards or in other traditional outlets; instead, they will be featured on the side of travelling motorized vehicles for a new project titled ART ON THE MOVE.

As part of each hand as they are called, her Luminato project celebrating the history of Jewish life in Kensington Market, artist Reena Katz was to organize a game of Mah Jongg between seniors from the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care and grade eight students from Ryerson Community Public School. (Mah Jongg is "a game that originated in China, migrated west, and was popularized with North American Jewish women during the 1920s.")

The City has chosen the winner for the Dufferin Jog public-art competition from the four candidates that we wrote about last week: Luis Jacob, whose unnerving tie-dyed mosaics will line the walls of the underpass and creep out local children as of around spring 2010.