From Steps to Stories
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What can cutting-edge sensor technology teach us about the future of public space? This interactive data art installation invites visitors to explore the fascinating connections between human experience and computer vision under the Gardiner Expressway. Presented in collaboration with Autodesk Research, From Steps to Stories reveals how we can achieve a deeper understanding of how public spaces are experienced.
Ghost Landing
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A large-scale windowfront installation by Caterwaul Theatre will haunt The Bentway Studio this Halloween. Encounter the urban legends and myths of the CityPlace neighbourhood and its inhabitants through innovative shadow puppetry, storytelling, and a series of commissioned Jack-O-Lanterns created by local artists.
University of Toronto Furniture Build at The Bentway
September 27, 2023
Over a two week period, UofT Daniel’s students designed and constructed a set of accessible modular furniture pieces – nicknamed, Flippin’ Chillin’. The pieces can be arranged into a lounging play-scape or transformed into a bar for events.
Grand Opening: Experimental Gardens under the Gardiner Expressway
September 18, 2023
Bentway Staging Grounds is a new public meeting place for community, culture, and ecology. This temporary public space under the Gardiner Expressway at Dan Leckie Way explores new ways to leverage stormwater runoff from the highway to support urban ecology.
Bentway neighbourhood illuminated for Nuit Blanche
August 23, 2023
This Nuit Blanche, we invite you down to The Bentway and surrounding area for a series of installations that light up the neighbourhoods along the Gardiner Expressway.
Fountain Monumental
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Logan MacDonald premieres Fountain Monumental, a series of 20-foot-tall images situated within the new Bentway Staging Grounds public space pilot. MacDonald re-imagines the original shoreline of Lake Ontario and invites us to consider the unique history of our city’s waterways while also imagining a decolonial future that prioritizes ecological preservation.
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A New Nature at Bathurst Quay
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During Nuit Blanche, the iconic Canada Malting Silos will be brought to life by a large-scale projection by Mark Dorf that reflects on the changing nature of both the building and the city at large. As this historic property transforms into a new civic and cultural landmark, The Bentway and the City of Toronto have teamed up to demonstrate the creative potential of this unique canvas.
Shared Space
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Step inside an immersive installation that reuses upcycled plastics to explore the possibilities of inflatable architecture, circular design, and the role waste plays in the larger Gardiner ecosystem. Experience a snapshot of our shared consumer habits transformed in a unique gathering space, with a mesmerizing soundscape by MONEYPHONE.
Bentway Staging Grounds opens on September 18
August 22, 2023
Join us on September 18 at the public opening of Bentway Staging Grounds, a temporary public space under the Gardiner Expressway at Dan Leckie Way that explores new ways to leverage stormwater runoff from the highway to support urban ecology.
Bentway Staging Grounds
On view now
Bentway Staging Grounds is a site of active, environmental learning that continues The Bentway’s creative work along the Gardiner Expressway. Visitors are invited into a living laboratory for urban ecology, with experimental gardens that use rainwater run-off from the highway above to support the growth of flowering plant species.
Coming Soon: Bentway Staging Grounds
August 9, 2023
Opening in September 2023, Bentway Staging Grounds is a temporary public space under the Gardiner Expressway at Dan Leckie Way that explores new ways to leverage stormwater runoff from the highway to support urban ecology.
Boom Buddies honour Pride
June 22, 2023
Head over to York St and Lakeshore Blvd under the Gardiner to see one of our Waterfront ReConnect Boom Town Buddies with a fabulous new rainbow look for Pride!
Waterfront Reconnect projects open at York St and Simcoe St
June 1, 2023
Temporary street-level interventions add light, colour and enhanced waterfront connectivity at York and Simcoe Streets. Following a national design competition completed in early 2022, today The Bentway announced the opening of two projects that explore new strategies for improved intersections under the Gardiner Expressway. Waterfront ReConnect continues the organization’s creative work to re-imagine the Gardiner […]
The Benchway
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Bentway Public Space Fellow Ella Hough’s Benchway public furniture project starts a conversation about the waste produced by the private construction industry, its impact on our city, and the potential for a circular economy approach instead.
Multispecies Lounge
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At The Bentway Studio facing Canoe Landing Park, a new set of public furniture invites interspecies-encounters with urban wildlife. Through UV-painted details, the piece offers glimpses of how birds and insects see beyond the human eye and offers a more-than-human lens through which to experience the urban ecosystem.
Waterfront ReConnect: Pixel Story
On view now
Pixel Story references the multitude of vantages, scales, speeds, and distances at which to view the Expressway, enticing passersby to move forward towards the waterfront, or pause to reflect on its diverse stories.
Waterfront ReConnect: Boom Town
On view now
Boom Town employs vibrant colour, playful characters, and environmental lighting to enliven the York Street intersection, improving safety and accessibility for pedestrians and cyclists.
Groundcover
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Photographer Genesis Báez co-creates with the soil and stormwater below the Gardiner, burying film underground beneath the highway to absorb the surrounding landscape. Developing and displaying the images at large-scale reveals the reciprocal nature of the Expressway and its ecology. Co-presented with the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.
Lichen
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Remarkable, powerful, and resilient, “lichen” are ancient and diverse life forms, both an individual and a community. Anishinaabe filmmaker Lisa Jackson re-imagines her acclaimed short film as a multi-media installation and invites us to learn from lichen about being in relation to our environment and one another.
Memory Work
May 5, 2023
Memory Work is a mural made up of twelve embellished portraits of revolutionary women and non-binary figures from a future Toronto. Initiated by From Later with artist Rajni Perera and Memory Work Collective, this speculative monument imagines a city characterized by collective care and politics that value nurturing over growth.
Atmospheres
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What can the wind teach us about our city’s infrastructure and our own needs for comfort? Atmospheres manifests this powerful force into a series of soaring soft sculptures, sound, and video that both generates and visualizes environmental data collected under the Gardiner.
Balete Bulate Bituka
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An otherworldly creature germinates at The Bentway, its parasitic tentacles emerging from the history of waste materials used as landfill to create the solid ground where the Gardiner now sits. Woven with bamboo, living plants, and locally-sourced discarded plastics, Leeroy New’s first North American commission presents nature reasserting itself amidst concrete infrastructure.
Bentempus Gardinus: A Long-Exposure Ecological Portrait
May 26 to Sep 24, 2023 - Viewable 24 hours a day
Geometric animal sculptures emerge from the Gardiner, representing species who’ve inhabited this place across time – from prehistoric woolly mammoths to sly modern foxes. Alex Sheriff’s speculative new work uncovers each of their stories and reconsiders our own role within natural history.