Groundcover
to
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
to
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
to
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.
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.
Balete Bulate Bituka
to
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.
Confluence
October 1, 2022
Inspired by the water systems that have shaped Toronto, Confluence invited visitors to flow through an engrossing convergence of natural and human-made forces. The picnic table, a familiar fixture in parks across the city, contorts into a dynamic sculptural installation; twirling, cascading and cresting to evoke Toronto’s buried, lost rivers.
Pulse Topology
October 2, 2021
In the height of COVID-era lockdowns, The Bentway and artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer invited audiences to rediscover the Gardiner as a shared space for human connections, through an artwork powered by collective heartbeat. Pulse Topology took over a massive, enclosed storage chamber beneath the Expressway at Exhibition Place.
O Espaço (The Space) with Art Spin
October 1, 2021
Choreographed and performed by Pulga Muchochoma, O Espaço (The Space)examines a complex range of movement, starting with the very beating of the human heart and the spaces in which not just those myriad movements but existence itself is illuminated for us and others to witness. Co-presented with Art Spin. “How much information do we need […]