An image from Alvin Luong’s Life Preserver. The artwork will be projected on the south wall of the Donald D. Summerville Pool, at the foot of Woodbine Avenue, nightly from Oct. 21 to 24. Photo: Submitted.
A wall of the Donald D. Summerville Pool at the foot of Woodbine Avenue will be turned into a giant projection screen this week as part of the outdoor public art project The Essentials: Art and Urban Recovery.
A three-part series, The Essentials is being presented by The Bentway and The Waterfront BIA. It is part of the City of Toronto’s Big ArtTO initiative which is encouraging residents to go outside, explore their neighbourhoods and enjoy art while observing safe COVID-19 protocols.
It will examine what is “essential now, reaffirming priorities and commitments for a post-COVID Toronto” through art projections on the walls of large buildings in and around the city’s waterfront.
Each art projection is approximately 10 to 15 minutes long and will be repeated on a continuous loop during the display hours.
Examining what is essential as we all deal with the realities of COVID-19, the toll it is taking and what we now most value was the theme taken up by the three Toronto artists commissioned for the displays.
“This year has forever altered the foundations of public life, challenging our understanding and appreciation of routine, mobility, education, and so much more,” said Ilana Altman, co-executive director of The Bentway in a press release.
“All of us are questioning what we deem essential – from basic freedoms, to critical labour, to crucial kindness. To explore these questions, we were truly thrilled to commission these new projects and meet Torontonians in their own neighbourhoods.”
The projection planned for the Summerville pool is Life Preserver by Alvin Luong.
It will run nightly from Wednesday, Oct. 21 to Sunday, Oct. 24 on the south-side wall of the Summerville pool from 7 to 10 p.m.
The Essentials press release says Life Preserver examines the essential need for food, shelter and mobility. Many of the scenes were shot along the waterfront in the Beach.
“In Alvin Luong’s Life Preserver, a leisurely walk along the water leads to the discovery of a bundle of food that has been washed ashore. The bundle appears purposeful in its assembly, yet its function is unknown,” says the release.
“The artwork is inspired by the essentials of food, shelter and mobility; and the pursuit of these essentials by people across geographies, histories and nations.”
The Essentials series began on with its first projection from Sept. 30 to Oct. 3 on the walls of the Canada Malting Silos at the foot of Bathurst Street. Created by artist Erika DeFreitas it examined the architectural lines “and cracks” of many of Toronto’s buildings.
The third projection in The Essentials series will also take place in East Toronto.
Artist Wendy Truong’s work will be projected on the wall of Canada Post’s South-Central processing plant on Eastern Avenue from Wednesday, Nov. 18 to Saturday, Nov. 21 from 6 to 9 p.m. each night.
Truong’s work is titled Interchanges, and takes inspiration from the mail distribution system and the parallel system of seed distribution.
Everyone is invited to come outside and view The Essentials projections while taking care to be safe and limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
