After Thursday’s opening night gala, Art Toronto opens to the public Friday. More than 100 galleries are exhibiting at this year’s edition of the art fair. (Courtesy of Art Toronto)
It’s “Canada’s art fair,” to quote the official tagline. Art Toronto returns to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre this weekend, and more than 20,000 visitors are expected to prowl the floor between Thursday night and Sunday. The fair is an annual gathering of gallerists, collectors and art-lovers of all stripes — and if you plan to be among them, get the most out of your ticket by taking note of these highlights.
3 things you have to see
Good Foot Forward
Duane Linklater. i want to forget the english language, ulterior, 2020/2023. (Duane Linklater)
The inclusion of a specially curated “Focus Exhibition” is still new to Art Toronto; fair director Mia Nielsen introduced the program just last year. And for 2023, she’s tapped one of the country’s most well-regarded curators, Kitty Scott, to oversee the project.
Scott was famously involved in Geoffrey Farmer‘s exhibition for Canada at the 2017 Venice Biennale, and she’s worked at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Banff Centre and London’s Serpentine Gallery over the course of her 30-year career. For Good Foot Forward, she’s gathered work by 15 contemporary artists. Each piece has been pulled from participating galleries, and they range from smaller works on paper to large-scale installations. All together, it’s a story about “what constitutes a livable life.”
Eve Tagny. Untitled (2), 2022. (Eve Tagny)
Just scanning through the preview photos available online, there’s a striking push and pull between themes of land sovereignty, domestic life and the absurdities of the housing market. In a Q&A for the Art Toronto website, Scott said her concept for the show began with a piece by Duane Linklater, I want to forget the english language (ulterior) 2020/2023.
In form, it’s a chandelier strung from a bundle of painted tipi poles — a DIY lever system precariously balanced on a wheeled mover’s trolley. Said Scott: “It seems to ask ‘How are we to live today?’ Much of my thinking expanded outward from how this work is constructed and the ideas it opens up.”
You’ll find the exhibition at the top of the west escalator.
Elizabeth Zvonar. Daytripper, 2023. (Elizabeth Zvonar)
Project Spaces
Amid the maze of fair booths, Art Toronto has added eight mini exhibitions (Project Spaces) curated by Canadian galleries. Pangée has a survey of ceramic work by Montreal artist Trevor Baird; Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is presenting Floating on the Waves by Ari Bayuaji, an installation colourful tapestries woven from plastic ropes used by Indonesian fishermen. (The artist splits his time between Montreal and Bali.)
Ari Bayuaji. Floating on the Waves, 2023. (Ari Bayuaji)
Another likely stand-out: Paquebot by Jannick Deslauriers, an enormous ghostly ocean liner made of nylon, tulle and silk.
Fresh for 2023 is a brand new section called Discover. Eight galleries were selected to present work by an up-and-coming talent in their roster, and throughout the fair you’ll encounter booths devoted to these artists on the rise.
Among them: Svava Tergesen — a Vancouver artist who lends an unsettling eye to vintage-style food photography — and Marcy Friesen, a Saskatchewan artist of Swampy Cree/Welsh heritage. Her beadwork captures elements of contemporary life, while subverting traditional utilitarian forms (e.g. moccasins and mittens).
More than 100 galleries will be exhibiting at Art Toronto, marking a return to the fair’s pre-pandemic numbers. The local scene is heavily represented, but Art Toronto draws exhibitors from across the country and beyond. The mix offers a unique opportunity to fair-goers. Take a lap around the floor, and you’ll get a top-level view of what’s happening in Canadian art right now.
John Hee Taek Chae. One-eyed Jacks, 2022. (John Hee Taek Chae/Tap Art Space)
Montreal’s art galleries will be out in force, with more than 20 attending. But if you’re leaning into the spooky vibe of Halloween weekend, Tap Art Space has a themed booth: “Nocturnal Nuances” — art that explores the “mystique of twilight.” Expect to find eerie scenes by Olga Abeleva, Julien Parant-Marquis, David Bellemare and John Hee Taek Chae.
Visit Norberg Hall‘s booth (Calgary) and you’ll be greeted with emoji wall hangings (by Sobey Art Award nominee Kablusiak) plus an extensive selection of cheeky glazed stoneware by Erica Eyres. Her realistic sculptures include a beady-eyed Crab Sandwich and a collection of life-sized Sweet Valley High paperbacks.
Séamus Gallagher. A Lovely View Gives Way to A Haunted Site, 2023. (Séamus Gallagher/Iota Studios)
Michelle Sound. Every Photo I Have Of My Mother, 2023. (Michelle Sound/Ceremonial/Art)
Ceremonial/Art (Vancouver) will be putting the spotlight on Cree/Métis artist Michelle Sound. Her series of “Medicine Print Drums” — cyanotypes on elk hide — are particularly striking.
Still feeling a little lost? Consider signing up for a free tour of Art Toronto. (Courtesy of Art Toronto)
An Art Toronto ticket includes access to free talks, tours and other happenings that will be going on throughout the weekend.
The Platform stage will be hosting panel discussions starting Friday afternoon, beginning with a one-on-one chat between Kitty Scott and Connie Butler, director of MoMA PS1 in New York City (Curators in Conversation, 12:30 p.m.). Here’s the full Art Toronto event schedule.
As for event highlights: Saturday at 6 p.m., head to Art Toronto’s Event Space to join a listening party for As We Rise: Sounds from the Black Atlantic. The new compilation album is a musical companion to the photo book and touring exhibition, As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic, a project drawn from the Wedge Collection, Canada’s largest privately owned collection of Black art. For Saturday’s launch, Wedge founder Dr. Kenneth Montague will be in conversation with CBC Music’s Odario Williams.
And if you’re still unsure about what to see at Art Toronto, get help from an expert. Art-world insiders will be giving free guided tours every day of the fair. It’s a chance to explore Art Toronto through the P.O.V. of esteemed collectors, curators and critics. Find the full schedule here; tour groups meet at the information desk near the top of the escalators.
Art Toronto 2023. Oct. 26 to 29. Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Toronto. www.arttoronto.ca
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.
