Posts Tagged ‘art installations’

winter stations, wet stations

Posted: March 23, 2026 in public art, waterfront
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The 12th annual Winter Stations installation at Ashbridges Bay and Woodbine Beach is nearing the end of its six week run.  I visited it recently on a rather forlorn grey and wet morning.

below: Along the boardwalk – two little black blips in the distance

below:  A little closer, to see two hands facing each other.  Another couple with their umbrella, and me with mine.  The lifeguard station in the middle looks a bit awkward don’t you think?

looking from boardwalk across beach to Lake Ontario

below: So…. what can we do about it?

winter stations, public art installation at Woodbine beach, in late March, no snow,

below: ‘Embrace’ consists of two large hands made with layers of black wood.  The edges of the layers are painted in bright rainbow colours.  It was designed by Will Cuthbert.

winter stations, public art installation at Woodbine beach, in late March, no snow, title is embrace, designed by Will Cuthbert

below:  The next installation is Crest, also made of wood.

winter stations, public art installation at Woodbine beach, in late March, no snow, title is crest, curved structure made of wood

below: Curved pieces of wood connect with amazing geometry to form a simple yet complex three dimensional structure.  It could be a pile of driftwood if seen from afar while closer up it looks like a wave about to break and crash to the shore.  The design team responsible for ‘Crest’ is from the University of Waterloo School of Architecture and the Department of Architectural Engineering

winter stations, public art installation at Woodbine beach, in late March, no snow, title is crest, curved structure made of wood

below: There seems to be a few features that popular “stations” have that re-appear year after year.  One of these is a window that looks out over the lake – this is one of the 2026 windows as found on ‘Specularia’.  The twist is that the windows are actually boxes with mirrors angled inside, like a periscope.  The view from the five windows is quite different depending on the angle of the mirror.

small window in dark blue plywood wall, looks towards lake ontario

below: Another popular feature is the presence of “flappy or dangly” bits like fabric or rope. This installation, ‘Specularia’, incorporates this too!  This is not to belittle the creativity of the artist (TORNADO SOUP: Andrew Clark) – I quite like the installation and the interactive possibilities here (just need to add people!).

blue flaps of lightweight fabric hanging from red wood supports in public art installation

below: While we’re on the subject of repeated elements, let’s consider the popularity of reflective surfaces. They are always fun to play with too!  Here is ‘chimera’, designed by Denys Horodnyak & Enzo Zak Lux.  It’s a four sided structure and each side is made of a grid of convex circular mirrors.

winter stations, chimera art installation, a large cube made of convex circular mirrors

reflections in a group of convex circular mirrors, as part of an art installation called Chimera, at Woodbine Beach on Lake Ontario

reflections on a rainy day, red umbrella

below:  These polycarbonate panels are filled with water that freezes when the temperatures plummet – hence the name “Glaciate”.  But it’s difficult to make ice when it’s raining!  It probably have looked a bit different just a few days ago when we had snow and colder temperatures.

winter stations, public art installation at Woodbine beach, in late March, no snow, title is glaciate, made of polycarbonate panels filled with water that freezes to ice

below: A couple of panels have come off but otherwise the installation has stood up well  (…actually, they all have been quite robust).  The panels form a nice little maze of passageways to explore.

winter stations, public art installation at Woodbine beach, in late March, no snow, title is glaciate, made of polycarbonate panels filled with water that freezes to ice

Glaciate is the result of a collaboration between a group from Toronto Metropolitan University Department of Architectural Science and one associated with Ming Chuan University School of Design in Taiwan.

 

Surrender

Posted: October 16, 2015 in galleries
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The title of the exhibit is ‘Surrender’ and the words on the wall say this:

“Liz Magor’s art invites us to reconsider our relationships with the things we encounter every day.  Through subtle shifts in materiality and context, her works reveal the important role that objects play in our lives: they can allow us to conceal ourselves or to express our identities.  In her sculptures and photographs, Magor explores how we depend on domestic materials to develop a sense of self.”

Nothing is mentioned about surrendering, or why the exhibit has the title that it does.

In the first room there are boxes on the wall.  Each box looks like a carefully wrapped sweater or jacket that has just been purchased.  I can envision a middle aged saleslady taking her time to package your purchase, like in an Eatons store thirty or forty years ago.

art installation at the Art Gallery of Ontario by Liz Magor - two walls with many open boxes on them. The boxes are made to look like they've just been opened to reveal a sweater or top folded neatly inside, including the tissue paper that often accompanies a new purchase. The clothes have all been decorated with different objects.

On closer look, most boxes also have a hand print, or shape of a hand with index finger pointing at something and little details are amiss…  a ketchup package for example.

blog_liz_magor_cornhuskers

The second room has a number of smaller installations.

A garment bag left over a chair.
Neatly folded blankets hanging on a wall.
A platter of chocolates and left overs.
A tweed jacket on top of a liquor bottle.

art installation at the Art Gallery of Ontario by Liz Magor - in the foreground are two long narrow tables. On one of them is a platter with chocolates and a platter with the remains of cheese and crackers.

A husky under a blanket (of snow?  on a bed?)
A coat and purse hanging on a hook.
The contents of a room boxed and ready to move.

art installation at the Art Gallery of Ontario by Liz Magor - 3 pieces. First, a pile of moving boxes and other items that look like they are in the midst of getting ready for the movers. Second, a large white blanket bed sized that has a hole in the middle of where the pillows should be but instead there is a wolf curled up inside the whole. Third, what looks like a jacket hanging from a hook on the wall

art installation at the Art Gallery of Ontario by Liz Magor - two hangers with plaid blankets folded over them hanging from hooks on a wall. One of the blankets has a clear plastic Creeds bag over the top part of it

On closer look, some of the details on the blankets are wrong
including the labels that are sewn on back to front.

The label on a plaid blanket is sewn on backwards so that the writing on the label faces the blanket.

I was interested in what people’s reactions were to this exhibit so I had a chat with a couple of the employees about it.  According to them,  there was no reaction.  Most people showed interest in the boxes but when they walked into the second room they rarely stopped to take a closer look.

blog_liz_magor_rose

As for surrender, I did find reference to it in the description of the exhibit on the AGO website, ” In this exhibition, everyday objects and forms, as well as the natural world, function allegorically by evoking the human need to surrender to desires, compulsions, fantasies.”  Once again, I will leave it to you to decide if this description fits.

Exhibit continues until 29th November.

Villa Toronto

Posted: January 22, 2015 in events, galleries
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An art exhibit in the Great Hall at Union Station, January 16 to January 23

I’m going to out on a limb a bit here and say like most contemporary or modern art, this exhibit was combination of  some shoddily thrown together nonsense and some well executed and interesting pieces.
One of the things that caught my attention was how people reacted and/or interacted with the different parts of the exhibit.  Union Station is not an art destination.  It’s a space that people walk through on their way to somewhere else.

A view of the Great Hall of Union Station with the provincial flags along one wall, the archway over the window at the end of the room, and an art exhibit in the main part of the hall. Two woman are looking at sculptures on one side. A video screen is showing a video about the exhibit - a man sitting in a chair is what is seen in this picture.

In the above photo, the women are using a computer monitor to learn about The Legacy of Joseph Wagenbach, an installation by Iris Haussler.  In 2006 she turned a house on Robinson St. in Toronto into a ‘discovered’ home of a reclusive older man who had filled his house with over 100 sculptures that he had made.  At that time there was some controversy when people learned that there was no real Joseph Wagenbach, that his story was fiction.   There is a  Joseph Wagenbach Foundation with its own website.

A colletion of small sculptures of life like figures in grey and black.

Some of the Joseph Wagenbach sculptures.

A relief sculpture of a woman's head, on the ground. In the background are people and some of the booths of Union Station.

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A corner of a dimly lit white walled room. In the

‘Marbled Meanings’ by Navid Nuur. 
top right: ‘Broken Diamond’  made of neon, broken glass, argon neon blue light. 
center: ‘Threshold’ made of green florist foam blocks

With the above collection, I found that the light and shadows were more interesting than the green column.  I don’t know whether or not this was an intentional part of the exhibit.

Neon art piece on a wall. It is shaped like a V, it's turquoise blue in colour and it is a bit bigger than the size of a hand. It is mounted on a wall with the electrical wires visible. It is shadow.

close up of ‘Broken Diamond’

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part of a piece of art that is a pillar like structure cover with bits of colourful paper. There is also a child's drawing in pencil on an 8 by 11 piece of paper. Also a sign in blue letters that says . In the background there are a couple of people walking past.

“I’m going to use the two hundred dollar artist fee from this project to pay my phone bill and with the money left over I’ll probably buy a pack of smokes and maybe order some Chinese food.” 
Is this a statement about the value of art?  Is this a f*ck you statement – if you, or society, don’t value art why should I (as the artist) care about my work?

 

A large translucent rectangular piece of fabric hangs from the ceiling. It sort of has a face on it, yellow eyes and a small slit mouth.

Floating overhead and watching us with yellow eyes.

 

This photo was taken looking into a mirror. A man in a long black winter coat and red scarf is taking a photo of some art on a wall.

reflections

 

Four people, two are standing together while one texts, and two others are walking past. Four large square paintings (or photos?) are behind them on a white wall.

I know that art is subjective but I fail to see the appeal in large monochromatic pictures in an ugly shade of green.  They aren’t profound; they’re not making a statement; they elicit no emotion.

 

The projector is playing a loop of blank screen to a garbled soundtrack.

The projector is playing a loop of blank screen to a garbled soundtrack.

 

An art piece, a shiny silver coloured porta potty stands in the middle of the floor. A trash container (real) is behind it.

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the juxtaposition of the arty porta-potty and the real trash container behind it.  Someone tried to open the door of the potty but it was either locked or not real.  Note to artist: Why?

video art installations at an art exhibit. The large clock and departures board of the train station are seen over the top of the temporary walls of the exhibit.