The best thing about the Gladstone Hotel’s annual Come Up To My Room exhibition isn’t the art, it’s the artists. Each year the Gladdy unleashes architects, designers and artists, either alone or in teams, to create beguiling contemporary art installations across the hotel’s second floor. Rooms, hallways, even the bathroom are transformed. Some of the spaces are mysterious, some are challenging and others are just plain fun. In most cases, the artists are right there, ready to explain and expound upon their work. At yesterday’s media preview, I had the pleasure of exploring the show with Katherine Morley, left, one of four guest curators who divvied up the exhibit and teamed the collaborators, some of whom had never met before.
Morely is seen emerging from Room 207, one of the more transporting spaces in the show. Dubbed Bed Memory, visitors are required to step into a discombobulating mirrored hallway that narrows to a small entrance into a brilliant white, tented bedroom. Step carefully because the floor is a bed that provides uncertain footing; on the ceiling float lines of text culled from the Bed Memory blog of artists Richard Unterthiner and Paolo Ferrari (pictured below left).
Arriving at the exhibition, you’re confronted by a honeycombed wall that’s reminiscent of a wasp’s nest (below); a blinking light beckons you out onto the balcony where you are encouraged to look back into the space through the circular segments. “By interrupting the peripheral vision of the observer, the installation requires movement in order to attain the entire image,” write creators Edward Lin and Kira Varvanina, above right, in their artistic statement. “Forming a wall of visual interruptions, the installation aims to disorient and intrigue the viewer.”
Further down the hall are ceramist Alexx Boisjoli, below right, and Ian Phillips, a graphic artist, who joined forces to create Chevaux de bois, “a simplified visual and interactive representation of a carnival sideshow,” in which patrons can win ceramic sculptures by playing a midway-style game of chance.” Prizes include glazed, two-headed squirrels — this is the Gladstone after all.
One of the most talked about spaces is Room 204, Julia Hepburn’s dark, fantastical Can You Remember My Dream?. The charming, young artist has created a brilliant and intricate tableau: lanterns, each containing a finely crafted, three-dimensional dream scene, hang from branches above a bed in which a small black bird, silently sleeps, the covers rising and falling with its breath. Hepburn will happily detail the lantern narratives, as strange and marvelous as any dream.
Next door in Room 202, artists Christine Lieu, Phoebe Lo and Maggie Greyson have created Undertaking Acquisition — Chronicles of Our Time, where an apothecary-style wall of jars contain trinkets of every description. Visitors are encouraged to take an item and leave something of their own behind (similar in spirit to Katherine Walter’s Trade at this year’s Radiant Dark). Each of the three artists engages in a different discipline — theatre, industrial design and sculpture — yet the installation feels remarkably cohesive.
As he does every year, Gladstone resident artist Bruno Billio, above, has given up his home — Room 209 — and teamed with another creator to transform the small space. This year Billio works with light sculptor Orest Tataryn to pump up the Wow-factor with multi-coloured neon.
Come Up to My Room is different every year and the 2010 edition is one of the best yet!
WHERE/WHEN: Come Up To My Room at the Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen Street West, 416.531.4635), January 22 – 24, 12 – 8 pm, $8.
Photos by Christopher Jones
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What a fantastic looking exhibit.
I need to make some time to go see it.