For anyone who lived through it the time and place evoked by This Is Paradise, opening tonight at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, is palpable. The exhibition celebrates the art scene that grew up around the Cameron House tavern (408 Queen Street West), which was transformed into an art hotel in 1981 by then owners Herb Tookey (above left), Paul Sannella and Ann Marie Sannella.
Tookey, who curated the MOCCA exhibition with the help of artist Rae Johnson (above right) — sees the show as “a beginning in terms of attaching a bit more importance to this work and this time. Torontonians seem to have an aversion to history and self promotion, there’s no mythologizing. So, if anything, here’s an attempt to bring back this story. It got us to where we are, there was a process involved and it was meaningful.”
“I’m hoping this show is a gift to the young,” adds Johnson, who has been teaching at OCAD for the past 20 years. “As a teacher I’m aware that if it’s not on the internet it doesn’t exist so we’re working with Bill Kirby at the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art to document and preserve this legacy. We need to get it up there before we all drop dead, while people still remember what happened.”
Tom Dean, THIS IS PARADISE, inside the Cameron House. Image Credit: Peter McCallum, 1983. © Tom Dean
This Is Paradise could be dismissed as a mere nostalgia trip if the work wasn’t strong, but it is strong. Prints and paintings by Barbara Cole, Andy Fabo, Eldon Garnet, Lorne Wagman, George Whiteside, Tim Jocelyn, Tom Dean (above) and Rae Johnson all support the argument that the Cameron produced more than a scene, it produced some pretty great art.
Even an outsider like National Gallery of Canada curator Jonathan Shaughnessy, above, who was 9-years old when the Cameron was reborn in 1981, sees merit in the work that came out of Toronto’s bohemian heyday. Shaughnessy dipped into the National’s permanent collection to curate a tandem exhibit in the NGC@MOCCA space featuring works by General Idea, John Scott, Joanne Tod, Sandra Meigs and David Buchan, among others.
“I think it holds up very well,” says Shaughnessy of the work in This Is Paradise. “These artists have had a very real influence on what came afterwards and they were exploring similar themes as their contemporaries working elsewhere, artists like Jeff Koons and Richard Prince.”
Barbara Cole, Tomorrow, 1984. Appliqued c-print. Courtesy of the artist. © Barbara Cole
Many themes are explored in This Is Paradise – the relationship between art and media, transgressive sexuality, death and decay, the allure of drugs and alcohol – but the Cameron itself is never far from the fray whether in photographs like Tomorrow by Barbara Cole or the Sandra Meigs watercolour Pugatorio, A Drinkingbout.
Sandra Meigs, Purgatorio, A Drinkingbout (Series of Drinkers - Smokey The Bar, No. 2), 1981. NGC Collection © CARCC
Johnson and Tookey apologize profusely to artists who populated the 1980s Queen West art scene but aren’t represented in This Is Paradise: “There’s more to the story than we were able to tell here,” stresses Johnson. “One show cannot do this justice, it just can’t.”
Adds Tookey, “This is a little slice and we knew we’d have this problem from the very beginning. We tried to deal with the challenge in a number of ways and you can decide for yourself how successful we’ve been. But it’s just a tiny slice.”
WHERE/WHEN: This is Paradise at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (952 Queen Street West, 416.395.0067), June 25 to August 21, Tuesday to Sunday 11 am – 6 pm; Pay what you can.
Photo of Herb Tookey and Rae Johnson by Christopher Jones
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