It’s disorienting. It’s oddly like becoming Alice in Wonderland swallowing some large pill.
Those features of an exhibition most notably thwarted by installation art that anchor a viewer in an exhibition are absent. Forget about panels telling you what to think, painting labels, cold sterile cement floors. These things are supplanted by caf-like couches, digital prints and plaques and web pages projected onto the gallery walls.
That’s what it was like to enter The Institute: Or, What We Do For Love, a recent exhibit at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at Hart House by Canadian artist Vera Frenkel.
An abandoned hospital site is suddenly a space of refuge for maturing Canadian artists. Or is it? Its mission is to “provide physical care and professional studio facilities for the nations’ leading artists in their maturity.” The Institute offers mature artists a safe haven in the midst of cutbacks to healthcare, education and the arts, combining all three factors to create a tension that may get us thinking outside the box about new possibilities.
Is the Institute a lovely dream, a critique of the social institutions that have betrayed us, or a vision for a largely aging baby boomer population? Those are all rhetorical questions-because it’s not real.
“A lot of people wanted to know where they could sign up to go,” explains Judi Schwartz, the director/curator of the gallery at Hart House. “There are a lot of people that are troubled about where the future is taking them.”
“What we do for love is often very different-perhaps regrettably, perhaps inevitably-from what we do as members of an institution of whatever kind,” explains Frenkel, who’s a well-known video installation artist and York art professor. “I wanted to signal other, more personal, individual and passionate realities along with the structures that the word ‘Institute’ so quickly brings to mind.”
Two institutions-one fictional and the other a very real space. The Justina M. Barnicke gallery at Hart House is a hidden treasure. It can be found nestled in the northeastern corner of the building. What distinguishes this gallery is its commitment to student participation in the decision-making process; and, at one time, its mandate to support the work of both historical and contemporary Canadian art.
When Judi Schwartz joined the gallery in 1975, there were only two commercial galleries showing contemporary Canadian art in Toronto: The Art Gallery of Ontario and the Barnicke Gallery. The gallery’s mandate is quite simply to exhibit the work of Canadian and historical art (including several works by the revered Group of Seven).
Every show that exhibits in the gallery is decided upon in consultation with a student committee. “We’re the only gallery on campus where students have a say,” Schwartz explains from her office next to the gallery. “We’re on the leading edge of cool.”
The Hart House Visual Art Committee selects exhibitions, runs art competitions and selects work for the permanent collection. Visits to artist studios are also a part of the experience.
Lara Okihiro, a student member of the visual arts committee, says she wasn’t really into joining clubs because she thought their mandates always seemed too restrictive. Though it took some confidence-building, she eventually joined the Visual Art committee at Hart House when she realized that the student-driven group has a real role to play.
Okihiro compares her experience on the committee with some student union conferences she has attended in North America. “I was shocked at how little responsibility and even respect students are given elsewhere,” she says. As art committee members, “we set our own budgets, plan all of our own programming, and buy art to build Hart House’s world-renowned collection.”
Okay, so this institution may be different than most. “Of course, there is always a bit of bureaucracy to work past,” Okihiro reflects, “But it’s good to learn how to see beyond that.”
Currently running at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery is Ryszard Litwiniuk’s sculptural installation Infinite Transitions.
The Hart House Visual Art Committee’s annual ‘Zine Fair happens Wednesday, March 10 from 11 am-2 pm. The committee is also hosting the Hart House Art Competition (open to all U of T students and Hart House members), which has cash prizes for the top three selections. The deadline is the day after tomorrow, so hurry! For more info, see the gallery’s website at www.utoronto.ca/gallery.
