![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.artoronto.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/rsz_hearth_ns_1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n Exhibition view of New Strata<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n HEARTH is the latest plot in a constellation of weird spaces that make up Toronto\u2019s milieu of artist-run centres. To name only a few, this includes the basement spaces of Sibling and Franz Kaka,<\/em> the other garage Crutch CAC, and the literal bunker that is Bunker 2. Typical to this DIY gallery model is a mandate that rejects institutional bureaucracies, and their attended deference to private and public funders, exclusionary power structures, and gentrifying efforts that often piggyback galleries\u2019 spring-up. In short, the artist run-centre establishes itself as an antidote to a commercial art world that is oft more aptly categorized as a market than a community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Installation view with (L-R) Cadence Planthara, Untitled (quadrant painting)<\/em>, Shannon Garden-Smith, Sand Candle<\/em> & Curtain Wall (Tending Toward) <\/em>and Misbah Ahmed, Dalmation Running<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The artist-run M.O. in Toronto dates back, in part, to General Idea\u2019s establishment of Art Metropole, one of the city\u2019s first artist run centres, and A.A. Bronson\u2019s now canonical manifesto for the Association of National Non-Profit Artist Centres (ANNAC) \u201cThe Humiliation of the Bureaucrat: Artist-Run Centres as Museums by Artist\u201d (1986), which characterizes the artist-run centre as \u201ca sort of self-determining method of bypassing the gallery system, the artist’s office as museum reaching into the corporate pocketbooks of big business,\u201d and champions the artist-run centre as\u00a0 \u201ca connective tissue\u201d between an emergent egalitarian arts community. HEARTH\u2019s own mission statement says that it seeks to \u201cprovide a reprieve from limitations imposed by many larger artistic operating bodies, and the city itself,\u201d and that it \u201cis committed to working towards an anti-oppressive, queer positive environment, and welcoming marginalized, radicalized and indigenous folks.\u201d The make-do ethic (and aesthetic\u2014think space heaters, bad beer and donation jars) make artist-run spaces feel special, or somehow exempt from the typical hierarchies that make a city hard to live in, and its arts scene tough to participate in. But HEARTH\u2019s inception on this site reminds us that no place is really exempt<\/em>, but actually stands for its position in a city\u2019s ecosystem, even as it carves out refuge. Steeped in HEARTH\u2019s inception are questions about private property, ownership and community. It is a space for those who can\u2019t rely on existing institutional structures to provide a home for their artwork on a site that once belonged to those who can\u2019t rely on existing institutional structures to provide a home for them at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Cadence Planthara, in the wall<\/em>: freshwater pearls, cotton, peppercorn, glazed stoneware <\/p>\n\n\n\n In their opening exhibition New Strata<\/em>, artists attend to those questions about place, which HEARTH\u2019s cite seems to provoke. Cadence Planthara tucks tiny pearls and peppercorn into HEARTH\u2019s corners and cracks in the drywall. This is a kind of christening gesture, endowing the space with symbols of good luck. Peppercorn, a common household spice, is something of a wish for this garage to become a home, like a housewarming gift. It also speaks to one of fire\u2019s most generative purposes: cooking, which is a form of community building. Planthara\u2019s work \u201cUntitled (pearls inlay painting)\u201d (2019) includes pearls again, as well as silk and cotton, and loose threads. These materials allude to the domestic. Hanging her artwork feels a lot like decorating a home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Cadence Planthara, Untitled<\/em> (pearls inlay painting)<\/em>, acrylic, paper, silk, cotton (LaCache by April Cornell), plantago, calendula, clay, graphite on hardboard, 4 freshwater pearls, 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Andrew Harding\u2019s artwork also offers symbolic efforts to make HEARTH a home. \u201cUntitled (tribute)\u201d (2019), are laser-cut orange gargoyles. Gargoyles are mythological guards, symbols of protection. \u201cUrban Hide\u201d (2019) reads like a coy attempt at reclaiming cultural sovereignty. The \u201chide\u201d is made from trippy graphic t-shirts, which feature cartoonish abstractions of indigenous iconography, including far-out looking caricatures of headdresses and eagles. It is iconoclasm\u2014which, like a fire, is also a way to destroy a home\u2014to render symbols meaningless by placing them on something as banal as a cheap t-shirt. Hanging these shirts in the form of a hide is, perhaps, a symbolic return home from the whiplash of displacement and assimilation, which had been feebly addressed in our popular imagination through random cultural fetishes. L-R Misbah Ahmed, Champa<\/em>, wood panel, oil, acrylic and graphite, 2019. Andrew Harding, Urban Hide<\/em>, tshirts, silver plated chain, 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps the most site-specific artwork in New Strata<\/em> is Shannon Garden-Smith\u2019s \u201cSand Candle\u201d (2019). Mounds of sand, built on the garage\u2019s concrete floor, form a collection of basins. Burning tea lights float inside each. Garden-Smith made \u201cSand Candle\u201d as a direct response to the space. When I visit HEARTH for the first time, <\/em>I don\u2019t know about Nick Lambrinos and the house fire and the displaced tenants. Now that I do, \u201cSand Candle\u201d reminds me of a candlelight vigil. It looks like a memorial. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n