Dream Homes: Far-out ideas for rebooting the 'burbs: Toronto Free Gallery displays dreams for brave new future for subdivisions crumbling corridors
The Toronto Star, Apr. 23, 2006
Inspired by a United Way study outlining growing poverty in old suburbs of Toronto, Brenda Goldstein curates a collection of speculative work about the future of suburbia at the Toronto Free Gallery. The artists work seems divided between dystopian and utopian visions for the future;the work of Lorraine Oades seeks positive uses for suburban space whereas Jason Van Horne depicts a post-apocalyptic suburban street setting using scale models. Arbor Lake Sghool's Trench War! seems to get to the core of radical thinking surrounding suburban ideals by re-enacting famous battles with water balloons on a lawn in suburban Calgary: "the suburbs are...-a facsimile of an ideal that might have seemed to make sense at one time." Imagining a Kensington Market in the middle of Markham, Goldstein surmises the movement of re-imagined spaces is just beginning.
ITEM 2006.122 – available for viewing in the Research Centre
Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited
Garden City – Lorraine Oades
Trench War! – Arbor Lake Sghool
Homes for America – Dan Graham
Soft City – Upper Parkdale Benevolent Art Guild
Pressure Treated Privacy Space – Franco DeFrancesca