Six stations along the Eglinton Crosstown light rail transit line will feature public art by local and internationally renowned artists. Metrolinx released renderings of the eight public art projects yesterday, Wednesday, January 17 at a “pop-up gallery” in the Ontario Science Centre, not far from one of the future stations on the new line, which opens in 2021.
These eight art projects represent the first investment under Metrolinx’s new integrated art program, an initiative to improve the transit experience for riders across the Metrolinx regional transit network. According to a Metrolinx news release, “These art projects — and future public art programs that will be part of Metrolinx building projects — are an investment in new and improved public space for the communities Metrolinx serves.”
“Public art in transit stations is an excellent way to improve the customer experience. Metrolinx knows that outstanding design, including integrated art for the public to enjoy, helps build ridership and community pride in the transit system”, Phil Verster, the president and chief executive officer of Metrolinx told reporters during a media event announcing the art pieces.
The artists include world-renowned sculptors, photographers, video artists, painters and printmakers from the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area, Canada, and around the world.
The Crosstown LRT line will include art installations at significant stations, usually where the line intersects with other transit services:
- Mount Dennis Station;
- Caledonia Station;
- Cedarvale Station;
- Eglinton Station;
- Science Centre Station; and
- Kennedy Station.
Mount Dennis station
When the line opens, Mount Dennis will be its western terminus. LRT passengers can connect with GO Transit trains on the Kitchener line and Union Pearson Express trains at a future GO / UPX station.
Mount Dennis will feature two art projects.
Canadian artists active since 1997, Hadley and Maxwell have produced installations, performances and writings that employ diverse media to rework iconic images and traditional forms through pop-cultural, artistic and political movements. Exhibitions include Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), Smart Project Space (Amsterdam), and Project Art Centre (Dublin), and group exhibitions at the Power Plant (Toronto), the National Gallery of Canada, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse (France), Witte de With (Rotterdam) and the 19th Biennale of Sydney.
Up to This Moment will be a video artwork in the upper concourse of the station, visible from Eglinton Avenue West. An evolving visual archive, the artwork captures ongoing changes in Mount Dennis, and, especially, on the land where the station sits, Kodak Heights. Quotes from Ovid’s famous poem, Metamorphoses surround the video screen. The moving images on the video screen will be different every day, showing creation, renewal, and change - just like the transformation taking place in the local community.
Canadian photographer Cwynar has recently worked in monochromatic colour studies and has exhibited her photos and installations internationally in The Magenta Flash Forward Festival, at Butcher Gallery, Ed Varie, Printed Matter, Paul Petro Special Projects, the Royal College of Art, and COOPER COLE. The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, 01 Magazine and Bad Day Magazine have all featured her work. Print Magazine listed her as one of 20 Under 30 New Visual Artists for 2011. In 2016, Cwynar was awarded the Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel.
At Mount Dennis, her untitled artwork is a brightly coloured, wall-sized photographic mural, displaying a collage of found images and objects. She has digitally printed these images on layers of glass panels and will mount them on a wall in a pedestrian corridor in the station. The artist’s practice involves archiving and re-presenting collected visual materials in new ways to tell a new story. Photography plays an important role in the history of Kodak Heights in Mount Dennis, and this artwork showcases the legacy of the site for the local community and for future generations.
Caledonia Station
At Caledonia, LRT passengers will connect to GO trains at a future GO station on the Barrie line.
- Janice Kerbel:
Born 1969, Canadian Janice Kerbel works in mixed media. In the past decade, she has garnered commissions from public-art organization Artangel, institutions including Chisenhale Gallery and Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe, and exhibited at galleries including Tate Britain, the ICA London, Kunsthalle Wien and the Whitechapel Art Gallery. In 2011, she won the Paul Hamlyn Award for artists. In 2015, she was a Turner Prize nominee.
The Ride of Your Life is a series of large works of mosaic tiles for walls in Caledonia station. Mosaic tile has played an important role in the history of transit - you see it in signs, architecture and design on other transit systems around the world. That design has inspired the artist to use mosaic tiles to create large signs of different typefaces and different sizes. The signs will look like fairground posters from the early 20th century, with the kind of over-the-top language you might hear at a fairground or from a carnival barker to create a sense of excitement and wonder.
Cedarvale Station
The current Eglinton West Station. Passengers can connect with TTC subway trains along Line 1 Yonge - University.
Born 1961, Canadian Douglas Coupland’s public production in contemporary art has gained momentum since 2000 with speaking and exhibiting engagements at art venues, including the Serpentine Gallery, MASS MoCA and the Manchester Art Gallery. Notable public art commissions include Digital Orca (2010) — a “pixelated” sculpture of a jumping whale — in Vancouver and Monument to the War of 1812 (2008) in Toronto, which enlarges toy soldiers to monumental scale. Coupland was appointed to the Order of Canada and, in 2014, the Vancouver Art Gallery held the first major survey of his art.
Coupland has created a set of Super Signals, exaggerating the kinds of graphics that transit systems have often used to help riders find their way around the station and along the line — circles to show stations or different colours to show different transit lines. Super Signals consists of large aluminum panels with brightly coloured circles on a background of black and white diagonal lines — shaking up a traditional transit map. The graphics are vivid, bright and exciting, encouraging passengers to enjoy the experience of being in transit.
Eglinton Station
Passengers can connect with TTC subway trains along Line 1 Yonge - University.
Rodney LaTourelle creates large-scale colour installations, public artworks and architectural interventions that explore the interplay of colour and physical space in an immersive viewing experience. Recent solo exhibitions include Optica (Montreal), Mendel Art Gallery (Saskatoon) and Diaz Contemporary (Toronto). His works have been collected by The National Gallery of Canada and the Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (Luxembourg).
The shimmering light that crystals, gemstones and minerals — the kind that you might find underground — inspired Light from Within, the artwork for Eglinton station. As you go down the escalators into the station, the artwork gives you the sensation of entering a beautiful crystal cave. The sculpture of mirrors and glass prisms is two stories high. It reflects light from front and back and casts it down deep into the station giving you a sense of wonder and surprise.
Science Centre Station
Science Centre is the only underground station between Laird Drive and Kennedy Road. Passengers may eventually be able to transfer to Relief Line trains operating north and south under Don Mills Road at the station.
British/American Sarah Morris is known for abstract paintings featuring bright colour fields and graphic line work. She has exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions at Hamburger Banhof (Berlin), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Fondation Beyeler (Basel), Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna among others. She has created site-specific installations for institutions, including Lever House (New York), Kunsthalle Bremen (Germany) and the Gloucester Road tube station (London).
Total Lunar Eclipse is a vibrant and colourful “wall painting” that Morris made of porcelain tiles that she silkscreened by hand. Over the past several years, Morris has been producing a series of paintings based on the lunar cycle. Looking at this work for the Science Centre Station, you can see how the changes in the moon influenced her, with so many different colours and shapes creating a sense of motion and change. The movement of light and how it can affect our behaviour fascinates the artist — a fascination you can see in this dramatic work.
Kennedy Station
At Kennedy, passengers can connect to GO Transit trains operating along the Stouffville line. They can also transfer to TTC trains for the Line 2 Bloor - Danforth subway and Line 3 Scarborough rapid transit.
Kennedy is home to two art installations.
- Joseph Kosuth:
Born 1945, American Joseph Kosuth was one of the originators of conceptual art in the mid-1960s, a pioneer in using words or text in place of visual imagery. He was invited to exhibit at documentas V, VI, VII and IX and at the Venice Biennale in 1976, 1993 and 1999. He has been involved in various artistic collaborations, such as designing album art for John Cale. He has been commissioned to produce permanent artworks for public buildings, including the Paul-Löbe-Haus, Bundestag (Berlin) and the Musée du Louvre (Paris).
Locations of Meaning (for Toronto), an art installation for Kennedy station, is about how we find meaning and even belonging in a city that is so rich in diversity. The installation consists of the word ‘meaning’ translated into the 72 languages spoken in the City of Toronto and the surrounding region. The artist has laser-cut each word in stainless steel and then set them into tiles, creating a wall work that becomes part of the station design. Kosuth often uses language to create new kinds of meaning through his visual art. Toronto will have the largest installation to date in this artwork series.
A Polish-Canadian, known for drawing, painting and collage, Genda’s practice includes large-scale immersive installations. Her work has been shown at the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, the Esker Foundation, Calgary, Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener + Area Biennial 2014 and numerous public and private venues across Canada and the United State. Over the past two years she has been working in various residencies nationally and internationally, including China, the United States and the United Kingdom. Her publications include articles and reviews in Border Crossings, Canadian Art Online, Momus and C Magazine.
Reorganization of One Hedge is a work that is specific to its site at Kennedy station. Dagmara Genda wants to answer the question: ‘How do things change with time?’ She began by taking photographs of the leaves of one hedge in different lighting conditions over a period of several months. She cut out the images of the leaves by hand, forming a collection of leaves of many different colours — like the colours on a painter’s palette. She then put the leaves together in a collage and will print that collage onto glass so that coloured light will stream in through a station skylight. She’ll also set light boxes with the leaf patterns in the walls of a hallway in the station, bringing light and greenery into the station.
Subscribe to our news feed: (