Eight images from this body of work are shown below. Each limited edition print is available for purchase in 50" x 50", 36” x 36,” 18" x 18" and 9" x 9" sizes. Please contact me for more information.
75, 100 and 150 Graydon Hall Drive, Toronto (2011)
35, 43 & 47 Thorncliffe Park Drive, Toronto (Rideau Towers) (2011)
2600 Don Mills Road, Toronto (Hunter's Lodge) (2011)
10 Edgecliff Golfway, Toronto (2011)
7 & 9 Crescent Place, and 102, 104, 106 & 108 Godwood Park Court, Toronto (Crescent Town) (2011)
110 and 130 York Mills Road, Toronto (2011)
655 Broadview Avenue & 10 Hogarth Avenue, Toronto (Montcrest Apartments) (2011)
40 Godstone Road, Toronto (2011)This project began in May 2007 when I exhibited Landmarks and Monuments: Residential Complexes in Toronto’s Urban Periphery at the Larry Wayne Richards Gallery. At that time, I described the work as follows:
The residential complexes in the periphery of Toronto are definitive landmarks: markers of boundary and locality, points of orientation, representations of an instance and turning point in time, and structures of compelling historical and aesthetic interest. Their monumental significance is belied by a lack of conscious popular awareness of their presence and status. By presenting these buildings as consequential architecture, I aim to stimulate discourse about their role in our city.Or, to put it more succinctly: by shooting the tower apartments as places of beauty and significance, I help make them worth renewing.
By adopting the technique and style of commercial architectural photography, this work deliberately deviates from a more common artistic approach to the subject of tower apartments, which is characterized primarily by ambivalence.
Images from this growing body of work have formed the visual basis for a large number of tower apartments neighbourhood renewal initiatives over the past four years. This unanticipated but welcome adoption and use fulfills my artistic intent: to stimulate discourse on the role of Tower Neighbourhoods in Toronto, creating the opportunity for the consequential nature of these sites to enter the popular consciousness.
The new images shown above will serve as a launching point for a book project on the topic of Toronto tower apartments. The work featured in the book will be disseminated through a variety of media and distribution methods, including public exhibition at non-traditional venues (e.g. shows in tower neighbourhoods) and facilitation of the work’s use in future scholarly and public outreach initiatives (e.g. publication-ready image packages). The book will be funded in 2013, and published in 2014.
This ongoing project is important because it creates visibility for the subject matter, making it familiar, accessible and emotionally affecting for scholars, design professionals, artists and the public. It also serves an important documentary function, cataloguing this ubiquitous buiding type at a pivotal moment in its history.
On May 12, 2011, I presented this body of work at the second Tower Neighbourhood Renewal Symposium. The poster from this presentation is shown below.
On May 18, 2011, this exhibition was featured on BlogTO.An image from Figure Ground was exhibited at Gallery TPW as part of Photorama 2012.
