EVERGREEN PRESENTS above and below and so on forever – NEW PUBLIC ART AT CASTLE FRANK SUBWAY STATION
Artist Nadia Belerique reminds us of our proximity to the Don River in the newest public artwork opening on April 16, 2019
TORONTO, ONTARIO (April 16, 2019) – Evergreen is bringing the Don River up into the city with above and below and so on forever, a new large-scale outdoor photo installation for the TTC bus terminal windows at Castle Frank Subway Station. Through a series of five still-life photographs, Toronto-based artist Nadia Belerique reminds us that when you’re at Castle Frank, you’re at the edge of the Don River. This latest installation is part of Evergreen’s Don River Valley Park Art Program, in partnership with Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival and Pattison Outdoor Advertising, and will be on display from April 16 to June 9, 2019.
“We are thrilled to present Nadia Belerique’s first public art project in Toronto, on such a large scale. Nadia’s work often shifts the expected photographic viewpoint, and here she offers a new lens on the river. The photographs play with our ideas of how a river might be represented. And they work beautifully with the architecture of Castle Frank Station,” says Kari Cwynar, Evergreen’s Curator of the Don River Valley Park Art Program. “Castle Frank sits at street level, at the edge of the Don Valley, and the installation literally brings the river up into the city, surrounding the viewer in a landscape that is as natural as it is altered, inhabited and manipulated.”
In her work, Belerique complicates the way we look at images. She often alters conventional perspectives or re-photographs in her studio to create multi-layered images that conflate places and moments. For above and below and so on forever, Belerique brought her studio outdoors composing and shooting a series of still-life photographs in the Don River. Belerique staged found objects (bottles, shoes) in the river alongside existing ones (leaves, flowers) and re-photographed the images in her studio through a pane of glass, lending the Don River an unusual and artificial new surface.
Each photograph follows the station’s architecture so that the sequencing of the bus terminal windows mimics the flow of the river. With the transparent nature of the photographs installed on glass, Belerique’s close framing of the river and the shadows of passers-by through the station windows, the installation creates a strange sense of depth.
Belerique’s artwork is part of Evergreen’s Don River Valley Park Art Program. Current installations can be found along the Lower Don Trail including Virginia Overton’s Built, Will Kwan’s A Park for All and Duane Linklater’s Monsters for Beauty, Permanence and Individuality.
The project was made possible with the support of the Ontario Arts Council.
About the artist:
Based in Toronto, Nadia Belerique constructs installations that engage with the poetics of perception and question how images perform in contemporary culture. She received her MFA from the University of Guelph and has exhibited at such venues as Grazer Kunstverein, Graz; Oakville Galleries; the Art Gallery of Hamilton; Daniel Faria Gallery, The Power Plant, and Gallery TPW, Toronto; and Kunsthalle Wien. Belerique was long-listed for the 2017 Sobey Art Award and is represented by Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto.
About the Don River Valley Park Art Program:
The Don River Valley Park Art Program, presented by Evergreen in partnership with the City of Toronto and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, is a series of new temporary sculptural installations, murals, billboards and performance, including dance and sound, along the Don River, created specifically for this site by local, Canadian and international artists. The commissioned artworks explore the Don Valley’s ecological, cultural, industrial and Indigenous histories and future histories and the decisions that continue to shape the city’s public space and public art. Each project will have its own timeline, with some lasting many years and others for one day.
The Don River Valley Park, a 200-hectare greenspace spanning Pottery Road to Corktown Common, aims to build connections to and from neighbourhoods, engage Torontonians and visitors in cultural activities and enhance the environment of one of the world’s largest ravine systems.