URBAN SITES on view at the Market Gallery (South St. Lawrence Market, 92 Front East) until June 24. 416-392-7604. Rating: NNN
Rating: NNNNN
wondering what happened to
all those Millennium projects funded by special one-off grants?
They’re finally coming to light.
Urban Sites: Five Toronto Photographers presents five distinct visions of Toronto in the year or so around Y2K.
Each artist — the group includes Andrew Danson, Ruth Kaplan, Elaine Ling, Vincenzo Pietropaolo and Marcus Schubert — exhibits a solid and compelling body of work, but as a whole the project lacks unity.
Danson and Ling both look for quirky anthropological signifiers in the city’s signage, while Schubert proposes the transformation of the Gardiner Expressway lands into a public pedestrian zone.
Kaplan and Pietropaolo, meanwhile, stick to hardcore social documentary imagery. Pietropaolo’s Praying In The Street captures community festivals like the Peruvian feast of Nuestro Señor de los Milagros.
Kaplan explores the search for community at institutions as divergent as the black Cotillion Ball, the Hungarian debutante ball, the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship and outings organized for teen moms with their babies.