Passing Water at Art Metropole (788 King West), to August 28. 416-703-4400. Rating: NNNNN
Rating: NNNNN
The best riff on the project’s theme is the Passing Water show at Art Metropole . It’s piss without a miss, with two Yanks, two Canucks and two Brits contributing excellent work on the theme of expelling waste water. There are photos of Alexander Schweder ‘s male and female porcelain urinal pair as well as a yellow-bound book called Peeple that records his invention of temperature-sensitive urinal decals featuring people who are stripped to their underwear by the warmth of urine and clothed by cool flushing water.
Mathew Sawyer has composed brilliant little ditties that are accompanied by the percussion of his pee hitting the toilet-bowl water. The others are strong, but Adam Frelin tops the show with his toilet interventions. Frelin reroutes water from one washroom appliance to another – from the urinal to the toilet or from the sink to the toilet – by duct tape bridges.
In the Art Met washroom, he’s designed a tube that moves water from the toilet tank around the feet of the toilet user and back into the tank. (Another of his toilet designs is at Mercer Union right now.)
It’s inspirational.
A province-wide response by artists and galleries to the tainted water scandal in Walkerton has spread throughout Toronto during July through some form of art osmosis. The Ontario Society of Artists’ Water Project ranges from the Yorkville galleries’ expected watery landscapes to a surprising show at Art Metropole featuring urine.
