WE’RE IN THE LIBRARY at the Koffler Gallery (Artscape Youngplace, 180 Shaw), to January 19. 647-925-0643. Rating: NNNN
At a time when libraries are (again) under attack, Koffler Gallery inaugurates its new downtown space in Artscape’s classy renovation of Shaw Street Public School with a paean to the rooms’ former occupant: the school library. Curator Mona Filip commissioned seven local artist to comment on the building’s history through themes of childhood, learning, reading, language and memory.
Sara Angelucci continues her investigation of found photography by mounting gradually darkening images of early-20th-century schoolchildren in foldout books. The haunting disappearing photos are displayed on a book trolley equipped with headphones that play children’s voices reading stories.
The past is also a focus for Adam David Brown, whose mesmerizing revolving circle of Encyclopedia Britannica volumes channels old playground spinners. Barbara Astman pays tribute to the inspirational power and poetic beauty of old books, covering a wall with pages from a beloved children’s natural history text that she’s overlain with coloured versions of their black-and-white illustrations.
Language is a subject for Michelle Gay, whose digital display of computerized (mis-)translations conjures changing modes of communication as well as the struggles of immigrants (an issue echoed in Brown’s chalk-dust facsimile of the Rosetta Stone), and Ido Govrin, whose fuzzy wall broadcasts whispered passages from authors’ final works, a kind of valedictory for the printed word.
The students of adjacent Givins-Shaw PS participated in two projects: Vid Ingelevics asked them to draw impressions of the 60s that might have been part of a lost mural painted at Shaw in that period, then animated them into an amusing video. In a riff on multicultural commercials, Jon Sasaki filmed the kids in his typical deadpan fashion instead of enacting some kind of advertising-hyped glee, they stand around looking bored or confused.
It’s a fitting debut for Koffler in the Queen West art district, showcasing some of our art scene’s best and engaging the school community (a practice we hope will continue), at once looking back and forward.
art@nowtoronto.com
