Opening Reception: Saturday, January 25, 7-11pm
The Gladstone Hotel’s Annual Alternative Design Event with curation and work by current IAMD Master's students
An exhibition about trust, risk and collaboration, Come Up To My Room (CUTMR) enters its second decade as Toronto’s biggest alternative design event. A surprise until the day before it opens, the show never fails to delight and inspire with 25 installations that transform the Gladstone Hotel both inside and out. This show bends disciplinary boundaries and explores new ground each year. Amongts his years participants is Anna Jofre a current IAMD MFA student. Curator Robert Cram is also currently enrolled in the Interdisciplinary Master's program.
Hours:
Thursday 6-8pm
Friday 11am-8pm
Saturday 11am-10pm
Sunday 11am-5pm
Taking inspiration from the Gladstone itself, Nathan Whitford and Sarah Keenlyside illuminate the façade to reveal the architectural bones beneath, while Rollout confronts the constraints of a historic building where their wallpaper cannot go on the walls. Throughout the building, Sisley Leung’s mouse-sized hotel amenities and Ana Jofre’s life-sized marionettes question who else makes use of the hotel.
A secretive collaboration between resident artist Bruno Billio and studio resident, the Department of Unusual Certainties, is bound to surprise you with new sounds, while the Torontonians, the Teenagers in Residence, and Mammalian Diving Reflex present a manic, hyper teen aesthetic in ‘GET OUT OF MY ROOM.’
Experiences of fantasy and reality, inside and out, private and public are mediated by the Escapespace installation that emerges onto Queen Street, Currentform’s responsive hotel entrance, Natasha Basacchi + Aliya Tejani’s interactive bathroom, and A Zero’s Fall of the Walled Garden where all is revealed. Connect to other times and places with Victoria Taylor and Linda Dervishaj’s Emergent Structures, SPAM collective’s Touched, and Andrew Foerster’s city of ramshackle sheds and raw mean villains.
Installations by Jordan Evans, Ryla Jakelski + Evan Jerry with Lois Weinthal (RSID), KRDW, Kathleen Wicks, Shannon Scanlan, Claire Scherzinger, Christine Kim and Vanathy Ganesharajah explore materiality and sense of place, offering alternative perspectives of tangible realities.
Making is celebrated in furniture and lighting throughout the hotel by Wayne Muma, Jennifer Rong, Sheridan College, Bettie Cott and Megan Blake, Hilary Hayes and Tim Richards. The making continues in the Melody Bar with Collage Parties hosted by the Collage Collective.
Interested in the processes, skills and techniques behind CUTMR installations, participants were invited to submit short videos that explain their works in progress. Watch them here.
This year’s exhibition is curated by Jaclyn Blumas, Robert Cram, Elise Hodson and Britt Welter-Nolan.