OCAD University

Come Up to My Room is grassroots. It’s where ideas are born. It’s where people come to take part. It’s accessible. It allows art and design to collide, unite, melt, disagree, catch a cold, get better, hold a grudge, spread a rumour, take risks, fight and make up.

What differentiates the artists and designers who show at CUTMR each year is their willingness to take risks, to push their ideas, to evoke meaning not just function. They’ve been working for months. They will transform all four floors of the hotel with their site-specific installations that challenge the ideas of art and design.

All year the excitement has been building. Designers have been revealing their projects to us. Layer by layer. Room by room. This curatorial process is ephemeral, gaining shape only as we move closer to the event. We want it like that. We ask for it like that because we need this experience to be a surprise. We still don’t know what it will look like, what direction everyone took—and we won’t know until the doors open..

COME UP TO MY ROOM 2016

Thirteen…an unlucky number for some, but not for Come Up To My Room (CUTMR). This year’s event, the thirteenth edition, once again showcases the work of new and established artists, designers and collectives from Canada and the US. CUTMR encourages spatial exploration that engages our senses, our memories and our perceptions of reality. Framed within the backdrop of the historic Gladstone Hotel, CUTMR invites participants to inhabit three floors with site-specific, immersive installations that stimulate the imagination and encourage discussion and dialogue between contributors and visitors alike.

Coming from the fields of architecture and exhibition design, this year’s curators, Jana Macalik and Nuria Montblanch have reengaged with the heritage of CUTMR, focusing on the spatial sensory experiences and design as the medium. The designers have been encouraged to identify discursive opportunities, altering perceptions of space and place. The inclusion of designers’ own identities within the experience of the exhibition affects narratives and is reflected in their use of interactive and tactile media. Thus, a space of discourse is created where multiple dialogues can begin to take place – between the hotel, the spaces and the people within.

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.