History (1981 – 2014)
The Toronto Sculpture Garden has been the site of innovative contemporary sculpture installations since 1981. This small, urban park in the downtown core served as a testing ground for artists to experiment with public space and to address issues of architectural scale, materials and context.
Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins, In Sit You, 2006; Tri-Vision Rotating Billboard, 10' x 20', Aggregate Park Bench, 8' x 4' x 2'
Liz Magor, Messenger, 1996; log cabin, trees, bushes, flagstone, mixed media; Cabin with porch, 12' W x 17' L
The Toronto Sculpture Garden provided some artists their first opportunity to work out-of-doors, to experiment with the challenges of siting work within an urban environment and gave them critical experience for future public art projects.
Many, including Susan Schelle, Stacey Spiegel, Brian Scott, Mark Gomes, John McKinnon, Carlo Cesta, Judith Schwarz, Stephen Cruise, Reinhard Reitzenstein, Yvonne Singer, Brian Groombridge, Lisa Neighbour and Warren Quigley, undertook their first public commissions after exhibiting in the Toronto Sculpture Garden.
Located at 115 King Street East, near Church Street and opposite St. James’ Cathedral, the Garden was both a civic and a private initiative in its first 35 years. It was a unique partnership between the City of Toronto, which owns and operates it as a city park, and the Louis L. Odette family, who created the non-profit L.L.O. Sculpture Garden Foundation to fund the exhibitions. City mayors David Crombie and John Sewell played a significant role in the development of this special city park with privately funded art exhibitions.
Site Design
The Toronto Sculpture Garden measures 80’ x 100’ and is situated between two “City Buildings” built in the Georgian style of the early 1840’s.
The TSG was designed by what was then the City of Toronto’s Civic Design Group, a division of the Department of Planning and Development. A waterfall was designed to provide ambient sound and muffle vehicular noise in summer, benches and a low brick retaining wall were designed to provide casual seating, and night lighting was included to allow for nearly 18 hours of public viewing. A wrought iron fence, designed by Angelo Garro and commissioned by the City, enclosed the space and provided security for the works since the gates were locked at nightfall.
The 1980 design for the site was conceived to accommodate the original mandate of group exhibitions of individual works. It featured a limestone gravel ground with concrete footings and splayed steps to accommodate the slight change in grade. As the mandate shifted from group to solo exhibitions and/or installations, and as artists began to respond more directly to the site, the physical characteristics of the space were gradually simplified and altered. In time, gravel areas were replaced with grass, footings for pedestals were removed, concrete steps were eliminated and the site was re-graded. These changes provided a more neutral field and allowed greater flexibility for installations.
Exhibition Mandate
The early mandate identified group exhibitions of existing work. This provided artists the opportunity to exhibit in an outdoor space and introduced the public to the many aesthetics of contemporary work. The Art Advisory Board selected the first two exhibitions with that directive. By the third exhibit, the mandate shifted to solo shows of existing works with Louise Stokes’ exhibit, then evolved again to solo exhibitions of commissioned site-specific work beginning with the fourth exhibit by Lee Paquette.
The evolution in the mandate was influenced by several factors. It became quickly apparent that there was not an infinite number of existing available works suitable for outdoor display and that it would be difficult to continue large group shows for an indefinite period. Group shows also tended to focus attention on the site rather than on the art, especially since the works were selected for formal rather than conceptually reasons and the exhibitions lacked curatorial focus.
The greatest impact on the exhibition mandate was the change, evidenced internationally, as sculpture moved from being a point object on a pedestal to a work of many parts whose installation became a variable influenced by site and context. Most exhibitions in the TSG have been solo shows with artists creating new work specifically for the site, although guest curators have been invited by the Board, from time to time, to mount group shows of new or existing work.