Reading The Garden
Josh Thorpe and David Court
April 6 – 30, 2010
Josh Thorpe and David Court, Reading The Garden
Artist Statement
The work for Toronto Sculpture Garden takes the form of a single-sheet newspaper, The Garden, that is available in the boxes at each entrance to the park. Its content proposes a discourse few would consider to be news; it’s static, intensely local, and concerned with details far outside the conventions of the newsworthy. It also presents itself as public art but suggests a private activity. We think of it as a way to get to know this space better (for locals, tourists, and participating artists), and as the object of a common leisure activity for parks: reading. It is a text that, by necessity, addresses the recent past of the space, with some anticipation of its present and future.
The Garden, and other works like it, originates from a simple curiosity about the built environment and the material qualities, histories, functionalities, inter-subjective relations, and conventions of a particular site. We spent a good deal of time onsite observing and describing details collaboratively with architects, planners, artists, critics, and various people involved in or adjacent to the space in question. This body of knowledge then forms the basis, and often the content, of the resulting work, which seeks to address the complexity of the experience of a space.
Read The Garden
The Garden was conceived and assembled by Josh Thorpe and David Court and designed by Hagon Design of Kitchener-Waterloo. The text is set in ITC Cheltenham and Utopia and was printed on 30 lb Vista Opaque by Flash Reproductions, Etobicoke.
