Our City By Laura Beeston Staff Reporter 338 Views

Queen West Art Hut in its Final Act

By the end of April, the Art Hut will be no more.

The pop-up cultural project on the corner of Queen St. W. and Gladstone had a spirited six-month run, with a mission to explore how community is built in a “post-gentrified” neighbourhood.

The project — a collaboration between The Gladstone Hotel and Skale Developments, who lent out the property — will go from creative hub to sales centre before becoming a 16-storey condo in the days to come.

But the hotel doesn’t believe this is a sign of the times.

“People have been predicting the death of Queen West for 10 years now and it continues to be one of the most vital places in Toronto,” said Christina Zeidler, whose official title is ‘Chief Alchemist’ of The Gladstone Hotel. “What we see here is resiliency, an incredibly creative space (and) we’ve done something interesting and political.”

Zeidler, who has run the hotel since 2003, believes the reason the neighbourhood continues to thrive as a creative hub is because “artists get involved in the conversation.”

They’ll keep talking for the next few weeks anyway, as the 1,433 square foot hut continues to showcase local talent and emerging creatives who are finding themselves increasingly squeezed out of the downtown core.

The Gladstone Hotel has hosted a pop-up space for emerging local artists for the past six months in the Art Hut at 1181 Queen St. W.
The Gladstone Hotel has hosted a pop-up space for emerging local artists for the past six months in the Art Hut at 1181 Queen St. W.

Special projects manager Chris Mitchell said the Art Hut has been overwhelmed with submissions from those seeking space. “Literally every week we get calls from people,” she said. “We made hay.”

For its final month, Toronto’s League of Lady Wrestlers take over the Art Hut for two weeks starting March 27, building a ring and creating a “feminist wrestling utopia” through live performances and immersive installation.

Then a duo called The Masking Collective makes their way from the MOMA, using the hut as an open studio for a video project where they insert themselves into dating shows, documentaries and reality TV.

Finally, Layne Hinton and Rui Pimienta — the team behind Art Spin who hosted the celebrated In/Future project at Ontario Place last fall — will collaborate for the first time together as artists (not curators) and activate the space with moving boxes.

A proposed development is before the zoning board concerning designs for 1181 Queen St. W.
A proposed development is before the zoning board concerning designs for 1181 Queen St. W.  (Beeston, Laura)  

It speaks to how residential spaces are the “singular focus of urban development, which is a homogenizing force at play in the city,” said Pimienta, who has lived in the Queen West neighbourhood for over 20 years and seen its thriving and dynamic community “sadly squeezed out.”

They hope, through interventions like Art Hut, the public can reimagine and stimulate new conversations about what Toronto could be.

Indeed, it’s a creative send-off for the Queen West corner, whose future is still up for zoning debates.

Michelle Knieriem, a city planner on the file, said she was unable to comment on the project, which is before the Ontario Municipal Board, an independent, quasi-judicial, administrative tribunal that handles appeals of land-use planning disputes.

A spokesperson for the developers said it would be “premature” to discuss the site’s development as it is working through the process with the city.

Richard Witt, the Principal at Quadrangle Architects Ltd. in charge of the design, told the Star more details should be available before the end of the summer.

The next OMB hearing date for the development project is June 2, 2017.

Read More..



Comments

There are 0 comments on this post

Leave A Comment