Hanging Matters, installation by Jordan Evans, Ryla Jakelski, Evan Jerry, with Lois Wienthal (RSID) 2nd Floor CUTMR 11, Photo by Joanna Katchutas
Last week was design week in Toronto and I had the opportunity to visit Come Up To My Room 11 (CUTMR 11), the Gladstone Hotel’s annual alternative design event from Thursday Jan 23 – Sunday Jan 26 2014. Now in its eleventh year CUTMR has become Toronto’s largest alternative design show and visiting the event has become an annual ritual for many art & design enthusiasts, tourists and Torontonians alike. Running simultaneously as part of the Toronto Design Offsite Festival (TODO), this unique art & design event converts the Gladstone hotel both inside and out taking over the Gladstone’s rooms on the second floor, ballroom, lobby, and even extending out into the street. The exhibition fills every crevasse of the 125 year old building with site-specific art installations suitable to the space. The artists and designers involved had five days to create their installation in their allotted space, to fill their ‘room’ at the hotel with architectural designs, industrial designs, fashion, interior designs, films, sculptures, paintings, metal works and much more. Curated by Robert Cram, Jaclyn Blumas, Elise Hodson and Britt Welter-Nolan, Come Up To My Room 11 (CUTMR 11) was an exquisite four-day show featuring 60 artists and 25 unique and engaging installations. The artists involved came from different a variety of backgrounds. Those involved ranged from mid-career artists, design teams and collectives, independent artists and designers, emerging and/or self-taught. In an interview I held with Curator and Producer of the event, Britt Welter-Nolan, she revealed this year’s theme for Come Up to My Room: Engaging in ideas of rush, exhilaration and the theme of trust and risk.
One of the installations I was drawn to during my visit to the exhibition included Analog Pixels by Rollout located in room 208. This installation explored the use of patterns, three dimensionality and the designers’ three current obsessions: Rob Ford, pixels and boxes. The goal for this installation was to inspire the audience to reconfigure the space and uncover the history of digital graphics within the environment. The designers wanted to encourage the audience to go crazy and interact with their exhibition, hoping that people would destroy the installation by throwing around the boxes and change around their order so the graphic projections would be constantly changed by the new order. It was also encouraged that visitors be sure to take a Rob Ford selfie, which was by far my favorite part!
Analog Pixels Room 208 CUTMR 11, Photo by Joanna Katchuas
I also particularly enjoyed Shannon Scanlan’s installation entitled Gut Feelings located in room 207. Scanlan created an ironic ick factor making body parts (i.e., intestines and organs) out of bright coloured fabric toys and carpet and the audience was invited to interact and walk through the installation. As described in the Come Up To My Room 11 booklet in this setting, viewers are antagonized by casual depictions of body parts where the dry outside moves toward the slippery inside. This installation provoked ideas of the autonomous figure, social, psychological and sexual aspects of bodily politics, body perception and body image.
Gut Feelings, by Shannon Scanlan room 207 CUTMR 11, Photo by Joanna Katchutas
I found the installation The Common Thread by Kathleen Wicks extremely interesting and would like to mention it as well. This installation was created from an accumulation of reclaimed vintage wool blankets found in estate sales/yard sales recreated and transformed into new objects. The transformation in Common Thread from utility to art questions the value society puts on using discarded objects and their place in a system of wealth. Each creation of the blankets in Wicks room told a story. As an example, Wicks created a button blanket which is an item worn by Haida Indians as a cloak. Wicks’ button blanket however was reconfigured to showcase the Chanel logo, which is somewhat conflicting. Wick explained to me at the show about her inspiration for doing this: “We are at a critical crossroads where wealth is blinding our sense of value,“ she commented, “[the] Chanel logo is what would be considered something more of value in terms of money where as the heritage of the Haida people would be considered of more value in terms of true value.”
Finally, The Torontonians, Mammalian Diving Reflex’s teen collective are teenagers that are in residence at the Gladstone Hotel. They like to take over the Mammalian Diving Reflex office on the second floor of the Gladstone, give performances, make videos, dance on the street and so much more. These inspirational aspiring artists had room of their own, room 201, to convert for CUTMR 11 which they gave the witty name of Get Out of my Room! I caught up with them for an interview.
CUTMR11 also included unique outside programming that was tied to the exhibition. On Thursday January 23, Stephen Eyes and Kaleb Robertson hosted the Eyes on Design event in the Gladstone Ballroom. The late-night style talk show style offered the best of entertainment including acts of comedy, music and even burlesque. Another highlight was the Love Design Party, which was held on Sat Jan 25 in the Gladstone Ballroom. This party featured a one-night-only design installation specifically made for CUTMR11 by Justin Broadbent.
I feel that I have gone over just a portion on what makes the Gladstone’s Come Up to My Room event so great. Despite having some of Canada’s top art and design talents on display, the many other contributions of design, culture and collisions of creativity really give the exhibition an extra edge. If you missed it this year then you just have to wait until next January for this event’s big return. Be sure to mark it on the calendar for next year as this show just gets bigger and better. It is truly a signature cool, edgy and diverse exhibition that you can only find in Toronto.
About the Gladstone Hotel
The Gladstone Hotel is one of Toronto’s oldest continually operating hotels, this year celebrating 125 years in Toronto! In 2005, the building converted into a Boutique Art Hotel and is now internationally acclaimed as Canada’s favourite Boutique Art Hotel. The Gladstone exceptionally balances historical Victorian architecture with modern luxury, downtown culture and whole lot of art. With 37 artist designed rooms, over 70 art exhibitions a year, 4 diverse event venue spaces and two restaurants, the Gladstone Hotel has a lot to offer both tourists and the local community.
