Repeat performances
‘A Forest of Canoes,’ the series of photos by Dana Claxton were printed by Beyond Digital Imaging (BDI), massive wrap graphics of canoes for pillars along the Bentway, a new public trail under the Gardiner Expressway.
Those same pillars have been wrapped for Contact in the past. Indeed, some of the same spaces have been used for many years in a row, including billboards and subway station posters donated by Pattison Outdoor Advertising and select buildings’ exterior surfaces for murals.
Location-appropriate installations in these spaces have included such examples as ‘Toronto: Under This Ground,’ a 2013 series of subway station posters with photos by Michael Cook and Andrew Emond showcasing previously concealed waterway spaces.
“Toronto’s subway stations were the perfect location for the poster project, as this space allows viewers to reflect on a layer of the city to which we are all connected, yet rarely have the opportunity to see,” says Sharon Switzer, director and curator of Pattison’s Art for Commuters initiatives.
“We focus on different stations in different years,” Killeen explains. “This year, we worked with Pattison on Osgoode station.”
Another standout example was ‘Demolition Site,’ Jihyun Jung’s mural depicting a destroyed façade, which Four By Eight Sign Services installed on the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) in 2015, when that building itself was slated for demolition and redevelopment. The work drew from Jung’s personal experience of seeing his childhood home in Korea replaced with a high-rise building.
“Rough surfaces like brick and stone can only be wrapped with special, conformable films, which fortunately have become more common and faster to use,” says Jeff Uzbalis, a digital sales and marketing specialist for 3M Canada. “So, wrapping the exterior wall of MOCCA became faster with each year.”
“We also had a giant banner up at the Westin Harbour Castle for three years,” says Killeen.
Seeking new display spaces
As the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival continues to expand its scope with new public art commissions, an array of exceptional work is presented throughout Toronto.
Finding new spaces each year for public art installations helps open new possibilities for the festival’s outreach. One example from 2018 that proved particularly challenging and visually striking was ‘Reflection of Hope,’ a series of large-format photographic works by Aida Muluneh, which Four By Eight installed in reflective pools throughout an outdoor park at the Aga Khan Museum.
“The Aga Khan is a magnificent space we’ve wanted to work with since it opened in 2014,” says Killeen. “We are always looking for new and exciting spaces.”
“Those were complicated installations,” says John Kotsopoulos, Four By Eight’s owner. “The graphic frames had to be engineered for the wind load in a space that’s very open, but we could not penetrate the tile below. Instead, we weighed down each aluminum structure with patio stones in the base, then closed them up.”
BDI printed the photos on 3M’s 40C white Controltac vinyl film, which was then adhered to Alupanel-brand aluminum composite panels (ACPs), for the double-sided graphic structures. Each photo had to sit a couple of inches above the surface of the reflective pools, with the rest of the base concealed underwater.
“We used aluminum tube bases, reinforced with gussets, and they were very well-balanced,” says Kotsopoulos. “The water filled those horizontal tubes to help weigh them down.”
For another series of framed graphics, displayed along King Street West near Metro Hall, Four By Eight used beam clamps to install the images in a series of 13 grey steel structures.
