Spend a Gallery Weekend in Toronto and see art in the city in a new way

Gallery Weekend Toronto started last year with the goal of getting people back into Toronto's commercial art galleries after an extended shutdown. It featured artist talks and guided tours and gallerists on hand to help talk crowds through the exhibitions. It's an idea that had been successful in other cities, including Berlin and Paris. 

"I think to everyone's surprise, it was a huge success," says Juliana Zalucky of Zalucky Contemporary Gallery, who was part of a group of gallerists who came up with the idea to bring a Gallery Weekend to the city. "I think overall the event drew about 5,000 visitors. There seemed to be a lot of excitement to get out, to discover the city again and for people to engage with art in interactive, meaningful ways."

This year it's back, with more galleries — it's increased from 22 to 26 — and with an eye to getting people who don't usually go to Toronto's small galleries to come out. 

"I think there's no secret that [Toronto] has this amazing visual art scene," Zalucky adds. "I'm speaking mainly about the major institutions and even the street art. But I don't think a lot of people in the city know about the network of independent art galleries, specifically dedicated to contemporary art. They're doing really interesting programming and that access to these spaces are free and open to the public."

Maria Hupfield's exhibition Protocol Break will be at Patel Brown Gallery as part of Gallery Weekend. She'll also be giving a talk in the gallery on Sept. 24. 

Hupfield credits her Anishnaabe heritage as an influence on her approach to art — she's a member of the Wasauksing First Nation. 

"I'm looking at these other, more ancient, enduring practices of making that are really informed by my background," she says. "And that sense that connect us to movement, to ceremony, to land and place. So I'm really thinking of art as living and putting things in relation."

Hupfield is a trans-disciplinary artist, whose work often includes both performance and visual art, and that's something that's hard to re-create virtually. 

"I just love that freedom and liberation that comes from performance art," she says. "So I make an object and then I often activate them in my performance, or I might give them to someone else who then performs with them. I'm really thinking of art as being alive, and having other people [present] is a part of that."

Protocol Break features, among other things, everyday items that Hupfield made out of felt, including a chair, a telephone and a traffic cone. She says her time inside during the pandemic inspired the pieces

"I made a felt chair because I was like, 'Oh, I'm sitting so much in a chair. Like, I'm becoming a chair. Like, my life is about a chair,'" she says. "So I work with felt, so there's a felt chair, and then there's a photo series of this chair in different iterations on the wall, as well."

Hupfield adds that, more than anything, she's looking forward to watching people respond to her work.

"I love seeing children come in, or the unsuspecting public, because everyone has a very honest reaction to art," she says. "I feel like that's genuine. That's a truth."

For her part, Zalucky says the thing she's most excited about is showing the breadth of Toronto's commercial galleries. She points out that Gallery Weekend features both galleries that have been in business for decades, and DIY spaces that started during the pandemic. Zalucky says that getting more people into these small galleries is what will help the city's art scene grow and evolve.

"Canada offers a very robust granting program to assist artists at various stages of their career," she says. "But public funding alone can't do all the work. What's really required in a thriving art ecosystem is an equally robust art market, where artists can make a living from the sale of their work. And this is what commercial galleries are going to do."

Gallery Weekend Toronto runs from Sept. 22 – 25.