Sneak Peeks: June 20 at Markham Museum & June 26 at 401 Richmond’s Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art
Toronto, June 17, 2013 – From the creative curatorial team behind The Leona Drive Project and the Museum for the End of the World comes Land|Slide: Possible Futures, an epic art intervention responding to a world in transition – where past, present and future collide.
Land|Slide uses the location and situation of Markham, branded as “Canada’s high tech capital” and one of the country’s fastest growing ethnoburbs, to explore multiculturalism, sustainability, and community. Thirty-five local and international artists will install site-specific works at the 25-acre, open-air Markham Museum and Historical Village in a massive public art exhibition to run September 21 - October 14, 2013.
Working in a wide range of media – from landscape architecture and design, sculpture, and performance to media installation and projection, photography, sound and locative media – the invited artists are deeply engaged with ecological issues such as climate change, sustainable energy, alternative farming, and urban planning to create a collective conversation around the future of land use in Canadian edge cities.
Project lead and curator Janine Marchessault will host two public sneak peek events to introduce Land|Slide on June 20 at Markham Museum and June 26 at Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art at 401 Richmond St.
“Markham is both one of Canada’s oldest and fastest growing communities,” said Marchessault. “It also ranks among the most culturally diverse and agriculturally rich cities in North America. This, and the Markham Museum’s 80,000 historical artifacts including 30 pioneer buildings from the 1820s, make it a fascinating backdrop for artists to explore some of the most pressing issues facing Canadians today: how to balance ecology and economy, farming and development, history and diversity.”
A complete list of participating artists will be announced, some of whom will be present to share their project concepts. A new Land|Slide website, including a map of the Markham Museum site detailing where work by each artist will be on display, will also be unveiled.
Marchessault is a Trudeau Fellow, cinema and media studies professor, and Canada Research Chair in Art, Digital Media and Globalization in the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University. For more than two decades, she has been working with the curatorial collective Public Access to investigate new models of urban public art. Land|Slide extends her ongoing research focusing on urban space and cartographies of place.
Like the hugely popular Leona Drive Project, which transformed six vacant Willowdale bungalows slated for demolition into interactive public art installations, Land|Slide will bring artists, urban planners, ecologists, educators, civic leaders and the general public together in a unique community engagement initiative that pays homage to the past and imagines the future.
Land|Slide Markham Sneak Peek Cocktail Party
When: Thursday, June 20 from 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Where: Markham Museum, 9350 Markham Road, Markham | Map
Admission: Free http://landslidemarkham.eventbrite.ca/#
Land|Slide Toronto Sneak Peek Cocktail Party
When: Wednesday, June 26 from 6:00 – 8:00PM
Where: Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Ground floor, 401 Richmond Street West, Toronto | Map
Admission: Free RSVP to http://landslidetoronto.eventbrite.ca/#
Information: landslide-possiblefutures.com
Twitter: LandSlide2013
Facebook: Land|Slide possible futures
Media Contact: Amy Stewart, Communications, Faculty of Fine Arts, York University
416.650.8469 | amy.stewart@yorku.ca
