Aisle 4 is a curatorial collective based in Tkaronto/Toronto working in social practice and public art. Learn more about us; view our complete list of collaborators; and explore our current & past projects, including exhibitions, public programming, research, and advocacy.

Gallery Galleria

Adrian Blackwell
Circles Describing Spheres (Fountain)

Fraser McCallum
Everything is going up

Golboo Amani
Plant Adoption

Roy Arden
Shop Around

Marjan Verstappen
Mall Walk

Oliver Husain
Galleria Cruise

Sarah Beck & Shlomi Greenspan
Clean Sweep

May 12-17, 2016 
Galleria Shopping Centre (1972-2019)
Toronto

Gallery Galleria was a week-long exhibition of site-specific artworks, socially engaged projects, and public performances that animated Toronto’s Galleria Shopping Centre. As one of the city’s first enclosed malls, the Galleria had retained much of its original 1970s architecture and interior design, a relic in an area experiencing a recent surge of new homeowners, restaurants, and galleries. Late in 2015, the site was slated for redevelopment. To mark this transitional moment and impending gentrification, Aisle 4 invited nine artists whose practices were rooted in social engagement and participatory process to respond to the mall’s ecologies, varied economies, and aesthetic eccentricities. Gallery Galleria reflected on the site’s imminent destruction and its communities’ inevitable displacement, while celebrating its role as an informal gathering place for diverse publics. 

Press

New art exhibition is a love letter to Toronto's relic Galleria Shopping Centre, Peter Knegt, CBC Arts, 2016

Gallery Galleria at the Galleria Mall, Terence Dick, Akimblog, 2016

Aknowledgments

Gallery Galleria was funded through the Toronto Arts Council and Ontario Arts Council. Exhibition documentation by Yuula Benivolski. Special thanks to the patrons, tenants, staff and management at the Galleria Shopping Centre for making this exhibition possible.

Golboo Amani
Plant Adoption

Roy Arden
Shop Around

Sarah Beck & Shlomi Greenspan
Clean Sweep

Adrian Blackwell
Circles Describing Spheres (Fountain)

Oliver Husain
Galleria Cruise

Fraser McCallum
Everything is going up

Jessica Vallentin
light weight

Marjan Verstappen
Mall Walk

About the works

Golboo Amani
Plant Adoption

Golboo Amani staged the performance Plant Adoption in the mall’s centre court on a bustling Saturday afternoon, hocking plants and seedlings that had been carefully uprooted from public planters in Toronto’s high-income neighbourhoods as a commentary on the city’s segregated investments in urban beautification.

Roy Arden
Shop Around

Roy Arden’s Shop Around was an installation conceived specifically for the vacant window display of ‘Smokers Choice’. Arden purchased a pair of white leather boots from Smokey Robinson to present alongside an autographed photo of the Motown legend holding the boots, complemented by an audio soundtrack of his greatest hits. The simplicity of the arrangement reflected the artist’s admiration for both the recording artist and the site as emblems of a time who continue to persevere.  

Sarah Beck & Shlomi Greenspan
Clean Sweep

Sarah Beck and Shlomi Greenspan’s interactive sculpture, Clean Sweep, appropriated the mall’s aesthetics to retrofit a 1980s claw machine into a diorama of the Galleria, humorously reviving an obsolete form of personal entertainment to tell a fabricated story of the site’s past, present, and future.

Adrian Blackwell
Circles Describing Spheres (Fountain)

Adrian Blackwell’s social sculpture Circles Describing Spheres (Fountain) was situated in the mall’s centre court, a popular meeting place and the site of a former fountain, highlighting the social qualities of the Galleria’s architecture and providing a place for visitors to convene and converse. Accompanying the sculpture was the custom publication, The Galleria Reader, which presented a complex genealogy of malls as social civic spaces. Blackwell then hosted the public program Reading the Galleria Reader, highlighting the publication’s key themes through group discussions. (Design/Research Assistance: Clara Syme)

Oliver Husain
Galleria Cruise

Oliver Husain’s stop-motion video, Galleria Cruise, depicted a journey through the Galleria that documented the interior architecture while chasing an unattainable prize composed of items purchased from the mall’s varied independent shops. The looped work was displayed on the mall’s digital signage at each entrance throughout the exhibition run. (Camera: Faraz Anoushahpour)

Fraser McCallum
Everything is going up

Fraser McCallum’s text installations gathered historical and contemporary accounts of the public’s relationship to the Galleria site and explored nuances in language surrounding urban development. The illuminated outdoor sign, Everything is going up, was a lightly adapted quote from a resident that spoke to the ambivalence and melancholy of gentrification and change; ‘going up’ in this case referred to the erecting of highrise buildings, the up-marketing of neighbourhoods, and the increased costs of living associated with these optimistic phrases. Meanwhile, cut vinyl text on a vacant storefront referenced a 1982 survey regarding housing on the shopping mall site, featuring responses on what people valued most about the Galleria.

Jessica Vallentin
light weight

Jessica Vallentin’s light weight was a subtle yet significant transformation that altered the mall’s iconic overhead lighting to evoke a Mediterranean sunset. Speaking to the intangible, sensory aspects of the mall’s shopping experience while appealing to many communities who frequented the space, Vallentin’s work revealed how the undercurrents of our environments affect our relationship to the body, the perception of self, and interactions with others. 

Marjan Verstappen
Mall Walk

Marjan Verstappen’s Mall Walk was rooted in social engagement, participatory process, and public exchange. Collaborating with a group of local seniors, Verstappen staged a photo shoot based on an early morning mall walk. Participants were asked to create a fashionable look with purchases from Galleria shops using a set budget, featuring local businesses by modelling their own outfits. The photographs were displayed throughout the mall during the exhibition run as informal advertisements for the local shops. (Portrait photography: Yuula Benivolski)

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We acknowledge Indigenous sovereignty and are grateful to live and work on the territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat Peoples.

info@aisle4.com @_aisle4

Website by Natasha Whyte-Gray, 2024.

Gallery Galleria

Press

Aknowledgments

About the works

Aisle 4

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