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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Gene Threndyle's piece for the weekend long WADE show (performances and installations in wading pools in Toronto's parks, curated by Christine Pearson and Sandra Rechico) was one damn fine work of public art. He filled the pool at Trinity Bellwoods Park with inflatable killer whales, each painted with an excerpt from Dante's Inferno. The kids loved it, taking to the whales instantly without a care for the strange dark poetics beneath their bellies. The parents loved it. The art audience loved it. All afternoon we sat around in the sun and shade. Egon Von Bark played old 78s his victrola and they sounded good to us eventhough the needles were dull and scoured threads of vinyl up off the disks.
thanks to Tanya Read for this excellent photo!
There was also a reading from the Inferno. Von Bark stood in the pool and delivered some lovely elocution while the children bumped their whales around his shins. Mark Hazen and Anne-Marie Hood administered a long and challenging test to guage your level of hell (I got 7, which was disconcerting but seemed par for the course).
David Hoffos' piece for WADE at Bellevue Square Park. Photo by Justin Waddell
Another WADE installation I really liked was by David Hoffos in Bellevue Park. It's a night piece, a video projection of a little boy standing in the edge of the pool, his toy boat a little distance out into the water. It's sad and quite creepy. The ghostlike child is life-size, almost part of the crowd, but hopelessly remote, isolated and from us flesh and blood folks by the fact of being a mere video projection. These are the only two WADE pieces I've seen so far, and they've both been excellent. Maybe I'll see some more of them later today.
Any reports on other WADE performances are very welcome in the comments section below. If you want to send me jpegs at smblog@sympatico.ca, I'll post em with your comment.