Michael installing the Slide Stack, September, 2012

The Slide Stack

So far we have been, and will continue to, look through our history, writing stories as we go along.  For today’s entry I have taken some shots for the blog of the installation in progress for our upcoming 45th anniversary exhibition.

Up until about 10 years ago all of our images and documentation were primarily on 35mm slide film and mostly taken by David. Any time we documented a show or some new work in the gallery we bracketed the shots so that we would have at least 6 copies of each at 3 different exposures.  It was considerably cheaper (and better quality) to have 6 slides of the same work than, to later, duplicate the slides to meet requests.  That meant we gathered a very large slide library over the years.

Now during the process of digitizing the slides, (Michael Tuck, our son, is the computer master and general jack of all trades around the gallery during the downsizing) we have had to edit and reduce the collection to the key documentation.  That left us with several thousand slides for the garbage or recycling.

Each of us had other ideas for re-purposing the slides.

For one, it seemed to me that the slides and their inherent history needed to be a part of this 45^th anniversary exhibition.

Charlene inspecting the Red Cart.  In the background is a painting by Angela Leach and on the cart is a painting by Doris McCarthy from her 60′s abstract period.

The Red Cart

There are always surprises when a group show is in progress.  Here is Charlene discovering some hidden “treasures” in the old  cart -a phone receiver with no phone attached and various other assorted hardware that seemed to have no good reason for being there, but I’m sure did originally.   In the background is the slide installation in the beginning stages nearby a painting by Angela Leach and many decisions still to be made.

The cart was found in our new space at 80 Spadina Avenue in 1982 when we were moving from 83 Front Street .  At that time it was an old 4 wheeled dolly with only one fence.  We needed it to be double-ended to hold the many works of art that we had to move and since our space at 80 Spadina would be 6500 square feet (and the whole fourth floor we were renovating with our neighbour, Olga Korper, was 20,000 sq ft. ).  The General Welding School, our old neighbour from Jarvis Street welded a second fence for us.  We thought this would be a good cart to have around.  We were right.  The cart was put to good use over the years.

It became the Red Cart when Fela Grunwald was renovating her space at 80 Spadina (the third gallery on the fourth floor there).  She needed it as a good base with wheels to use as a scaffold for finishing and painting her walls.  Since the cart was going to get renovation grime and paint on it she offered to paint it any colour we wanted after she was done with it.  Red was our colour of choice.

It might end up in  the current installation which  is coming along nicely –more later.