On June 26th, 2018 CAMH announced the first five of 10 art installation projects as part of its Queen Street Redevelopment Therapeutic Arts Installation Project.
Artist: Dan Bergeron
Title: Support
Location: Teaching Kitchen Frit, McCain Complex Care and Recovery Building
Description: Using the image of a chair, the artist will use glass frit along the teaching kitchen to emulate the path that CAMH patients might experience on their journey to recovery. Viewing the artwork from left to right, the viewer will see two horizontal chairs unfolding to reveal a single chair. This moves the viewer from a vulnerable, horizontal position to a secure, vertical position, with each step building upon the last to create a profound change towards rest and stability. The individual frames can also be understood as an unfolding or opening up of our emotions, as shelters that provide comfort and security, or as symbols of the masks that we wear to protect and guard us from the traumas of our past.
Artist: Niall McClelland
Title: You Call This Culture
Location: Main lobby, McCain Complex Care and Recovery Building
Description: A poster-filled wall has been a visual mainstay of the West Queen West neighborhood for many decades — its low-brow clutter becoming a calling card, a point of pride and symbol of the diverse, active, and unsanctioned communities in the area. With ‘You Call This Culture?’ the artist will create an aesthetic entry point that acts as an intersection between the pulse of the neighbourhood and an abstract moment that viewers could get lost within.
Artist: Alex McLeod
Title: PATHS
Location: Library, McCain Complex Care and Recovery Building
Description: In the animation PATHS the artist guides the viewer through multiple looping sequences of forested discovery. A glowing orb, surrounded by other smallish, flowing and following orbs follows the paths revealed to it, moving forward into areas that are familiar yet different. As the seasons change, so do the palettes of the terrain, ranging from green to blue to purple."
Artist: Sean Patenaude
Title: Watching the Time Pass by the Sun
Location: McCain Complex Care and Recovery Building and the Crisis and Critical Care Building
Description: The artist will document the construction of the two new CAMH hospital buildings by creating solargraphs from the rooftops of the existing structures. Small, home-made pinhole cameras will be employed to capture multi-month exposures of the buildings on black and white photo paper, which will then be scanned at high resolution to produce large, blue-tinted images that will show the trails of the sun over the buildings and the buildings themselves as they grow. Because of the nature of long exposures, only motionless objects will remain visible – people will be invisible, trees will take on a ghostly blur, the sun will appear as a streak across the sky and the buildings themselves will appear to be growing from the earth.
Artist: Nathan Whitford
Title: Public Art Lighting Plan
Location: McCain Complex Care and Recovery Building and the Crisis and Critical Care Building
Description: The artist will illuminate the entrance of the two new CAMH hospital buildings, creating a unified light experience for visitors, pedestrians and passing traffic. This connected experience will help mark the hospital properties and distinguish them from its surrounding environments. Coloured lighting will change over long periods of time, initially appearing static, but if one reconsiders the lighting at a later time, it will be evident that the colours have shifted. The rhythms of the lighting will mimic human rhythms of waking and sleeping, so that certain colour palettes will only emerge at particular times of the day, as different colours mix.
The process to select the next five installation pieces is currently underway and will be announced before the end of 2018.