Like many of you, we have been closely following the developments of COVID-19. The Gardiner Museum is closed temporarily as of March 14, 2020. We will continue to take guidance from our public health officials regarding the duration of the closure and will post updates to our website and social media channels as they become available. We are grateful for your support and thank you for your patience and understanding as we work to navigate this challenging time. We look forward to welcoming you back to the Gardiner soon.
Our spring sessional classes and workshops scheduled for April and May have been cancelled. Refunds will be issued automatically.
The Gardiner Museum is among the few museums in the world focused on ceramics, and is one of the most important specialty museums internationally. It houses approximately 4,000 objects, including European porcelain, ceramics from the Ancient Americas, Chinese porcelain, Japanese porcelain, and contemporary ceramics. Search the collection online!
Support the Gardiner's mission to champion clay, build community, and promote arts education. All of our memberships include a full year of free admission to the Museum, as well as discounts at CLAY Restaurant and the Gardiner Shop, and start and at just $30!
Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival Featured Exhibition
During weekly classes at the Gardiner Museum, Chris Curreri photographed students’ wet and discarded projects. The resulting series of photographs, Untitled (Clay Portfolio), focuses on the material of clay as it shifts between states of form and states of formlessness. Some of the prints in the series have a subtle solarization effect—a phenomenon in photography in which the image is wholly or partially reversed in tone by exposing the print to light during the development process.
This process underscores a correspondence between the photographic darkroom and the pottery studio by emphasizing the brief moment where the latent image is still malleable and has yet to be fixed to the photographic paper. The images themselves, depict raw material in different states: fresh and untouched clay; bowls and other identifiable objects left discarded in a pile; and the stuffing of this discarded matter into a machine that compresses and extrudes it as new, usable material. One thing is not depicted in the photographs: the moment when the material becomes a calcified, acceptable thing.
The portfolio will be accompanied by a new sculptural work titled That, There, It that elaborates on the relationships between raw material, latency, and fixed (or fired) finality.
About the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival
Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival is an annual event in May with well over 1500 Canadian and international artists and photographers exhibiting at more than 175 venues throughout the Greater Toronto Area. Founded as a not-for-profit organization in 1997 and now a charitable organization, the Festival is devoted to celebrating, and fostering the art and profession of photography, through a diverse range of programmes.
As a leading proponent of photography, the Festival increases exposure and recognition for local, Canadian and international artists and is committed to advancing knowledge, creativity and innovation in photography. It stimulates excitement and discussion among a diverse audience that has grown to over 1.8 million. CONTACT is the largest photography event in the world, and a premiere cultural event in Canada.