In accordance with the announcement by the provincial government, the Gardiner Museum has closed temporarily, effective Monday November 23. While this news is difficult, the health and safety of our visitors, staff, and the wider community remains our top priority. We'll continue to provide you with engaging digital content to keep us connected while the galleries are closed.
During our temporary closure, we're posting exhibitions and selections from our collection online. Discover Inuit ceramics, Chinese and Japanese porcelain, pottery from the Ancient Americas, and more!
In accordance with instructions from the provincial government, the Museum closed to the public on Monday November 28 and we have cancelled all clay classes. We regret the inconvenience this may cause, but are hopeful that these actions will help maintain the health and safety of our communities. We will automatically be crediting students with a refund for remaining sessions.
Every object in our permanent collection can be accessed through our eMuseum portal. Learn about individual collecting areas, like Italian Maiolica or Modern and Contemporary Ceramics, or search the full collection by keyword. You'll be amazed by what you discover!
With the Museum closed temporarily, we need your support to continue to offer innovative and engaging exhibitions, programs, and community projects online, as well as plan for the future. Please consider making a donation to help us build community with clay.
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.