The email that rocked Toronto’s art community and sent shivers across the country landed smack dab in the middle of the year on an otherwise innocuous afternoon in June. Jessica Bradley Gallery was no more. Sure galleries come and go, but this one was at the top of the heap and the shuttering caught many (even, it seems, some of the gallery’s artists) by surprise. The possible reasons for the closing were widely discussed over the summer, but even after Bradley broke her silence, the answers people wanted to hear weren’t forthcoming. The gallerist’s business is her business, but the public’s interest was not so much gossip fodder as the concern that if she could go down, what’s holding up any of the equal or lesser galleries. I’ll be the first to admit that the economics of art baffle me, but money makes the world go ‘round and if one of the seemingly central generators of said motion suddenly grinds to a halt, then basic survival on all levels becomes even more of a worry.
On the flipside, there were also plenty of positive developments with a mini-exodus to the wilds of Dupont (followed a fraction of a second later by condo developers), MOCCA announcing its new digs way out west (where I live), two separate proposals for a Toronto biennial (too nineties, if you ask me), upstart spaces like Younger Than Beyoncé and Autumn Gallery emerging, and (this just in!) the redoubtable Justina M. Barnicke Gallery and University of Toronto Art Centre rebranding to combine forces under the twin curatorial powerhouses of Barbara Fischer and Sarah Robayo Sheridan. The Six (as Drake says) is definitely not dead yet. 
Marlon Griffith, Ring of Fire
The most joyous art event of the year took place on a blisteringly sunny day in August when a willfully heterogeneous group representing the smorgasbord of cultures and communities in the T-Dot gathered under the aegis of AGYU curator Emelie Chhangur and the artistic vision of Marlon Griffith to parade – literally! – down University Avenue in his years-in-the-organizing Ring of Fire. They were greeted and followed by a bounty of familiar faces from the art community and surrounded by confused, delighted, and patient drivers representing the city's ubiquitous traffic community (aka the Car People). The parade wound up – literally, again! – at Nathan Phillips Square as part of the opening ceremonies for the Parapan Am Games (the cultural component of which also included the mammoth multi-venue The Flesh of the Worldexhibition curated by Amanda Cachia and appreciatively reviewed by me in the current issue of BorderCrossings).
Finally, while I still bemoan the loss of Ydessa Hendeles’ Foundation every time I pass by her old space on King West, the gap in Toronto's private patron art parlor sector has been increasingly occupied by the modest but precise programming at Scrap Metal Gallery by their in-house custodian Rui Amarel. The year began with a genius group exhibition titled Somebody Everybody Nobody that included memorable works by Danh Vo, Miroslav Balka, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres alongside Canadians like Jason de Haan, Lois Andison, and Shannon Bool. It ended with the return of Paul P and an intriguing assemblage of paintings, furniture and rugs. In between were feature exhibitions for the Images Festival and Contact Photography Festival, and an artist’s residency by the incomparable Hazel Meyer– which I unfortunately missed, so I’m currently kicking myself. I’ll have to be more on my game next year.
Terence Dick is a freelance writer living in Toronto. His art criticism has appeared in Canadian Art, BorderCrossings, Prefix Photo, Camera Austria, Fuse, Mix, C Magazine, Azure, and The Globe and Mail. He is the editor of Akimblog. You can follow his quickie reviews and art news announcements on Twitter @TerenceDick.
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2015 Critic's Picks
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