Pink room by [r]ed[u]x lab, logo design by Jeremy Vandermeij
GLADSTONE HOTEL
Second Floor
1214 Queen West.
Toronto, ON, M6J 1J6
For 10 years Come Up To My Room (CUTMR) has been pushing the boundaries of design practice in Canada, searching not so much for what is new but rather for what is real. As curators we trust the designers to take risks and bring us their best work. Relevance is defined by the designer’s practice. Each year, we search for the right mix of practitioners who occupy different viewpoints: designers, design/builders, contemporary artists, material artists, architects, crafters, industrial designers and self-taught; people who think of design in broader strokes, who consider the term “designer” as they would “artist”. CUTMR is unique in that we curate the show by the individual and then trust them to design a site-specific installation following their own personal vision. We do not cherry pick from a designer’s catalogue, but rather build trust not just as designers and curators but also as audience, opening ourselves up to the possibility of magic through mutual risk taking.
Dennis Lin | Room 53, 2004
Maison St. Pierre with Patrick Lightheart | Room 206. 2005
Tiff Izsa | Room 206, 2006
For the tenth edition of the show, Christina Zeidler and Pamila Matharu, the founding curators of CUTMR have returned to join the curatorial collective along with Noa Bronstein and David Dick-Agnew. From the vantage of ten years of CUTMR the emergent pattern of each CUTMR edition has built on the success of the previous year, each “graduating” year of designers inspiring the next group to reach further. Within each edition there develops an almost collegial rapport between the designers as they share the experience of taking what is ephemeral and manifesting it in the context of the hotel while in conversation with the other work in the show. What has developed is a space which fosters a community of practitioners supporting each other, building ten years of launched careers, collectives, conversation, dialogue between disciplines and which has been a true incubator of art and design culture in Toronto.
Bruno Billio | Room 209, 2007
Laura McKibbon & Jasna Sokolovic | public space, 2009
Richard Unterthiner & Paolo Ferrari | Room 207, 2010
To mark the impact of CUTMR and the Gladstone Hotel on Queen West we have invited a handful of designers to “spill out” of the building. The unbridled gesture of making this metaphor physical points to the continuing strength of artists and designers within the context of city-building within “West Queen West” and all of Toronto.
Eric Chan, Public Space, 2008
CUTMR is unique. It’s a design show which smashes the perceived silos of art and design, emerging from the Gladstone Hotel’s hybrid strategy as both cultural incubator and operational restaurant and hotel business. In our first year of CUTMR, the Hotel had not yet been renovated, and we had not yet started the Artist Designed Hotel Room project. At the time, the idea of bringing an exhibition to the Hotel was a totally new, even transgressive idea, and so the cheeky title Come Up To My Room, was apropos. The parallel history of CUTMR and the development of The Gladstone Hotel reflected similar shifts in the development of Queen West. What remains relevant about the show is that there has not been an erasure of our history or the complexities of gentrification, but rather that the show has built upon a shifting context. Over the ten years, although the bones of the hotel have not changed, the context of the Hotel has been growing and shifting. The second floor of the hotel, its history, its ghosts, become a palette from which the designers can pull inspiration, react and respond.
Jamie Webster & Berkeley Poole | Room 205, 2010
Christina Zeidler & Deanne Lehtinen | public space, 2011
DarkLab |a reactive sound/sculpture installation presented by SubZeroArts team-members Deane Hughes and Christine Beaumont / Room 208, 2012
Welcome to the tenth year of Come Up To My Room (January 24 -27, 2013). The original premise of CUTMR remains relevant: change happens through conversation and real change requires engaged dialogue between disciplines. Once again designers have taken up this challenge, pushed their practice and brought it together in this special and delicate environment at The Gladstone Hotel. We thank them for letting us play within their creations.
Studio Kimiis, 2013
Curatorial Statement, 2013 by Christina Zeidler, Pamila Matharu, Noa Bronstein and David Dick-Agnew.
Photo credit: CUTMR, Gladstone Hotel