For those who don’t know, Gladstone House’s primary function is not to be an art gallery, but rather, it is a hotel. In fact, it is Toronto’s longest continuously operating hotel, even older than the Queen Street streetcar that operates in front of the building. Since 2003, and especially since its reopening in 2021 after an extensive renovation, the hotel has been committed to supporting local artists with permanent and rotating exhibitions in the guest rooms and the communal spaces in the lobby, stairway, and the lounge on the second floor, which are open to the public. Tourists boarding at Gladstone House as well as locals can enjoy and engage with Toronto’s vibrant art scene while exploring a landmark hotel steeped with history.
Visitors at Gladstone House
In this year’s CONTACT Photography Festival, the unusual gallery spaces of Gladstone House fittingly showcase photographic artworks that expertly and diversely deviate from what we typically understand as photography. It Starts with a Photograph features work from six artists, some in collaboration with another, that uses photograph as the starting point like the exhibition’s title implicates. They reinterpret the medium into something more akin to a material that is part of a greater whole. Through painting, textile, collage, and manual and digital manipulations, these artists reveal the endless experimentative and imaginative possibilities of photography beyond its typical use of documentation.
Curator Lee Petrie’s idea for the exhibition was sparked by Gladstone House’s resident artist Laura Butler. During her residency from October to December 2024, Butler began creating a crochet tapestry based on a childhood photograph. Much like the pixels of a digital photograph, the tapestry is made up of individual small, crocheted pieces called granny squares that are arranged and assembled in a grid to produce the complete picture. This labor-intensive method of handmaking 805 individual squares diverges from the spontaneity of traditional photography where a moment can be captured almost immediately. Butler adds another layer of intimacy and nostalgia to a precious family memory by recreating it by hand, one stitch at a time.
Laura Butler, Family Photograph, textile
In the hotel’s lobby, opulently placed above the fireplace, is Heather Haynes’s vibrant and impressive mixed media painting Immaculate Mother made in collaboration with photographer Virginia MacDonald. This artwork was inspired by MacDonald’s portrait series of women of diverse backgrounds styled in the likeness of Frida Kahlo as a tribute to Kahlo’s legacy and continuous inspiration for women. Haynes layers of paint, thread, and rug hooked into MacDonald’s photograph, filling the artwork with images of colourful vines, leaves, and birds, intertwined around the woman. Not only do Haynes and MacDonald pay homage to an emblematic cultural icon, but also to female wisdom and resilience.
Heather Haynes and Virgina MacDonald, Immaculate Mother, mixed media on canvas, 36 x 48 inches
Through the stairway there are Nika Belianina’s and Laura Key Keeling’s unique interpretations of landscape photography. Both artists use a motif of portals, a means of transitioning from one place to another, just like the stairway the artworks are displayed in. While their approach to landscape photography differs from each other, they both invite viewers to reflect on our place within the natural environment.
Belianina’s hypnotic photographs of the tropics were achieved using only available light and subtle in-camera adjustments. The simple mirroring and repetition of the images, not only create an aesthetically pleasing composition, but transform an ordinary tropical forest into magical arches, corridors, and gateways, exploring the relationship between organic forms and architectural symmetry.
Nika Belianina, Golden Gates, archival paper print, 12 x 18 inches
On the other hand, Keeling’s work employs both digital and analog collage methods, incorporating elements from her personal ephemera and photographs of the natural environment in Hamilton where she currently lives. Her compositions often feature frames within frames, symmetry, and an interplay between nature and man-made objects. Belianina’s and Keeling’s works transport us, or rather reveal to us, the magic and beauty of nature.
Laura Kay Keeling, Untitled Portal 01, archival inkjet print, 24 x 20 inches
Lastly, Jessica Thalmann’s urban photography is exhibited in the hotel’s second floor lounge. Thalmann takes a great interest in brutalist architecture of the 60s and 70s, buildings characterized by austere and geometric concrete forms. She photographs those buildings and streetscapes in greyscale, then manually modifies them by cutting, folding, and rearranging the very paper the photos are printed on. Within the cuts and folds are overlayed stripes of red, blue, or yellow, accentuating the hard angles and starkness of modern architecture and creating optical illusions that blur the line between the object depicted in the image, and the image as an object itself.
Jessica Thalmann, Such Memories as Places (Seattle III), folded archival pigment print
It Starts with a Photograph showcases both the boundless potential of photography as a medium, as well as the diversity of our local artists. Just from a single exhibition, visitors can experience nostalgia from Butler’s tapestry, awe from Haynes and MacDonald’s collaborative piece, supernatural wonder from Belianina’s and Keeling’s landscapes, and delight from Thalmann’s photo-objects.
Rebekah Barona
Images are courtesy of Gladstone House
*Exhibition information: It Starts with a Photograph / Group exhibition, May 1 – September 2, 2025, Gladstone House, 1214 Queen St. West, Toronto. Open to the public through the day.