“We Are Potential” by Shary Boyle

We Are Potential

Prepared remarks for Imagining Toronto: A City-Builders’ Symposium

By Shary Boyle • October 13, 2011 • 9 Comments

I’d like to start by naming three of my favorite things that are happening in Toronto right now: The Gibraltar Point art centre on Toronto Island, the new Feminist Art Gallery built and run by Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue, and the West Toronto Railpath. These are three things that perfectly embody the potential for excellence when stultifying bureaucracy is outwitted, community is fostered, and public spaces are made with vision and radical hope. These are “yes” places.

Imagine if Toronto was so proud and smart about promoting and celebrating its artists that people from Berlin got excited about our amazing scene and started moving here. Imagine if every wealthy educated person in this city found making the decision to spend money on art as easy as deciding to buy designer shoes. Imagine all new condos being legislated to not only include a percentage of subsidized units but also a few dedicated affordable artist studios — instead of commissioning a single, one-off public sculpture. Imagine a downtown art college with such a fantastic international reputation, facilities, and faculty that it was the first Canadian choice of application if you were an ambitious young artist. Imagine that the Toronto Now gallery off of the AGO’s Frank restaurant was turned into a space for grad students, and the serious artists of Toronto could always be found in major shows in the main spaces of the museum all months of the year. Imagine there were line-ups to see these local artists’ work at the AGO like there were during those first heady days of Frank Gehry’s redesign. Imagine Torontonians with so much confidence that instead of travelling internationally to buy culture, they stayed here, trusted their own judgment, and invested in something they decided for themselves was excellent.

As long as I have lived in Toronto I’ve had a push-pull relationship with it, constantly leaving and searching for a place I felt I truly belonged but always returning for pragmatic reasons. For many artists and creative people I know this is a common story. We want to be here — there are excellent people and resources, it makes a solid base to travel from, our friends and families are here, and compared to other cities in Canada, we have a better chance of creating and finding opportunity. Best of all, there is an old and strong culture of do-it-yourself here, pockets of radical thinkers and makers that keep a fire lit even when the politics of safety and small-think capitalism threaten to smother all those who live to take creative risks.

And yet, the single most prevalent idea within the arts community is that if you want to be taken seriously, if you want to achieve any real international success, you must leave this city. It is a cliché we all recognize. For the visual artist, the qualitative value of your work and ideas can only be truly established by moving to Berlin, New York or London.

One thing that makes those cities feel so international is the prevalence of civic pride. Berliners don’t obsess about Berlin, because they are present and confident they are in the best place they could be. When you are in London, people aren’t craning over their shoulder at the bigger, better city just over the water. Thinkers in New York are busy making the work we so admire, comforted by an address that secures global attention and credibility. Let’s agree that Toronto has a bad and stubborn complex of cultural inferiority. We are insecure and self-critical.

I have spent many years living short-term in various cities throughout Europe. Through these travels I have developed a kind of theory about Toronto, and what makes me like it, and why it’s hard for me to live permanently elsewhere. Toronto is an adolescent, relative to the sometimes rigid and ripely developed character of the Old World. We are a city waiting to happen. We are potential. There is so much room for innovation, but like insecure tweens we are afraid to make the first move. We aren’t sophisticated or experienced enough to be bold. We are awkward and gangly and have bad proportions.

But our history is fledgling; our sense of self is so unsure and unformed that it does not have the power to imprison us. We can change. We can invent. We are in the process of writing what we want to be. No one’s really watching us too closely, so we have the advantage of surprise. This is the freedom I crave after months in any place with an entrenched sense of national identity. I believe it is also this quality that enables us to make truly innovative art. We are process and possibility. But we aren’t getting any younger.

Scarborough-born Shary Boyle is a world-travelled Canadian artist. She delivered these remarks on October 12, 2011 at Imagining Toronto: A City-Builders’ Symposium, which preceded The Walrus Toronto Project Debate at the AGO.

Tags • art, manifesto, toronto
Posted in Cities •

Paul Petro

Well put Shary.
Paul Petro

Well put Shary.
Wrongtable

Toronto is a citysprawl built around the automobile.Â That is why its “art-cultural” troves are isolated from most of its community.Â Toronto’s community is splintered.
Wrongtable

I’ve been regretting my facile comment above since I posted it.Â Having lived in Toronto three times, I have observed the art market up fairly intently there.Â I can say that the MFAs sell their work for three grand +, and unknowns sell for much less.Â Yet those who appreciate art (at any price) either don’t have enough money to buy it at all, or they have the money and want to buy it as investment.Â I think more people should be making art for themselves.Â I also think that people shouldn’t hedge their bets on Masters of Fine Arts.Â MFA doesn’t imply talent.Â Talent comes from dedication and often desperation. Art funding spoonfeeds artkids, and the result is often wallpaper.Â
Â Â Â Â Shary Boyle is a master, though, and I love her work.Â The article was good.Â -WT
Cliff Eyland

Excellent words, Shary!
Alana

Just as the organizations mentioned in the introduction are “yes” places, this article is a “yes” sentiment. Thank you Shary!
becky

so well put.

i do want to say, though, that i work into the diy craft/art scene (so quite outside the gallery structure) and prefer doing that work in toronto to anywhere else in the world including berlin, new york and london. i have been all over working in this sphere, too. perhaps it is that “low craft” exists in that fledgling space between fine art and commodity and that is where the city is at. regardless, i am always perfectly happy to circle back home to toronto. this is a place that supports countless art and craft fairs, at least two successful annual zine fairs and farmer’s markets somewhere every day. it really feels like the makers are making here – there is so much talent, thoughtfulness, skill, hard work – but political sentiment pushes against these people. at the indie craft level, young professionals are buying, too – more than anywhere i have been. the seeds are here. calls to action like this one just need to echo out into the sprawl. but how do we achieve that?
Higgs Boson

I recently moved here from London (England). Correct me if I’m wrong, but my perception of the defining characteristic of the Toronto Art Scene is the self-involved provincialism. It looks very much like you can only get funding if you are deliberately promoting Canadian culture and Canadianism, in a way that seems to be more pronounced than in the major art cities. (Admittedly the YBAs emerged as a dominant meme, but there was and is a lot more going on). I’m desperate to see (possibly found) and participate in more alternative spaces, that are more ambitious. Just because something is from Toronto doesn’t make it interesting.Â

That’s one of the things that grates about this piece. Imagine there were spaces in this city that were showing good work from London, Sao Paulo, and Karachi, and more people travelled here from those cities.
Sky Goodden

This is startling, refreshing, overdue, and damn good. Thank you, Shary.

We Are Potential

Tags • art, manifesto, toronto Posted in Cities •

The Walrus Foundation National Event Guide

Tags • art, manifesto, toronto
Posted in Cities •