Queen Street | A Group Exhibition

Exhibition Dates: September 13 – October 25, 2003

In celebration of the gallery’s upcoming move to a larger premises, located a few blocks west of our home for the past nine years, we are pleased to present a group exhibition celebrating the history and diversity of Queen Street. This exhibition will remind viewers of the historical significance that this neighbourhood has had in the life of Toronto; pay homage to the numerous landmarks, events, and personalities that have populated the area; and provide a context for the current resurgence of life to the Queen West community.

Within the ongoing project of architectural facades by Volker Seding is a small body of prints that focuses specifically on the buildings of Queen Street. These facades have captured his eye and imagination, and have led him to document the faces of buildings old and new that invest this street with beauty and character.

The photographer Ian MacEachern is a new artist to our gallery, and it is our pleasure to present his work for the first time in this exhibition. While working as a free-lance photographer, Ian was commissioned by Chatelaine Magazine in 1966 to illustrate the then-current state of facilities at the Queen Street Mental Health Hospital. The resulting portfolio is at times melancholy, but also extremely humanistic and moving in its portrayal of clients of the mental health system during that era.

It is impossible to envision Queen Street as the fascinating and dynamic place that it is without the people who inhabit its shops, homes, and facilities.  From patrons of the original Woodbine Racetrack, to shopkeepers and their customers, Lutz Dille captures this essence in his photographs from the 1950s and 1960s. Members of the Queen Street arts community during the late 1970s and early 1980s are represented in a selection of portraits courtesy of General Idea, and SX-70 Polaroids by George Whiteside.

There will also be a salon display of vintage photographs of Queen Street that span the 20^th Century, that were sourced from a variety of different collections including: The City of Toronto Archives; C.D. Woodley’s photographs from the 1940s; Albert Kish’s photographs from the 1960s; Boris Spremo’s images from the 1970s; as well as selections from the extensive projects of Patrick Cummins’ exteriors and Peter MacCallum’s interiors of Queen Street establishments, as well as a photograph by Jeremy Taylor taken of the north side of the Street between Euclid and Manning. We are especially grateful to include photographs from the personal collection of the Hawryluk brothers (Jules, Jean, James, and Ron) who, after their father, owned and operated Peacock’s Hardware at 1026 Queen Street West (which will be our new address come November) for almost fifty years.