BLACTO Reviews: ICC Art Bus Tour
What's more fun than a gallery crawl without the extra walking?
BLACTO Reviews is a segment of the newsletter dedicated to reviewing arts & culture activities for our readers with recommendations for their next outing with friends!
To close out March, we went on a unique arts crawl hosted by IC Contemporary!
IC Contemporary is a Toronto-based art collective founded by Ignazio Nicastro in 2019. Their small team has been creating exhibition programs with a focus on queer, immigrant and diaspora identities.
The Art Bus Tour was held on March 23rd, a lovely sunny day despite the melting snow.
The adventure began at 11:15 am at the Gardiner Museum where our group of about 40 people gathered to experience two exhibitions; Genealogies of Sustenance by Curatorial Resident Sarah Edo and Magdalene Odundo’s “A Dialogue of Objects”.
Sarah Edo showed the group artworks by Chiedza Pasipanodya, Mallory Lowe Mpoka, and Zainab Aliyu. Inspired by pottery work, Sarah created "Genealogies of Sustenance" to represent vessels in African culture. They listened to Sarah discuss the Mangrove tree styled in pottery by Mpoka. Aliyu's film imagined 3D vessels based on people's shared memories of ancestral vessels or containers.
The second exhibition by Magdalene Odundo was a self-guided experience through objects found and made by Magdalene to illustrate her dialogue with objects like ceremonial garbs, headgear and pots to create objects and meaning that will evolve in dialogue with the world and human activity. I loved her inclusion of works by Ladi Kwali, an infamous Nigerian potter.
After the Gardiner and a ride on our lovely yellow bus, we arrived at the Daniel Faria Gallery where Oluseye’s ‘Black Exodus: Winter Arrival’ is on show until April 6th. The exhibit focused on relics of Oluseye’s travels first between Nigeria and Canada as a child and also as an artist in major cities around the world. It was an interesting collection to see and I would recommend going to see it before it closes.
Our last stop was an exhibition curated by the ICC team at the Joseph D Carrier Gallery on Lawrence Ave. W. It was lovely to listen to Ignazio speak on the artists’ work and his dedication to centring younger immigrant voices by allowing them to show their art and grow.
‘Youth, Truth and Imagination’ closed out a day full of art that asked us to consider our stories, real or imagined and how they connect to the lives we build and the legacies we create in the world.
The ICC website will feature more programs like this after their exhibition ends on March 28th.
Overall 8/10. $10 for full day + free drink. $5 extra for light food. The tour ran until 4 pm, not 2:30 pm as planned but with the bonus of visiting Gallery TPW and Clint Roenisch Gallery.
To see more pictures from the experience, Follow us on Instagram.
BLACTO recommends going to the Gardiner for all their current exhibits and the fun ceramics in the gift shop!
Until Next Time, Stay Curious!