Lorna Simpson established herself as one of the more controversial female artists working in photography in the United States. In her work, Simpson focused on the relationship between an audience’s collective interpretation of photographic imagery and photography as a descriptive tool.

KAWAMATA Toronto Project brought leading Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata to create his first project in Canada – an outdoor public installation realised in the centre of downtown Toronto on the site of a small green public space dislocated between two neoclassical bank buildings.

La Vida Loca “Holy Cow, I just about landed on my keister when I found out that the livingroom gig was actually going ahead. At first I thought this flapjaw was just another ear-banger, after all the business is lousy with them.”

California artist Charles Ray incorporated four geometric steel sculptural constructions that were designed to reference various modes of domestic furniture and to evoke ambiguous machine-like or industrial qualities. Serving to support the artist’s body weight or acting as an extension of the live human form, a cohesive illusion between the body fragment and the support structure, and the artist and his product.

The site-specific installation featured a hand plastered column created on location as part of the summer studio project series. Hurlbut developed her response to the interrelating conditions of the interior gallery space, the ambient light and an existing column over the four week installation period.

An exhibition of sculpture and drawings by British artist David Mach who created several site-related sculptures in both exhibition spaces, incorporating imported and locally manufactured materials including thousands of newspapers and magazines as well as locally sourced furniture.

British artist Bill Woodrow presented a series of sculptural works created while in residency in Toronto. Woodrow’s sculpture was a collection of disposable remnants, presented back to us as contemporary narratives, alternately menacing and poetic.

Robert McNealy's work brought associative elements of what seemed to be disparate events/subjects. He drew on a wide range of media (sculpture, painting, photography, etc.) to establish a parallel associative context between his work and the socio/political environment.

The largest exhibition of contemporary Toronto sculpture ever held, and the first to focus on the city as a major centre of sculptural practice. Over 50 newly created works by 33 local artists were exhibited at six gallery spaces. “New City” focused on works by younger artists whose exposure had been limited and addressing the imbalance that had emerged between painting and sculpture.

Tom Dean’s Floating Staircase was begun in 1978 and completed in 1979. For two years it lived a problematic existence in Toronto harbour and in the fall of 1981 it was burned to ashes on the water. The exhibit included the charred ruins of the Staircase: letters, publications, texts, and photographs relating to its history and a video documenting its rise and fall.