Gardiner East Dismantling | Columns Part 1

Hi, my name’s John McKinnon. I am the artist responsible for the Gardiner East Dismantling, the public art end of it. This section of the Gardiner, elevated portion of the Gardiner, ultimately it was meant to travel onward to Scarborough, further east. But right at Leslie the road ended abruptly; there was a fence right across. So the justification for tearing it down was that it’s now going to cost more to rehabilitate it than to just tear it down.

The actual dismantling itself, the construction part, was curious for everybody who lived there, because they had to keep certain lanes operational underneath on the Lakeshore, while they tore down and chomped away at night on other sections. And they used big munching machines to just bite away huge sections all the time. All the steel was recycled; all the concrete that was carried away was recycled. So all that concrete probably ended up furthering the Leslie Street Spit. And visual art was made out of the remnants.

My intent for a visitor to the area is you have a sense of time passing. Because here is a historical artifact that’s been rehabilitated, rather than being just what it once was, it has now been manipulated into an artistic format, in a sense a kind of sculpture that you can interact with. Probably the most oppressive part of the Gardiner is the overhead deck and with the deck removed the columns take on a life of their own and that is actually the best part. It almost has a kind of marching Stonehenge… sort of almost millennial sense about it. And this kind of thing actually is what gives now the whole piece a distinct character. You won’t find this anywhere else in the city.

Want to hear more? Check out Part 2.

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