Outdoor School: Doris McCarthy

Outdoor School at the Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto Scarborough

September 14 – October 22, 2016

Artists: Deirdre Fraser-Gudrunas/Vibrant Matter, Ayumi Goto, Maggie Groat, Hannah Jickling & Helen Reed, Jamie Ross and Jay White.

Curated by Amish Morrell

Outdoor School was an exhibition and series of activities that explored ways of attending to interstitial urban wild spaces and other natural environments around the University of Toronto Scarborough. Functioning as a platform for critical spatial practice, Outdoor School included research materials, plants, tools, and objects intended to be activated during the exhibition, using the gallery as a classroom, meeting space and studio.

Included in Outdoor School is documentation and artifacts from projects by Hannah Jickling and Helen Reed that present queer models of outdoor education, destabilizing many of the narratives through which we encounter the natural world, as well as Maggie Groat’s Fences Will Turn into Tables, a communal table constructed from salvaged boards and posts, to be used during Outdoor School activities. Around these and other objects, UTSC students and other members of the public were invited to participate in artist-led workshops and events. Among these, artist-forager Deirdre Fraser-Gudrunas/Vibrant Matter led sensorial and experiential field identification walks and invited participants to contribute to a subjective field guide; artist and organizer Ayumi Goto invited the public to join her in running the surrounding landscapes as a practice of honoring and acknowledging traditional Indigenous territories and developing respectful relationships with the land; artist and witch Jamie Ross will involve participants in enacting place-based seasonal rituals of the Radical Faeries in landscapes around campus; and participants will be invited to follow, at a respectful distance, artist Jay White, as he walks and camps in and around Scarborough, remaining hidden as he mirrored the movements of urban coyotes.

Through artist-led activities that use the body and the imagination to produce alternate forms of knowledge, Outdoor School aimed to deepen and complicate our relationship to the outdoors.

Ayumi Goto: Rinrigaku: Collected Responsibility
Public runs each day, beginning at 11 am

Artist and organizer Ayumi Goto’s project focused on the idea of “passing through” the land as temporary occupants, and the responsibility that this entails. She ran the areas around the University of Toronto Scarborough campus for three days as a practice that aimed to honour and become better acquainted with traditional Indigenous territories and passages. Goto posits that running is a means of "passing through" and a practice by which we can develop a more respectful relationship with the land beneath our feet. Every point of physical contact mutually reverberates through the human and non-human in a give and take of embodied conversation. The public was invited to join the artist as she ran each day, beginning at the Doris McCarthy Gallery.

The Lashing: Workshop by Jamie Ross

Jamie Ross led a workshop and talk on the tying of knot spells in the context of the making of an effigy. Participants constructed a Cornholio grain effigy, one of these figures that Radical Faeries and other pagans make and burn annually at the harvest holiday of Lammas.

Jay White: Coyote Walk, Tracking led by Amish Morrell

Artist Jay White spent four days travelling on the margins between the University of Toronto Scarborough campus and nearby suburbs and riparian areas, avoiding contact with humans. During the walk he wore a tracking device that transmitted his location at half-hour intervals. The public was invited to take on the role of documenting his passage through photography and/or video, while maintaining a respectful distance and respecting his desire for privacy. On Thursday, October 20, Amish Morrell guided a walk tracking the artist’s route.

The Pyre: Performance by Jamie Ross

Jay White wrapped up his Coyote Walk with an artist talk in the gallery. Meanwhile, behind the velvet curtain the gallery turned into a gay bar (The Fool's Paradise) where all guests were welcomed to enjoy a libation and experiment with a light afternoon drag look. With words from Jamie Ross on the meaning of Samhain-Hallowe'en as highest holiday to pagans (and queers, before Pride street festivals usurped that role in the 90s), we celebrated and closed the exhibition by heading outdoors at dusk to set the Cornholio effigy ablaze.