We are very excited to announce that the Jury Award winner for Grow Op 2013 is Play the Walk by Gelareh Saadatpajouh and Talayeh Hamidya. The 2013 Jury’s Choice Award was selected by the Grow Op Jury and the following sponsors, the Award is presented for exceptional work that best responds to the conceptual direction behind the show as outlined in the original Call for Submissions.

This award is sponsored by Brook Mcllroy, Claude Cormier + Associès Inc., DTAH, The Planning Partnership and PMA Landscape Architects Ltd.

Grow Op jury: Victoria Taylor, Vanessa Eickhoff, Andrew Jones, David Young, Andrea Mantin, Netami Stuart, Lorraine Johnson, Jiva Mackay

We are also excited to announce that the GROUND magazine /OALA Award, selected by the members of the Editorial Board of GROUND magazine and representatives of the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects, was presented to Karen Abel with Rose Bolton for their installation GeoGarden: A Subterranean Symphony in C.

Chicken Cartel is a multi-disciplinary design collaboration between Landscape and Graphic Designers Justin Miron and Karen May. During their time together in the MLA program at  U of T, Karen and Justin discovered a common ground in work and ideas; that design could be both beautiful, and a tool for advocacy, provoking dialogue and bringing new life to the social spaces and ecologies of a typical city landscape. By joining forces in an attempt to realize an ordinary, outrageous idea, they hope to push boundaries while expanding their creative horizons.

Karen is interested in advocacy work as a creative practice. Drawing on her background in art and ecology, she is ever seeking creative ways of exploring interactions between design, dynamic natural and socio-political systems. Enamoured of visual representation as a method of inquiry, she works in a range of media from wood-working to video, information design to illustration.

Justin combines an interest in designing complex systems with a strong belief in the construction of design ideas. Currently an intern at the Landscape firm Janet Rosenberg and Studio, he approaches each project as puzzle to be solved. His work requires him to think about problems at all scales from material textures to urban relationships.

Images (top: screenshot from ‘Urban Chickens’, a video installation; top middle: images from Breakfast – A Closing Reception, multi-media gallery installation and performance, photo credits: Callum Baird; bottom middle: ‘People like chickens…’ illustration from Field Guide to Urban Chickens; bottom: Terrace planters with wildflower plantings, photo credit: Justin Miron)

Chicken Cartel / Karen May & Justin Miron

Collecting Tasker (16min) from Auratic Media on Vimeo.

From as far back as I can remember I’ve been acutely aware of the atmosphere of the built and natural environment.  It is the perception of these qualities that form the underpinnings to my work as a designer and filmmaker.  I am driven by the intimate relationship to memories of place, emotional connection to environments and the desire to be a producer as much as a consumer of place.  Such creativity requires a close attention to subtleties of the everyday experience, to details of the ordinary and spectacular.  My design and art practices and my work as a documentary filmmaker explore these types of understanding.  My work turns on the ability to pause, to recollect and to attempt to understand the meaning of a space.  The entirety of my work exists as an act of creation through observation, an observation that in its act of being, is itself, a creation.

About the video: Collecting Tasker is the story of a remarkable man.  An individual who has dedicated the past seventy years of his life to collecting a varied body of objects ranging from orchids and butterflies to cultural artifacts and artworks.  A renowned neurosurgeon, world traveler and recipient of The Order of Canada, Dr. Tasker’s life is without a doubt a fascinating tale made more remarkable by is his dogged pursuit of knowledge.  At 85 year of age he continues to  work on his collections, identifying butterflies and readying the various collections for dissemination to national museums and galleries.  Inside his rambling old home we discover the intimate nature of collections and an incredible individual who’s dedication to knowledge and philanthropy continues to drive a life long passion.

Gladstone Grow Op: Exploring landscape and place, is a four-day event that celebrates innovative ideas and conceptual responses to landscape and place across a broad range of creative practices. Grow Op will explore new territories and uncover new ways of expression and meaning through projects that represent a wide range of approaches from the prosaic to the poetic, the elemental to the ephemeral.

April 25 – 28, 2013

bREAL is a multi-media art + design studio lead by landscape artists/ architects Barbara Flanagan-Eguchi and Real Eguchi. We work collaboratively with a variety of other artists and as a result, a wide spectrum of visual art and design media is explored in our studio. We enjoy making. In our work we explore our immediate living environment and embrace the wellness, beauty and real joy that results from our intimate and visceral engagement with the landscape within which we live. We create works that hopefully enhance eco-revelatory experiences within others…art that encourages us to live within each moment…art that encourages us to be real. We explore a sustainable form of beauty. This opens us to Sustainable Joy!

Ashley Johnson was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and studied fine arts at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg. He trained in traditional artistic disciplines like drawing, painting and sculpture but in practice his installations combine strategies and often include sound. In 1992 he co-founded DASART, an artists’ collective that strives to rethink the connection between humanity and environment. Dasart was active from 1992 until 2002, with many national and international installations in public galleries and museums. He relocated to Toronto in 2005 where he was represented by Headbones Gallery. He has shown his Primal Series of paintings that challenge cultural taboos and seek the animal in our psyche. His current work explores the human/animal intersection in monumental paintings with ambient soundtracks.

David Hlynsky attended Ohio State University during the 1960’s and graduated with a BFA in painting and fine art.  His main interest then was photography and in 1971, he accepted an offer to work at the Coach House Press in Toronto as a graphic illustrator and editor of the magazine, image nation.  It was there that he became deeply connected with the art, music, performance and literary communities in Canada.  He has worked in a very wide range of practices from holography and graphic design to photojournalism and alternative theatre.  He has had countless publications and exhibitions internationally.  He has won numerous grants and awards and has acted as an arts consultant at all levels of government.  He is a published writer of both fictional works and critical essays.  He has taught at four major educational institutions around Toronto and currently holds a permanent, full-time position as Senior Lecturer in Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Toronto, Scarborough Campus.

Gladstone Grow Op: Exploring landscape and place, is a four-day event that celebrates innovative ideas and conceptual responses to landscape and place across a broad range of creative practices. Grow Op will explore new territories and uncover new ways of expression and meaning through projects that represent a wide range of approaches from the prosaic to the poetic, the elemental to the ephemeral.

April 25 – 28, 2013

Play the walk is a collaborative project between architectural designer Talayeh Hamidya and designer and sound artist Gelareh Saadatpajouh. The duo’s PTW project encompasses street games, adventures, collective mapping, and public education on native plants.

Talayeh Hamidya is a candidate of Masters of Architecture at University of Waterloo. In her work as a designer she is dedicated to celebrating fullness and rawness of life with a respect to its yet complex nature. Her approach is to create spatial experiences that connect one to his or her immediate time and place and simultaneously encourage play and muse. Her work involves investigative exploration into the capacity of everyday life and citizen’s intuition in design and development. Her focus: the shape of our most common habitat, cities. Material, scale, density, forms, paths and narratives are the medium she works with to deliver these experiences. She is the curator of The Soudan Project, a self-organized group exhibition that directly dealt with the sense of place and self-projection.

Gelareh Saadatpajouh is an independent designer and sound artist based in Toronto. She is the  programs coordinator of Toronto Design Offsite Festival. Her projects explore the interplay of sound and space, and architectural interventions that are attuned to site and context. Her work focuses on  everyday places, behaviours and objects, inviting the public to become active contributors in the process and the outcome. These experiences take many shapes: urban walks and interventions, sound walks, site-specific installations, spatial design, community-based discussion forums, workshops, and events.

Gladstone Grow Op: Exploring landscape and place, is a four-day event that celebrates innovative ideas and conceptual responses to landscape and place across a broad range of creative practices. Grow Op will explore new territories and uncover new ways of expression and meaning through projects that represent a wide range of approaches from the prosaic to the poetic, the elemental to the ephemeral.

April 25 – 28, 2013

Images (top to bottom): insideout soundwalk, Room of whispers (photo credit: Scott Poborsa), The Soudan Project (photo credit: Jane Wong)