The Gladstone Hotel
1214 Queen Street West
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M6J 1J6
P: 416.531.4635
F: 416.539.0953

Friday February 24     12-8pm

Sat February 25           12-10 pm + Reception 7-10pm (last                                          tickets will be sold at 9pm)

9pm LoveDESIGN Party Gladstone Ballroom - free admission

Sunday February 26 12-5 pm

Admission $6.00

2006 Participants include:

Joy Walker Toronto artist and owner of WORK Textiles

Rob Southcott Toronto Sculptor, Installation artist www.robsouthcott.com

Vest Collective "a group of not so like-minded individuals bound by a passion for craft and design" www.vestcollective.ca

MADE Collective of talents of Shaun Moore, Julie Nicholson, and Andresa Sisson. This group works with furniture and textile designs as well as digital and printmaking www.madedesign.ca

Kathryn Walter Toronto artist and owner of FELT www.feltstudio.com

Tiff Izsa Dusseldorf based installation artist www.izsa.com

Bruno Billio- Gladstone Artist in Residence, Sculptor and Installation Artist.

Miriam Grenville Toronto based artist specializing in post modern wall treatments www.grenvilledesign.com

Terence Cooke- Toronto based industrial designer www.terencecooke.com

RELISH directed by Paul Mezei, Toronto designer, educator and writer www.relishdesign.com

Melanie Zanker- woodworker, seamstress, and furniture designer. www.mazzie.ca

Kelly Palmer contemporary landscape artist and theatrical scene painter

Motherbrand global design collective www.motherbrand.com

New for 2006 Curated Lighting and Seating Projects by Orest Tataryn, Lisa Neighbour, Dennis Lin, Megan Muten, Marc Shu-Lutman, Paul Campbell, Jenny Francis, Lisa Mann, Nicholas Waissbluth, Sharif Khan, Patryk Ilehao, James Wright, Ryan McLay, Ryan Legassicke, Thomas Quan, Joel Robson

Come Up to My Room is an annual alternative design event housed in the historic 117-year-old Gladstone Hotel. Innovative, cutting-edge designers/artists are invited to transform all 12 of the Gladstone's second floor rooms into imaginative ? and sometimes strictly aesthetic & site-specific installations. The exhibition showcases the work of practitioners and emerging designers who approach design with radical personal vision.

Taking place at the same time as the Interior Design Show, Come Up To My Room is an alternative design event that allows designers to showcase their ideas, free from the constraints of commercial considerations.

NEW IN 2006 Come Up To My Room introduces Psssst! A series design dialogues which will include speakers and presentations as well as interactive workshops in keeping with the exhibition's curatorial theme of conversation as a metaphor for social change in design. These events will take place in the Gladstone Ballroom from 11am thru 5pm on Saturday February 25 and Sunday February 26 - check Event Listings for full details.

MORE NEW IN 2006 - Come Up To My Room exhibition will expand to include a collection of curated, sight-specific lighting and seating projects to be displayed in the public spaces of the hotel's first and second floor. These projects will play with the theme of dialogue and conversation.

Come Up To My Room is designed to connect designers and artists from diverse disciplines to each other and to the outside community through its alternative take on the trade show. Come Up to My Room showcases work that falls outside the "norms" of traditional design featuring designers and artists from diverse disciplines who dedicate their practice to; experimental, inter-disciplinary, self-taught, hand-made/craft-based, installation, and environmental, art & design projects. The installations incorporate furniture design, sculpture, lighting, ceramics, and more. Many of the installations are collaborative creations

The Gladstone hosts a reception followed by the full-blown LoveDESIGN Party in the Gladstone Ballroom on the Saturday night of the three day show.

The event draws over 2000 attendees annually and was short-listed for a 2004 Untitled Art Award - Best Curated Show - see http://www.untitledartawards.ca.

Curators: Christina Zeidler and Pamila Matharu

Curators' Statement:

Come Up to My Room is unique in that it is we curate the show by 'artist' and then trust the 'artist' to design a site- specific installation following their own personal vision. Due to the nature of how the show is curated, it is transient and never presents itself the same way twice. The success of Come Up to My Room is manifested in the magic of a small group of designers coming together for one weekend to step outside of the boundaries of discipline and to engage in dialogue with each other and with those who pass through the show. The premise of Come Up to My Room is that change through creative ideas requires engaged dialogue between disciplines.

Come Up To My Room is produced by: The Gladstone Hotel

Curated By:Pamila Matharu email pamila@gladstonehotel.com
Christina Zeidler email christina@gladstonehotel.com
Exhibition Production: Chris Mitchell email chrism@gladstonehotel.com

Psssst!
The Gladstone Hotel's 3rd Annual Alternative Design Event Presents...

Psssst! a series of design dialogues which includes speakers and presentations as well as interactive workshops in keeping with COME UP TO MY ROOM'S curatorial theme of conversation as a metaphor for social change in design . Join us in the Gladstone Ballroom for artist presentations, conversations, and interactive performance workshops with designers, artists, craftspeople, and everyone in-between. ADMISSION TO Psssst! is FREE

Sat 11am - 1pm          "RUMOURS"

Guerrilla Designers Spread the Word about Urban Interventions.

In the first series of presentations "Rumours", artist/designers present work which engages with the city in a temporal way. Without waiting for permission they insert their voice into the civic conversation about public space. Their actions demonstrate how artistic "intervention" projects can bring to mind ideas about space, private, public, or abandoned and even invite us to play in our city. Their work engages us and reinvents associations. It shifts power balances and fucks with expectation. It asks us to rethink, to imagine, to build.

Bakery Group -   Michel Devenet, Marcin Padlewski, and Anissa Szeto, Ottawa

2 videos by Kika Thorne - Vancouver/Toronto

Skunk Works Outlaw Neon- Orest Tataryn, Alfred Engerer, and Andrey Berezowsky - Toronto

Sat 2pm - 7pm           "SOFT CITY"

Drop in and help us build a new city in this interactive family friendly Urban Design Workshop

The Soft City Sweatshop is a model for city building that highlights the roles of artists and labourers in the growth of so-called "creative cities".  During this five hour event, you play the role of designers and architects to help design our "Soft City" (a city made of felt buildings that plays on Jonathan Raban's concept of the city as place of our imagination) Members of the UPBAG collective, along with three piece-workers will sit at a row of constantly humming sewing machines to construct participants' creative visions. You add the finishing touches and embellishments and then place your completed building within the ever-expanding Soft City landscape.

Presented by the Upbag Collective - Brenda Goldstein, Catherine Stinson, Darren O'Donnell, Jason Van Horne, Rose Bianchini, Sarah Couture-McPhail, and Yvonne Ng

Sun 11am-1pm            "GOSSIP"

Mother always told you "Don't talk to strangers!"   What would happen if you did?

Social interaction in most Canadian cities is codified into accepted behaviours which promote ideas of safety and citizenry. Necessarily when in public space we connect within known communities or most often avoid each other all together. In this second series of presentations "Gossip" , artists present projects that create opportunities for individuals and communities to challenge social norms by engaging in new ways.   Call it "social architecture" but these artists are building new cities, mapped out by spontaneous interactions and newly made communities.   Gossip the political tool of intimate relationships and myopic communities is turned around to spread the word about social change.

Pavilion Project - Robin Simpson - Montreal

Talking Creature - Darren O'Donnell - Toronto

Sun 2pm - 5pm            "Scavenging uTOpia!"
Do you have city savvy? Detective-like determination? Intimate knowledge of your town? Explore the crevices of Parkdale and the Gladstone Hotel as you join contributors from the book uTOpia : Towards a New Toronto on a scavenger hunt! Collect yourself a team of two to four people of any age, then meet up in the ballroom of the Gladstone between 2 and 2:30 p.m. to pick up a list
of things you might, if you're lucky, be able find in the hotel and around the neighbourhood. Meet back at 4:30 sharp so we can tally your score. The winning team scores gloating rights, a stack of Coach House books and a night's stay in an artist-designed hotel room at the glamorous Gladstone!

Presented by Coach House Books uTopia Towards A New Toronto - editors Jason McBride and Alana Wilcox.