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Contact - Art galleries, museums, artist’s talks

Scott Johnston

David Jager, Now Magazine

Contact: The month-long Contact Photography Festival of more that 500 Artists continues at hundred of local venues. NOW’s art writers deliver tips on what exhibits you won’t want to miss. Check out upcoming issues for picks

Where/when: Galerie Bertossini, (783 Queen Street East), to May 27, 416-466-3659.

What: Regent Park, Canada’s largest low-income housing project and one of Toronto’s most troubled neighborhoods, depicted as the gated community/luxury resort it never was.

Why: Johnston cleverly inverts our notions of the area by focusing on arresting architectural details. Stagnant pools, abject hockey rinks, denuded basketball courts and expanses of landscaping dotted with abandoned furniture are shot to evoke a feeling of serene prosperity gone to seed. By schlepping found mattresses and chairs into pleasing configurations and staying clear of graffiti and trash, he constructs a surreal alternative Regent Park that might have been.

Buzz: As he did in his acclaimed 2005 series Photographs From the Bridle Path, which featured abandoned and gutted mansions, Johnston cuts through our assumptions about place, prosperity and class.