gOgO K’necht

ART COLLECTOR

Years: 1993-1998 Unit: 206 Rent: $700-$900

“in 1993, i lived at Davenport and Ossington, so I passed 888 Dupont on my bike all the time. I had some friends living there, and when I got word that someone was leaving, I jumped on their unit. I was 31.

I’m a collector, and I loved having the wall space to put everything up. I covered almost every inch of my unit with art, found objects, belts, jewellery. I had fabrics and crafts and sculptures that I’d brought back from Asia and Africa. There was art made by friends, including Fiona Smythe, Erella Ganon and Bill Wrigley. And then a bunch of different pop culture items, like merchandise from the movie E.T., toy sewing machines, old board games, Raggedy Ann dolls and stuff I picked up at garage sales. People called it the gOgO museum.

My unit was one wide-open space, and in the middle of it was a toilet and a shower.

When anyone came over, I’d have to turn around while they used the toilet. On one side of me was a sewing factory, and behind me were the train tracks. So there was all this low-frequency oscillation in the background, and I always slept really well there.

Once a year, on my birthday, I’d throw a big party, and hundreds of people would come. I knew a lot of people back then from hanging out in the ’80s and ’90s, doing art things and promoting raves. This was before Facebook and Instagram, so I’d just invite people by phone. At the time, Bell had this thing where you could make lists of people and record a message and it would send that message out to the entire list.

I left 888 in 1998, after I got married. In 2021, I went to the last party. It was in the outside space that faces the supermarket, and Keith Mustachi, this groovy young kid, was deejaying. I went up to my old space and saw that it was being used by Andrea Shahara Kong, who does really cool art projects. I loved that, so many years later, my former home was being used by someone like her.”