Art moves in
Worn neighbourhood becomes city’s newest art hub, with five galleries setting up shop
“Road to Ruin” is the name of the inaugural exhibition at Cooper Cole gallery’s brand new space on Dupont and Dufferin Sts., though its proprietor, Simon Cole, intends the opposite effect.
After years on Dundas West, the gallerist pulled up stakes and relocated to an unlikely spot, chased by escalating rents and a growing priority on late-night food and drink — especially drink — in his former neighbourhood.
He’s not alone. In the past couple of months, four other galleries — Erin Stump Projects, PM Gallery, Angell Gallery and Neubacher Shor — have begun their resettlement to this improbable nexus, anchored by the world-weary Galleria shopping centre on the southwest corner, a McDonald’s and a string of car audio and appliance warehouses.
There is already an artists’ presence here, though, with clusters of studios strung from Dovercourt Rd. west to Dundas. This recent influx only makes it official and visible.
It comes as no surprise. Art has always nudged at the city’s frontiers in a predictable pattern of forced migration:
1. Art moves in, imbuing a worn-at-the-corners neighbourhood with an instant cachet.
2. New businesses follow, looking to capitalize on the sudden sheen, attracting more moneyed residents. 3. Rents go up. 4. Art moves out. This time could be different, with at least some of the new arrivals buying, not renting, their spaces in one of the last affordable pockets of the semi-central city. What’s certain, though, is change. With its stretch of underused storefronts, looming gigantic condominium developments and a modest but growing presence of new businesses starting to occupy them — across from Stump, an organic market is under renovation; espresso bars, most of them less than a couple of years old, are separated by less than a block — Dupont’s time is coming. Some would say it’s already here.
Tired west-end neighbourhood is attracting galleries and artists who are being chased away from their current locations by escalating rents