ARTSY BUNKER
Creative use of storage container highlights plight of cultural organizations,
When Matthew Kyba says “we’ll always have a home,” as he did one recent afternoon, it’s instructive to define the terms.
As a co-founder of Bunker 2, a new, not-for-profit art space recently launched into the troubled waters of Toronto’s infamously unaffordable property market, it seems less a statement of certainty than hopeful dreaming.
But on a breezy afternoon earlier this month, it became clear that it was a little of both. In a parking lot shouldered up against the train tracks near Dupont St. and Symington Ave., a flatbed truck lowered Bunker 2’s permanent home, a bright white shipping container once used by the Canadian military, into a parking space bordered by a narrow, weedy patch of grass.
“How many art galleries can say they have a front lawn?” grins Kyba, wrestling with the iron latch bars on the container’s face. Levering them open, he and his co-founders — Tamara Hart, Phu Bui, Kate Benedict and John Elmar — exposed a frame of white sliding-glass doors and a neatly drywalled interior beyond. Finding it intact, they exchanged highfives all around. “Amazing,” Kyba says. “This was the first move. I didn’t know if everything in there would be completely broken or the walls would be cracked. But the dude drove really slowly, so that was good.”
Even so, a little drywall damage would be a small price to pay. In a superheated real-estate market and subsequent affordability crisis that has the city desperately trying to broker a new property-tax class for buildings that house cultural activ- ities, Bunker 2’s approach to the problem is novel and practical.
“That’s why we started: it was a response to that precarity, and to the impossibility of having an arts organization in this city right now,” Kyba says. “Especially as a non-profit . . . ”
“. . .or a negative profit,” Hart interrupts, laughing.
“Right,” Kyba nods. “Whatever money we have goes to the artists. It’s about enabling them, not paying us.”
It’s a noble goal, time-honoured across generations of Toronto’s bootstrapping independent art scene. Starting in the 1970s with non-profit artist-run centres, Toronto’s most dynamic art spaces were forged by equal parts idealism and sheer force of will, both of which Bunker 2 shares.
What artist-run spaces like Mercer Union or YYZ had, back then, was ample space to grow. Four decades ago, derelict industrial swaths of downtown, many near King St. and Spadina Ave., proved fertile ground for independent art organizations to put down roots.
While the spirit remains, the space does not: youthful enterprises such as the Loon, Towards, Roberta Pelan, 8-11and Franz Kaka occupy whatever nook and cranny they can, scattered to the city’s far corners. The Younger Than Beyoncé gallery embraced itinerancy as a curatorial theme: for the Images Festival the gallery, now with no fixed address, fitted a rented cube van with video screens and drove it around town.
For an art scene to thrive, the financial stakes need to be low. In a tightening real-estate market in even the city’s previously undesirable corners — right next to their container and just a stone’s throw from the tracks, a semi-detached house sports the deep scars of a gut-job do-over — that’s wishful thinking.
Bunker 2’s fixed-cost model is unique. They bought their container last year for $2,000 from a wholesal- er in Oakville, who cut them a deal. (“He was used to people like Nike buying containers for a weekend event and then selling them for scrap,” Kyba says. “He loved the idea that we weren’t using it to make a quick buck.”)
The container touched down six months ago behind a low-slung warehouse near Queen and Dufferin, where the group put on a brisk program of five shows over the winter.
But with constant talk of redevelopment along the Dufferin corridor, they knew moving was a when, not an if. “We had an opportunity to move and to show that we could be mobile, so we took it,” Kyba said.
Their new space is as permanent as they want it to be: for $100 a month, Bunker 2 enjoys the rare and precious gift of low overhead. But it can also provide a creative challenge. “When I approach artists about it, I find they’re really drawn to the concept: ‘What? You just bought that?’ ” ble. “I’ve always wanted to do something more immersive, that you have to navigate,” Stewart says. “I wanted to play with these limitations. They can offer so many possibilities — ironically, I guess.”
“That’s what we love,” Kyba says. “We don’t want artists to use the space as a box to put a few pieces in. We love that they want to completely transform it.”
A pair of CN Rail diesel engines rumbled by, trailing flatbed cars stacked with storage containers not unlike Bunker 2’s own. “Those are the 40-footers,” Kyba says, now an aficionado. “Ours is a 20-footer. Maybe someday,” he said, laughing.
A block away at Lansdowne Ave., a new condominium tower has become occupied in recent months. Kyba shrugs at the notion that the lot — a rough expanse of asphalt littered with old trucks, many without licence plates — might soon share the same fate.
“If it does, we’ll just pick it up and move it,” he said with a smile. “What I love is that we bought an art gallery that nobody can kick us out of. This will always be home, wherever that may be.” Sean Ross Stewart’s Conservatory continues at Bunker 2, 346 Campbell Ave., until June 4. See bunker2.ca for more information.
“What I love is that we bought an art gallery that nobody can kick us out of.” MATTHEW KYBA CO-FOUNDER OF BUNKER 2