LAUREN POON > Mongrel Building Series of illustrations of mongrel structures in the Don River Valley MAR 22 - APR 10, 2012 Opening Reception: MAR 22, 7-10pm The Gladstone Hotel Art Bar 1214 Queen Street West, Toronto, ON www.gladstonehotel.com/events Detail: Pen + Ink, 18 x 24 inches

Exhibition Description: "I was interested in how the richness and diversity held within the Don River Valley created unplanned juxtapositions and associations that offered different possibilities for experience. I wanted to explore and record the way this place had developed over the last two hundred years, built slowly and incrementally over time; the permanent scars in the landscape left behind by historical events, and the temporal moments created by puddles, reflections and shadows, overlaid with the footprints of human activities. It is a site that persists through flooding, pollution, industry, and human overdevelopment. A design proposal emerged from the site and its mongrel identity. It is presented in the series of illustrations. This project grows on a piece of land currently used for snow dumping. It proposes four new infrastructural and spatial devices; a toilet, a drinking fountain, a shelter, and a bridge to provide access to the site. These pieces of infrastructure provide basic needs that acknowledge the inhabitation of this place. They give dignity to and validate human presence on the site, thereby unifying and strengthening the cluster of users. The structures act as a symbolic knot in the centre of the site, where all the diverse and sporadic happenings on the site converge and register in one singular location. The mongrel proposal is a register of time and human ritual. The drawings represent the structures in a moment in time. They conjure a possibility for user experience and inhabitation"