Art on Campus Tours

Join us for a new series of tours, featuring works from the Doris McCarthy Gallery's Permanent Collection installed around campus!

The DMG’s Art on Campus program provokes critical conversations about art and culture, and encourages contemplation of artworks from a diversity of viewers’ perspectives, building broader and deeper contexts for the works. As a way to provide further interpretation, each month this semester we'll be offering a tour focused on a small selection of works, grouped thematically. The tours will discuss each work, introduce the artists’ practices, and consider the works in terms of their place within wider conversations in art and culture, emphasizing their relevance to the U of T Scarborough and local communities.

Each tour is free and open to the public. Drop-in, no registration required. Please meet outside the entrance of the U of T Scarborough Library. If you have accommodation needs, contact dmg.utsc@utoronto.ca.

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Seeing Scarborough
Thursday, January 30, 1 - 1:30 pm

Our first tour will discuss works that depict and engage with the landscape and community of Scarborough. As a way for our audiences to see themselves reflected in the gallery’s collection, the DMG is committed to collecting work about and by artists from Scarborough. Each of the works in this tour consider the suburban, natural, and cultural landscape of Scarborough, working to resist and provide alternatives to stereotypes around this place, uncovering some of its hidden stories, and highlighting the artistic contributions from this underrepresented part of the GTA’s art scene.

Works featured:

Aaron Jones, Seeing Knowledge series, 2020

Anthony Gebrehiwot, From Boys to Men: The Road to Healing series: A Soft Touch, The Power, The Unearthing of a Poorly Structured Identity, 2020

Robert Burley, Scarborough Bluffs Park, 2014

Esmond Lee, Gods Among Us series: Baitul Jannah Islamic Center, 2019 / Thirupathi Venkatachalapathi Temple, 2019 / Masjid Bilal, 2019 / Jame Abu Bakr Siddique, 2021

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Identity Through the Lens
Thursday, February 27, 1 - 1:30 pm

Our second tour focuses on photography-based works, discussing the medium’s use in self-representation, reflection, and narrative. Each of the works narrate a reflection of the personal: addressing contexts, themes, and identities familiar to the artists and their communities. Each artist counters dominant or traditional modes of photography by centring and destabilizing the personal.

Works featured:

Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Skin Deep 03, 04, 08, 2018-2019 (at IITS)

Mariam Magsi, Kabilay ki Baiti (Daughter of the Tribe), 2019

Jorian Charlton, Susie, 2021

Meryl McMaster, Time’s Gravity and Equinoctial Line, 2015

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Imagined Histories and Futures
Thursday, March 20, 1 - 1:30 pm

Our final tour will discuss artistic visions of alternative histories and futures. In these works, through different media, the artists create imagined worlds, using these to challenge historic narratives, and to envision potential futures. From supplementing gaps in colonial archives to imagining ways to survive a world altered by climate change, these works provide fantastical yet logical, and optimistic yet sombre, reflections on worlds that transcend time and space.

Works featured:

Rajni Perera, No Pasture, 2022

Heather Hart, Oracular Rooftop, 2016

Qavavau Manumie, Ice Breakage, 2023

Anique Jordan, Sixth Company Battalion, 2015