Gerda Wekerle_The (Re) Constructed City_29 Oct.-09 Nov.

I have researched, written about and taught courses on housing, urban development and policy since the 1970s. More recently, visual art has become a new language to communicate my response to the growth and destruction of urban spaces. Initially, I set out to document the fleeting, temporary geometric shapes created by construction cranes and related equipment in Toronto’s most recent boom of high-rise development.These contrasted massive new constructions with existing streetscapes and nature. But I was missing something: the ways in which urban residents actively construct their own city, claiming its abandoned sites, remnant green spaces, and neighbourhood amenities. The focus on images of massive new constructionby both proponents of growth and its critics overlooks the human life that animates and transforms the city. My art is starting to foreground the lived city.