This summer, The Bentway invites you to dive “beyond the concrete” and explore the ways urban nature and the built environment co-exist, collide, even collaborate. Come experience a constellation of free art installations, performances, creatures, and conversations that reveal new possibilities for a more resilient Toronto.

Balete Bulate Bituka

• On view: May 26- Sept 24,2023 (Viewable 24 hours a day)
• The Bentway Skate Trail (250 Fort York Blvd)

An otherworldly creature germinates at The Bentway, its parasitic tentacles emerging from the history of waste materials used as landfill to create the solid ground where the Gardiner now sits. Woven together with bamboo, living plants, and hundreds of locally-sourced discarded plastics, Leeroy New’s first North American commission presents nature reasserting itself amidst our concrete infrastructure.

PHOTO CREDIT: Leeroy New

Ground Cover

• On View: May 26- Sept 24,2023 (Viewable 24 hours a day)
• Fort York Visitor Centre

Photographer Genesis Báez co-creates with the soil and stormwater below the Gardiner, burying film underground beneath the highway to absorb the surrounding landscape. Developing and displaying the images at large-scale reveals the reciprocal nature of the Expressway and its ecology. Co-presented with the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.

Atmospheres

• On View: May 26 – Sept 24, 2023 (exterior portion viewable 24 hours a day; interior portion viewable during 1pm-9pm on weekdays, and 10am-9pm on weekends. The interior portion will be closed on Mondays, with the exception of holidays.)

What can the wind teach us about our city’s infrastructure and our own needs for comfort? Atmospheres manifests this powerful force into a series of soaring soft sculptures, sound, and video that both generates and visualizes environmental data collected under the Gardiner.

PHOTO CREDIT: Public Visualization Studio

Multispecies Lounge

• On View: May 26- September 24,2023 (Viewable 24 hours a day)

On The Bentway Studio’s terrace in a bustling new community, Multispecies Lounge aims to bring attention to the urban wildlife in and around Canoe Landing Park and CityPlace. Take a seat, keep company with local birds and insects throughout the season, and start to see the neighbourhood from their point of view. Designed by architecture duo, Double Happiness, this public leisure space for interspecies-encounters acknowledges the diversity of local inhabitants. The piece offers glimpses of how birds and insects see beyond the human eye; a more-than-human lens through which to experience our urban ecosystem.

Betempues Gardinus: A Long-Exposure Ecological Portrait

• On view: May 26- Sept 24, 2023 (Viewable 24 hours a day)

Geometric animal sculptures emerge from the Gardiner, representing species who’ve inhabited this place across time – from prehistoric woolly mammoths to sly modern foxes. Alex Sheriff’s speculative new work uncovers each of their stories and reconsiders our own role within natural history.

Lichen

• On view: May 26-Sept 24, 2023 (viewable 1pm-9pm on weekdays, and 10am-9pm on weekends. The exhibition will be closed on Mondays, with the exception of holidays.)

Remarkable, powerful, and resilient, “lichen” are ancient and diverse life forms, both an individual and a community. Anishinaabe filmmaker Lisa Jackson re-imagines her acclaimed short film as a multi-media installation and invites us to learn from Lichen about being in relation to our environment and one another.