IT'S BACK! SMASH AT THE GARDINER MUSEUM

After a two-year hiatus, the Gardiner Museum is thrilled to relaunch its annual Young Patrons art party and fundraiser, SMASH, an unforgettable evening of original installations, cocktails, and cuisine, taking place on June 16th (8PM-12AM). This year, SMASH: Terra explores our connection to the world around us - our relationship with the land we inhabit, our responsibility to protect and nurture the environment, and the complex ways that place defines our collective and individual identities. One-night-only art installations will be featured throughout the Museum, with music contributed by DJ Dre Ngozi, and an innovative plant-based menu from Hospitality Partners, Food Dudes. SMASH is a night when the next generation of artists, arts enthusiasts, and cultural philanthropists come together to celebrate the city’s vibrant arts community and see how young local artists are pushing the boundaries of their media.

The Gardiner Museum has a mission to build community with clay. It brings together people of all ages and backgrounds through the shared values of creativity, wonder, and community that ceramic traditions inspire. Proceeds from SMASH support the Gardiner’s long-running Community Access Fund, making clay programs more accessible for young people. This year, SMASH will take place within the scope of the newly expanded International Ceramic Art Fair (ICAF), taking place June 9 - 19, 2022, for which this year's Honorary Patron is internationally renowned Kenyan-born British studio potter, Magdalene Odundo. ICAF features works by emerging and established ceramic artists and an exciting slate of artist talks, tours, performances, and more. ICAF 2022 celebrates connections between body, identity, and land, featuring artists: Cristina Córdova, Maura Doyle, Eddy Firmin, Raven Halfmoon, Sergei Isupov, Joon Hee Kim, Jennie Jieun Lee, Kate Newby, Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Brie Ruais, Edwina Sandys, Mara Superior, and Kukuli Velarde. 

Sami Tsang, Take a Chocolate Mint Moment, 2021. Stoneware, engobe, glaze, resin, chain, clay epoxy, enamel, cement paste, polymer clay, acrylic, ballpoint pen, 22h x 11 x 8 in. Photo courtesy of Cooper Cole Gallery, photo credit: Jessann Reece.

In addition to viewing the works on display at ICAF, attendees of SMASH are invited to experience exclusive installations by artists, including Sami Tsang. Tsang, a Toronto-based ceramic artist, gathers stories of domestic encounters; private narratives like those borne from living amidst two cultures, Chinese and Western; transformation; and mystic landscapes. Tsang forms relationships between such stories and materials like clay, resin, rice paper, and ballpoint pen. Tsang studied traditional Chinese painting for seven years in Hong Kong. After returning to Canada, Tsang earned her B.A. in Craft & Design from Sheridan College (2019), and her MFA in Ceramics from Alfred University, NY (2021). Tsang has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Canada, including the ClayAkar Gallery, Iowa City, the Gardiner Museum, and Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto. Tsang’s SMASH installation, A Night In The Bathtub (2022), will explore the bathroom as a nurturing setting – a space where we are enveloped, protected, and cleansed by water – highlighting how the environment nurtures and nourishes us, a gift we have the responsibility to return.

Alongside Tsang’s work will be installations by Randell Adjei, an entrepreneur, speaker, and spoken word practitioner who was recently appointed Ontario’s first Poet Laureate; Jasmine Cardenas, a Canadian-Ecuadorian multidisciplinary artist, working in sculptural painting, collage, and installation; and Jaime McCuaig of GUNNAR Floral, whose creative practice engages with the living world of plants and flowers, processes of growth, and the ephemerality of seasons.

Individual Tickets and Discounted Package Rates for SMASH are available for purchase via this link. Proceeds from SMASH support the Gardiner’s Community Access Fund, which makes clay programs more widely available to communities with limited access to arts education.

SMASH: Terra

June 16, 2022 | 8pm-12am

Gardiner Museum

111 Queens Park

Dress Code: Whatever makes you feel your best

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