GTA
Gentrification Tax website — frequently asked questions.
Gentrification Tax
GTA
Gentrification Tax
2018
16 x 8 x 4’
Fir plywood, Spruce, Ophiostoma clavigerum, screws
As the real estate bubble pushes more of us out of the city, GTA describe Gentrification Tax (2018) as a physical and conceptual structure that attempts to move beyond art into law. “In order to fight the class- defined displacement and polarization that is the result of gentrification, artists have to find models of solidarity with urban communities outside of their own solipsistic enclaves,” states Adrian Blackwell in 2006 (Fuse Magazine), “...understanding that it is precisely the city’s complexity in terms of class, ethnicity and culture that provides the foundation for those possibilities of substantive artistic experimentation and creativity that do exist.”
GTA is a group of friends – Adrian Blackwell, Sameer Farooq, Jane Hutton, Kika Thorne – artists and architects who have formed a collective to fight the predatory real estate market from within the creative class. This is their first collaboration but not their milieu’s first take on gentrification: October Group’s inflatable tunnel (1996), 1:1 over 1:300 (1998), Model for a Public Space (2000-present), Ambience of a future city (2001), C-Side (2004), Scapegoat Journal (2010-present), The Museum of Found Objects Toronto (Maharaja and —) (2011), Calculus of Forms (2011), White, Steel, Slice,
Mask (2016), reveal a through line of engagement.
Thank yous: curator Lamont Abramczyk, the Layer Up Winter Art Craw; install crew Obay Alrifai, Sabrina Iacono, Reilly McIlhone; documentation crew Bogdan Chifa, Eric Cazdyn and Angela Schubot; gentrification historian Simon Vickers. The Ontario Arts Council Exhibition Assistance. Sheila Sampath and The Public studio. Sonali Menezes, The Dis[re]placement project and the printmakers at Centre 3, Hamilton. Kari Cwynar, Jaclyn Bruneau and Kate Munroe at C Magazine. Jayne Wilkinson at Canadian Art, Rosemary Heather at Now Magazine.
For more information about the Gentrification Tax proposition, please see:
Gentrification Tax Website https://www.gentrification.tax/faqs
AAHA Architects Against Housing Alienation
Mahika Gautam, "Roll down your banners, take down your flags", Positions, E-Flux Architecture - Venice, August 9, 2023
Long Winter Panel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05fasDu6ir4&t=1s 2021
C Magazine https://cmagazine.com/issues/140/artists-are-leaving-2018
Globe and Mail https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/article-alarmed-by-rising-home-prices-toronto-residents-push-for-speculation/
Public Studio https://thepublicstudio.ca/gallery/gentrification-tax
https://www.facebook.com/gentrificationtax
