In photos: Toronto art exhibit a blast from the past for car buffs
toronto auto show
In photos: Toronto art exhibit a blast from the past for car buffs
Dan Proudfoot
Amidst the rush of 1,000-plus new vehicles, another 19 collector and museum cars are set apart, affording calm and context, exciting the eye and imagination, documenting the evolution of modern mankind's most personal means of rapid transit.
Art and The Automobile (Room 718, MTCC South Building) positions these vehicles - from Canada's first, the 1867 Seth Taylor Steam Buggy, through Ford's 1963 Mustang II show car - before archival backdrops and prints of the works of foremost automotive artists Ken Dallison and Jay Koka.
And so the 1953 Buick Skylark appears in front of a Toronto skyline dominated by the Royal York Hotel, as viewed from green parkland south of Union Station. Rocket Science VFX created the backdrop from a Toronto Archives photograph.
Others, like the pre-Model T 1903 Ford, motor forward from scenes in Murdoch Mysteries in which they've had star turns. The Mustang II that previews the pony car age has just gassed up at a Supertest station, the Canadian brand that disappeared into BP in 1973.
"The idea is to trick the eye into thinking the car is driving out of its era," says Rob McLeese of the Cobble Beach Concours d'Elegance, which is presenting Art and The Automobile along with Murdoch Mysteries. "I always look at the automobile as art, so when the show invited our involvement, I considered it a perfect fit."
Jay Koka feels similar comfort with the venue. "This is pretty much the biggest group of work I've showed in Canada," the Waterloo-based artist says of four major original paintings in the CIAS Exotica Exhibit in the north building, and an array of prints in Art and The Automobile.