Contemporary Art Bus Tour: Exploring Land Relations

The Contemporary Art Bus Tour: Exploring Land Relations traces serendipitous, intersecting curatorial ideas and artists’ works between current exhibitions at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, and The Joan and Martin Goldfarb Gallery of York University.

The bus tour begins at the Art Museum with Earthwork, an exhibition that redresses 1960s land art by considering multiple histories and layers of engagement with the earth through an Indigenous lens. The tour continues to Dwelling Under Distant Suns, where artists explore the entanglement between climate, the environment, and geopolitics.

At The Power Plant, we will visit two solo exhibitions: Jeneen Frei Njootli: The skies closed themselves when we averted our gaze and Lucy Raven: Murderers Bar. Though distinct in their approaches, both artists share an interest in the production of lens-based representations and in examining histories of land relations, past and present.

The final stop is The Goldfarb Gallery for exhibitions Standing in the Room Together with its reflection on relations between art and artists across generations and places, before concluding with 83% Perfect, Toronto artist Amy Ching-Yan Lam’s work including her analytics of the conditions of contemporary protest.

Free and open to the public! Snacks will be provided on the bus.

Locations:

1. Art Museum at the University of Toronto
   University of Toronto Art Centre, 15 King’s College Circle
   Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, 7 Hart House Circle
2. The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery
   231 Queens Quay W
3. The Goldfarb Gallery
   York University, 83A York Blvd

Detailed itinerary:

11am–12pm: Tours at the Art Museum
12pm–12:30pm: Depart for The Power Plant
12:30pm–1:30pm: Tours at The Power Plant
1:30pm–2:30pm: Depart for The Goldfarb Gallery
2:30pm–3:30pm: Tours at The Goldfarb Gallery
3:30pm–4:30pm: Arrive back downtown at the Art Museum

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About the Exhibitions

ART MUSEUM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

Earthwork
September 4–December 22, 2025
University of Toronto Art Centre, 15 King’s College Circle

Works by Alex Jacobs-Blum, Art Hunter, BUSH Gallery, Edward Poitras, Faye HeavyShield, Lisa Myers, Michael Belmore, Mike MacDonald, Protect the Tract Collective
Curated by Mikinaak Migwans

Earthwork re-imagines working with and for the earth centring Indigenous ways of repair, resilience, and possible futures. Considering multiple layers of engagement with the land, this exhibition brings together histories of land defense movements, the cultivation of plants, and ancestral practices of prescribed burns alongside contemporary artworks, approaching each as creative acts of relational intervention.

Dwelling Under Distant Suns
September 4–December 22, 2025
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, 7 Hart House Circle

Works by Kent Chan, Alvin Luong, and Solveig Qu SuessCurated by Yantong Li

Dwelling Under Distant Suns originates from the struggle to represent an increasingly precarious environment, a landscape of slow violence that occurs out of place and out of sight. The exhibition focuses on myth-making and speculation as methods of inquiry into the entanglement of environmental discourses and human movements on the ground.

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THE POWER PLANT CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY

Lucy Raven: Murderers Bar
November 7, 2025–March 22, 2026

Curated by Julia Paoli, Director & Curator, The Vega Foundation and Kate Whiteway, Assistant Curator, The Vega Foundation

Lucy Raven’s Murderers Bar is set against the backdrop of the largest dam removal project in North American history, continuing the artist’s exploration of material state change, force, pressure, and cycles of violence.

Jeneen Frei Njootli: The skies closed themselves when we averted our gaze
November 7, 2025–March 22, 2026

Curated by Frances Loeffler, Curator of Exhibitions and Sarah Edo, TD Curatorial Fellow

Jeneen Frei Njootli’s The skies closed themselves when we averted our gaze presents works that involve their ancestral land almost as a collaborator, deeply rooted in their life on the land in Old Crow.

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THE GOLDFARB GALLERY

Standing in the Room Together
September 26, 2025–January 31, 2026
Triangle Gallery

Works by Michael Belmore, Bob Boyer, Jack Bush, Edward Poitras, and Tariku Shiferaw
Curated by Lillian O’Brien Davis with Michael Belmore

Standing in the room together is an exhibition grounded in relationships. Starting with artworks from the York University Art Collection, the exhibition travels a circuit of influences and inheritances, suggesting that while artworks are situated in their own time, they also continue to impact and influence artists and publics through continuing existence.

Amy Ching-Yan Lam: 83% Perfect
September 26, 2025–January 31, 2026
Rectangle and Square galleries

Curated by Jenifer Papararo

83% Perfect by Amy Ching-Yan Lam begins with the anxiety of a childhood school admission test, a familiar ritual of sorting and ranking that shapes how we define ourselves. For Lam, the memory of that test lingers not as an achievement but as a frightening formative moment. Lam recounts that “an astrologer once told me that I was born under the banner of ‘I have to be perfect.’ She said that this is the key imperative that I have lived with since birth.” Recounting and re-imagining Lam’s first test becomes a means to understand the need to be perfect, where it comes from, how it is taught, and how to unlearn it.

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Images (clockwise from top left):
1—Installation view of Earthwork, curated by Mikinaak Migwans, September 4–December 20, 2025 at the Art Museum’s University of Toronto Art Centre. Photo: LF Documentation.
2—Installation view of Dwelling Under Distant Suns, curated by Yantong Li, September 4–December 20, 2025 at the Art Museum’s Justina M. Barnicke Gallery. Photo: LF Documentation.
3—Jeneen Frei Njootli, Dreaming of new futures, greater empires have fallen, 2024. Hot rolled steel, epoxy. 36 x 108 in. Courtesy of Macaulay + Co. and the artist. Photo: Byron Dauncey.
4—Amy Ching-Yan Lam, installation view of 83% Perfect, September 28, 2025–January 31, 2026 at The Goldfarb Gallery of York University. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.
5—Installation view of Standing in the room together, curated by Lillian O’Brien Davis with Michael Belmore, September 28, 2025–January 31, 2026 at The Goldfarb Gallery of York University. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.
6—Lucy Raven, detail of production still from Murderers Bar, 2025. Colour video, quadraphonic sound, aluminum and plywood screen, and aluminum seating structure, 41:47. Co-commissioned and jointly acquired by The Vega Foundation and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery. © Lucy Raven, 2025.