Mercer Union is delighted to launch groundwork, an incubator for artistic and practice-based research. As a format, groundwork invites multiple cultural practitioners to develop their self-directed projects concurrently in the gallery over a sustained period of time. As a program, it is interested in the generative possibilities that emerge when we shape our practices publicly alongside one another.

This inaugural edition of groundwork is collaboratively produced with seven Toronto-based practitioners: artist Luis Jacob, the working group EMILIA-AMALIA (Cecilia Berkovic, Annie MacDonell, Gabrielle Moser, Zinnia Naqvi, and Joy Xiang), and curator Kate Wong. Their projects consider the conditions currently impacting artistic and cultural production in Toronto, guided by differing prompts and senses of scale.

Delivered through aesthetic, informational, and programmatic means, their projects evolve over the summer with discursive events that call for public participation. These include discussions, workshops, presentations by invited speakers, a weekly reading group, as well as informal gatherings and shared meals. Taken together, these projects launch groundwork with a focus on Toronto and offer a living context brief for the desires shaping artistic and cultural life in the city—the stakes of which both engage and implicate our situated understanding of the world.