2025

Streetcar Stop - 2025

By Gustavo jabbaz
@vacaseca
www.vacaseca.com
November 2025 - April 2026
Opening Reception Sunday November 2nd 2025 2-5 PM

The streetcar is my favourite mode of public transportation in Toronto. There’s something special about gliding through the city in a vehicle that sits high on the road, with no side-to-side movement, and generous windows framing urban life. Though they are slow, easily blocked, and often infuriate drivers, they persist.

Toronto’s streetcar system has operated continuously since 1861, initially as horse-drawn carriages, and has been electric since 1892. Managed by the Toronto Transit Commission since 1921, it is now the most extensive streetcar system on the American Continent and one of the few that has never been shut down or entirely replaced.

Today, the entire active fleet consists of Flexity Outlook low-floor articulated vehicles, fully accessible and wheelchair-friendly. The total planned fleet size is to reach 264 cars by 2025. In 2024, nearly 35 million passengers rode streetcars, which travelled over 10.4 million kilometres. While the subway remains the fastest and most efficient mode overall, and the bus offers the widest coverage, streetcars are most effective downtown, where they serve as moving observation decks for city life.

In my work, I celebrate this flawed, enduring system—not for its speed, but for its character. The streetcar is a symbol of continuity, resistance to erasure, and the quiet beauty of transit that insists on taking its time.

Gustavo Jabbaz is a Photography-based Visual Artist and passionate urban photographer whose work explores the dynamic energy of city life. His artistic journey began early, as he taught himself the intricacies of developing and printing black-and-white photographs. In 1998, he transitioned into the digital era with his first camera and has since remained committed to this medium, embracing its potential to transform his creative vision.

As an emerging artist, Gustavo designs digital collages that blend photographs of urban scenes and pedestrians. His process involves capturing the visual allure of specific locations or structures, which he amplifies to create immersive and captivating artwork that dominates the viewer’s vision. Through his work, Gustavo seeks to reveal the extraordinary within the ordinary, offering a fresh perspective on the familiar.

Gustavo’s work has been showcased in several exhibitions, including People Looking at Art at Alleyway Gallery during the CONTACT Photography Festival in 2024 and Stilled Moments and Looking for Sky at Gallery Arcturus, curated by Deborah Harris for the CONTACT Photography Festival in 2023. His other exhibitions include Blue at Gallery 44 in 2023, SNAP for ACT Photo Contest in 2024, and the Annual Juried Shows of Fine Arts at the Art Gallery of Mississauga in 2020 and 2024.

Aquatic Rumours - 2024

by Veronica Moore
@veromur
veronicamoore.mx
May 2025 - July 2025

Reception: May 1st 5 - 8 pm

Artist Talk: May 10th 12:30 - 2 pm

Upon encountering the sheets of numbers created by my son, a mathematician by profession, I felt transported to a world of symbols and representations that were unfathomable to me. At that moment, I was working with aquatic plants, deeply immersed in observing these living beings that, in their natural cycle, head towards decomposition. This process evoked for me the delicacy and mysticism of oriental art. As I delved deeper into the subject, I discovered that algae, lotuses, water lilies, nori, and other aquatic plants have been depicted in paintings throughout the history of Japanese art, particularly in woodblock prints, especially ukiyo-e, which flourished between the 17th and 19th centuries, as well as in the famous lily prints by Katsushika Hokusai.

Inspired by these traditions, I envisioned how my photographs could establish a dialogue with mathematics, using symbols and metaphors to explore and decipher water and aquatic plants. Unlike traditional Japanese art, where aquatic plants emerge from bodies of water or touch the land, my intention is to capture them in their natural environment: the water itself. Through this immersion, I seek to reveal the intrinsic beauty and the mysterious relationship between these natural elements and the mathematical universe.

Veronica Moore

Veronica Moore was born in Chile's Central Valley in 1965 and grew up on a ranch where her parents managed a vineyard alongside livestock, fruit orchards, and vegetable gardens. Her childhood memories are deeply intertwined with living among horses, climbing trees, and experiencing the passage of time through the changing seasons.

In 1973, her mother, sister, and Veronica were forced into exile in Mexico. This event drastically altered her world and transformed her palette of colours: she opened herself to the grandeur of Mexican culture, fell in love with its people, and became endlessly fascinated by its vitality and diversity. At the same time, the uprooting caused by exile intensified her desire to capture everything that tends to disappear and, in this case, from memory. She strives to depict beauty in places that evoke nostalgia, emptiness, and absence: behind those decaying facade windows, she glimpses her album of memories.

She is captivated by leaves—some appear perfect, while others bear the scars of their survival. At some point, she felt compelled to document this journey, leading to her photographic work with plants. Initially, she aimed to allude to the aesthetics of ancient botany, but soon after, she ventured into composition. During this journey, she discovered that plants are resilient yet extremely vulnerable beings like us.

Fog is another of her obsessions; it allows you to hide within it and, without warning, can abandon you, revealing what it conceals. Likewise, water is where you can immerse yourself in its depths or float upon its surface. These elements provide me peace and a deep connection to nature and my surroundings.

City Block: Liminal Spaces - 2025

Series by David Scriven
@davidalbertscriven
davidscrivenphotography.com
August 2025 - October 2025
Opening Reception Thursday August 7th 5 to 8 PM

City Block is an ongoing long-term project documenting the streets and laneways encompassing Queen Street West, Ossington Avenue, Dundas Street West and Dovercourt Road. As a long-time resident of Little Portugal, I have observed and documented its rapid transformation from supporting an ethnic community to a trendy entertainment destination. For this mural, I have focused on the liminal spaces that for me are the essence of my neighbourhood.

The black and white images of storefronts represent each of the streets that form the perimeter of the City Block. Over the years, each of these storefronts have hosted numerous tenants and served varying functions. In this mural, they are each presented in a time of transition.

The laneways of Little Portugal are evocative of my childhood growing up in the east end of the city and were an early inspiration for my artistic practice. While they provide practical access for residents and businesses, they are presented here as a playful place of unrestrained urban wilderness.

The wheat paste artwork captured in the 1080 Queen Street West Image is by Jeremy Lynch (@jumblefacefoto)

I am indebted to Shaney Herrmann (@shaney.herrmann) for her curatorial guidance.

Thank you to Gustavo Jabbaz (@vacaseca) for giving me the opportunity to present this work in the neighbourhood that inspired it and my practice.

David Scriven

David Scriven is a lens-based artist living in Toronto. Grounded in documentary photography, his practice explores the confluence of place and time.

An ongoing project entitled City Block captures the Little Portugal neighbourhood where he is a long-time resident. Images from this series were featured in the Spectra 2022 and 2020 group shows at Artscape Youngplace.

Common Ground, another ongoing project, emerged out of ancestry research started during the COVID-19 pandemic. Images from this series were featured in the Spectra 2025 and 2024 group shows at 918 Bathurst Centre for Culture, Arts, Media and Education and in the online Montreal-based magazine Carte Blanche, Issue 46.

He has also exhibited work at the MacKendrick Community Gallery, Gallery 44 Centre of Contemporary Photography in Toronto and at ViewPoint Gallery in Halifax. In November 2021, he self-published a photo book entitled Alexandra Park that captured a year in the demolition and rebuilding of a Toronto west-end community housing project.

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