{"id":865280,"date":"2026-08-20T18:30:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T18:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/865280\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T18:30:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T18:30:12","slug":"canadian-art-goes-underground-literally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/865280\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian art goes underground (literally)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Matt Nish-Lapidus, Remembrance Agent is seen at the SCaM Project Space, a basement gallery in Toronto that gives artists a space to experiment without commercial pressure.Laura Findlay\/Supplied<\/p>\n

At the artist-run project the Plumb, the ceiling height is roughly 7.5 feet and there are no windows. In certain areas, it\u2019s easy to raise your hands and graze the overhead pipes protruding throughout the space. The gallery, accessed by an alleyway in the west end of Toronto, operates out of a basement. <\/p>\n

The Plumb has forgone what most people picture when they think of an art gallery, a room with high ceilings and crisp white walls, in favour of more affordable space and one that some see as more creatively stimulating because it is unexpected. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason this project happens in the basement is that it was affordable,\u201d founding member Daniel Hunt says, adding that artists looking to start a gallery without the deep pockets of a corporation have to think outside of the box \u2013 or outside the ground floor. <\/p>\n

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The ‘Never Enough Night’ exhibition at the Plumb.The Plumb\/Supplied<\/p>\n

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The ‘Shift n\u2019 Wiggle’ exhibition.The Plumb\/Supplied<\/p>\n

When the members of the Plumb, currently 12 who split the rent and make curatorial decisions, first looked at the subterranean space, even their realtor wondered why they\u2019d want it. \u201cIn our first interaction, the question of what exactly we are going to use this space for came up, and then when I said it was an art gallery, they would say: There are no windows,\u201d says Hunt. \u201cHaving windows is an immaterial component of what we are looking for. We\u2019re just looking for space.\u201d <\/p>\n

A desirable feature in most residential and commercial venues, windows aren\u2019t as important in art contexts. Think about walking through a museum: Typically, there aren\u2019t that many windows. Sunlight is a natural deterrent to light-sensitive artworks, meaning institutions tend to prefer the control of artificial lighting. For this reason, a basement gallery doesn\u2019t affect the art viewing experience. <\/p>\n

The Plumb\u2019s space is a sprawling 2,000 square feet. Hunt mentions that this space is ideal for group exhibitions, with many corners \u201cproviding natural architectural breaks that allow works to sit and nest together in sequence that in another space would maybe sometimes feel a little too jammed up.\u201d <\/p>\n

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Tough Guy Mountain, Lost in Internity is seen in the SCaM Project Space in Toronto.Cale Weir\/Supplied<\/p>\n

Ciar O\u2019Mahony, who is also a member of the Plumb, has her own basement gallery in Toronto called SCaM Project Space, a play on its location within a former church: St. Cyril and Methodius. O\u2019Mahony\u2019s experience running a basement gallery is inherited: Her parents started an art gallery in the same basement in 1998. The family, including O\u2019Mahony, still lives in the converted church. O\u2019Mahony, who runs the gallery with Joshua Rogin, continues the gallery\u2019s legacy, relaunching the project in 2023 to give artists a space to experiment without commercial pressure. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy mom has worked in the arts my entire life,\u201d says O\u2019Mahony, When she was growing up, her mother, Niamh O\u2019Laoghaire, was the director of the University of Toronto Art Centre; now, she\u2019s the director of Varley Art Gallery. \u201cShe was an art history lecturer but wanted to create exhibitions and didn\u2019t have the infrastructure to do so. So why not make your own space in the basement of your house?\u201d <\/p>\n

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Thrill Seekers by Philip Leonard Ocampo, featuring Hannah Doucet, is seen in the SCaM Project Space.Philip Leonard Ocampo\/Supplied<\/p>\n

O\u2019Mahony attributes some of the success of below-ground galleries to their hidden nature. <\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe there\u2019s just a little bit of excitement or something clandestine, that asks: What are we about to see?\u201d When visitors first enter SCaM Project Space, their reaction is surprise, she says. The basement gallery features 12.5-foot ceilings \u2013 a bit taller than a basketball hoop \u2013 and is polished with sleek white walls, track lighting and a minimalist black staircase leading to a second level.<\/p>\n

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The Crawlspace Gallery is located in Inglewood, Calgary, a neighbourhood its members say they typically could not afford.Bella Pesca\/Supplied<\/p>\n

In Calgary, the aptly named Crawlspace Gallery also makes good use of an underground unit. The gallery is located in Inglewood, a neighbourhood its members say they typically could not afford. \u201cWe just found this sketchy Kijiji listing for this basement that had been up for rent for five months and had a million views. We thought, \u2018This is definitely not real.\u2019 Then we went to see it, and it was so lovely,\u201d says May Jones, the lead creative director of the artist collective. \u201cIt was twice the size of anything else that we were looking at and super cheap because the building was maybe going to be demolished in six months.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Liminal Sunday by artist Chelsey Rice and curated by Yaiza Lopez Garcia San Roman is seen in the Crawlspace Gallery.Bella Pesca\/Supplied<\/p>\n

That precarity, along with the perceived notion that a basement is less than ideal, has given the group of nine artists, who graduated from Alberta University of the Arts in 2024, access to lower studio rent, freeing up funds to do other things, such as curate more exhibits. They\u2019ve been in the building for two years but because it\u2019s been slated for demolition, they could be asked to leave at any time.<\/p>\n

When that happens, Jones and her co-director know exactly what they\u2019ll look for: their next basement. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think people often cite money as an issue, that it\u2019s too expensive to start a space, but we did this for almost no money,\u201d says the Plumb\u2019s Hunt. \u201cWe did it because we wanted to do it and we love it and it\u2019s important to have pieces like that in the ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Matt Nish-Lapidus, Remembrance Agent is seen at the SCaM Project Space, a basement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":865281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[901,76,354,888,355,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,356,46,549,75,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-865280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-alberta","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-arts-news","tag-artsanddesign","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-design","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-entertainment","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/865281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}