Toronto art collective Team Macho talk about Axis Mundi, their installation in the Community Gallery at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Exploring themes brought forth in writer Northrop Frye's Words with Power and tackling the issue of space, they took over the Gallery and built a series of studio structures: A cave, a furnace, a mountain and a garden.
A fully functioning studio, the installation draws on ideas related to the history of artists working in collaboration with one another, referencing the practices of General Idea, Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven among others. Team Macho examines the manner in which these male artists also worked supportively alongside each other, developing structures that were both physical and personal to push forward their individual practices. The piece calls to question the role of community in artistic practice, using the studio itself as a way of reconsidering the role of the individual artist in a larger society.
More information:
http://www.ago.net/community-arts
About Team Macho:
http://www.teammacho.com/
