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The Power Plant is currently open with exhibitions Lap-See Lam: Floating Sea Palace and Charles Campbell: How many colours has the sea.

The Power Plant promotes physical and social inclusion. Our gallery is wheelchair accessible and includes an accessible restroom. Both levels of the gallery are serviceable by elevator, and we also welcome guide dogs and other service animals.

Accessibility

Free admission is made possible by our partner

The Power Plant is on a mission to provide communities with an open space for cultural exchange and  thought-provoking contemporary art. That’s why we offer free access to our gallery and programs. All year around.

All Year, All Free

Food, beverages and pets are not allowed in the gallery. Please do not touch the artworks. Photography is allowed unless otherwise indicated.

Etiquette

**By Public Transit**
From Union Station, board the 509 or 510 streetcar to Harbourfront Centre. For route schedules, visit the [TTC website](https://www.ttc.ca/routes-and-schedules#/510/0).

**By Car**
From Lake Shore Boulevard, take Lower Simcoe Street south to the gallery; from Queens Quay West, turn south at Lower Simcoe Street. Please be sure to take note of any construction updates or road closures. For driving instructions, visit [Google Maps](https://www.google.ca/maps/dir/231+Queens+Quay+W,+Toronto,+ON+M5J+2G8/@43.639396,-79.382942,16z/data=!4m8!4m7!1m0!1m5!1m1!1s0x882b352aeb38d68b:0x961b6dcf85643b57!2m2!1d-79.3820163!2d43.6382447?hl=en).

**Parking**
Underground parking is available directly in front of the gallery and above ground at Queens Quay West and Rees Street. For parking rates and locations, visit Harbourfront Centre's [website](https://harbourfrontcentre.com/).

Getting Here

The Power Plant comprises five main exhibition spaces, including  a clerestory with a beautiful view of Lake Ontario. New to the gallery is the redesigned and expanded lobby, with improved retail services. Designed to showcase the diverse nature of contemporary art, our space is available for special events and rentals.

Venue Rentals

Discover dance, theatre, performance, restaurants, cafés, and breathtaking views of Toronto’s scenic waterfront, all within walking distance of The Power Plant!

Downtown Toronto’s Waterfront

231 Queens Quay W.  
Toronto, Ontario  
M5J 2G8  

Location

View of Harlem Quilt, June Clark, 1997. Photo transfers on fabric, light fixtures. Courtesy the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery. Installation view: Witness, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, 2024. Photo: LF Documentation.

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104 TPP Summer Exhibitions Opening 20240502-HC.jpg

Plan Your Visit

This work by Tkaronto (Toronto)-based artist June Clark, is a socio-historic document of a place and its people, seen through a distinctly personal lens. The work was made as part of a series of photo-etchings from the same year titled _Whispering City_, in which Clark brings together snippets of stencilled text with photographs of her early family life in Central Harlem, New York and Tkaronto in the 1970s and 1980s. Employing a wiping technique during the production process, she eloquently illustrates the elusive nature of memory: the way it constantly emerges and recedes. By combining the image with text drawn from familial sayings and other childhood recollections, the artist attempts to “fix” the memory, anchoring her subjective interpretation of the past to another highly personal representation. The work is evidence of Clark’s deep love of and sensitivity toward a community she has continually returned to as a subject in her practice.

This presentation coincides with the exhibition June Clark: _Witness_, on view at The Power Plant from May 3 to August 11, 2024. 

June Clark: South Facade Billboard

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South Facade Billboard

Charles Campbell is a multidisciplinary artist whose diverse body of work challenges traditional notions of time and delves into possibilities arising in the aftermath of colonization. For _How many colours has the sea_ (2024), he creates a portal into a realm where the spirits lost in the Middle Passage—the harrowing journey of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic—find solace. The exhibition consists of newly commissioned works, including a large-scale sculpture that recreates the submerged terrain where African and North American tectonic plates converge, and nine monolithic panels, or “Breath Portraits” that visualize the breath of members of the Black community. It also includes an audio installation capturing the tranquil and tumultuous atmospheres of the sea using hydrophones (underwater microphones), and filling the gallery with the sounds of an ocean journey, both stormy and calm. An additional work available on headphones offers personal reflections on reconnecting with the lost. With these deeply resonant works, Campbell creates a sanctuary for private contemplation and collective healing that confronts the profound consequences of systems designed to divide and oppress.  
  
_How many colours has the sea_ is co-commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art and the National Gallery of Canada and co-presented with The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. The Toronto Biennial of Art is on from September 21 to December 1, 2024 at 11 venues across the city. For more information, visit **[torontobiennial.org](https://torontobiennial.org/)**.

Charles Campbell: How many colours has the sea

Charles Campbell, Breath Portrait series, 2024. C-print on aluminum composite panels, 20 in x 144 in. Courtesy the artist. 

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How many colours has the sea

Lap-See Lam creates mythical video installations that draw on traditional storytelling forms such as Cantonese opera and shadow play puppetry. Her work takes a magic realist approach, creating alternative representations of Chinoiserie as defined by imperialist history, while simultaneously reflecting on her own family history of migration from Hong Kong to Sweden, both to claim and complicate cultural heritage.  
  
In her newest film, _Floating Sea Palace_ (2024), Lam draws on the folklore tale of Lo Ting, a mythical human-fish hybrid, who is believed to be the ancestor of the Hong Kong people. In Lam’s story, Lo Ting exists both in past and future form, played by pop singer Bruno Hibombo and artist Ivan Cheng, respectively. Past Lo Ting longs to return to his former home Fragrant Harbour, the phonetic translation of Hong Kong. He unknowingly summons a dragon ship, performed by vocalist and improviser Sofia Jernberg, based on a real three-story ship named the Floating Restaurant Sea Palace. Commissioned by entrepreneur Johan Wang in Shanghai in the 1990s, it was relocated to different European ports where it lived many lives as restaurants, a haunted house, and now, a ruin. Lam has filmed aboard the real ship and taken its story of transformation and search for a harbour as the heart of the story. The ship embodies the mistranslation inherent to experiences of dislocation, and the complexity of searching for belonging. The dragon ship has inspired several of Lam’s major works, including _The Altersea Opera_ (2024), presented at the 60th International Venice Biennale, as well as _Tales of the Altersea_ (2023) and _Dreamers’ Quay_ (2022).  
  
In _Floating Sea Palace_, a sequel to the Altersea series, Lo Ting’s story is narrated by Singing Chef, a former chef aboard the dragon ship, played by Ping-Kwan Lam. The ship travels through space and time, propelled not by wind but by stories and memories. During its journey, the ship encounters a storm in the North Sea, where it sinks to the bottom of the ocean. As Lam is interested in mutable forms of translation, Fragrant Harbour emerges as a placeholder for an idea of home, a concept that remains out of reach. _Floating Sea Palace_ is a story of longing to return to an ever-shifting home, but needing instead to begin again.

_Floating Sea Palace_ is Lap-See Lam’s first-ever exhibition in Canada. For this installation, she worked with bamboo sifu (expert) Ho Yeung Chan to construct an environment built out of bamboo scaffolding. For centuries, bamboo has been an integral architectural and cultural material in Hong Kong and southern China. It is used as both construction scaffolding and as material for temporary stages for the celebrated art form of traveling, Cantonese operas. Lam’s ghostly film is held in the centre of the bamboo frame, drawing from the visual language of shadow puppetry, a traditional form of storytelling that is closely linked to Chinese folklore. Incorporating original shadow animation and 3D scans taken from the real dragon ship, as well as an original, multi-channel score composed by Marlena Salonen, the phantom-like aesthetic of the moving image invites imaginative encounters with Lam’s story and its characters.  
  
_Floating Sea Palace_ is co-commissioned by The Vega Foundation, Studio Voltaire, and The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. Produced in partnership with Moderna Museet. Floating Sea Palace is concurrently on view at Studio Voltaire in London from September 18 to December 15, 2024.  
  
_Floating Sea Palace_ was developed from the film _The Altersea Opera_, which was commissioned by Moderna Museet in partnership with The Vega Foundation and supported by Studio Voltaire and The Power Plant. _The Altersea Opera_ was presented as part of the Nordic Pavilion at the 60th International Venice Biennale ( April 24 to November 24, 2024).  
  
The exhibition at The Power Plant is organized and developed in partnership with The Vega Foundation. Founded in 2021, The Vega Foundation is dedicated to supporting and promoting artists through the production and acquisition of new moving image works and to facilitating their presentation through institutional collaborations.


Lap-See Lam: Floating Sea Palace

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Lap-See Lam, still from Floating Sea Palace

Floating Sea Palace

Toronto-based artist Vladimir Kanic’s _Garden of Breath_ is an installation of living algae sculptures that convert a spectator’s breath and carbon pollution into oxygen in order to lessen the effects of the climate crisis. He presents these works as beacons of a decarbonized future, where our efforts to create a better world adopt collaborative public acts that are as essential as breathing.  

As algae grow, they consume carbon in the atmosphere and break it down into an algal biomass. Kanic uses this dried biomass, as well as living algae cultures, as sculptural material for his work. When viewers of the work exhale, they participate in the process of capturing CO2. Each sculpture is capable of taking in tons of carbon per year, and in so doing the living algae components become thicker and deeper in colour. In turn, they produce fresh oxygen, which is then inhaled by the viewers.  

Kanic’s use of living algae, as both an artistic medium and a carbon capture mechanism, embodies a commitment to humans and non-humans alike. It is a call for a symbiotic future, one that reconsiders our place within the world and the potential of interspecies collaboration. The
living sculptures in Garden of Breath deepen our understanding of humanity’s role in addressing the current climate emergency, while providing glimmers of hope for lasting solutions.  
  
Vladimir Kanic graduated from OCAD University as a recipient of a Governor General’s Academic Medal. He has received numerous sustainability and fine arts awards, and is currently preparing for his PhD in interdisciplinary arts. His living sculptures have been exhibited throughout Canada. Kanic was part of the RBC Emerging Artist 2023 program at The Power Plant.

Vladimir Kanic: Garden of Breath

Vladimir Kanic , Oxygen-Producing Living Sculpture. Algae Biopolymers, Living Algae Culture. Grown in 2022. Photo by Natalie Logan.

The Power Plant

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