Spots and Pumpkins (or, What I did on my holidays Part 4)

Tue, 22 May 2018 20:44:46 GMT

A few days before we left for Canada, I saw that there was a Yayoi Kusama exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario during our visit, but also that all pre-booked tickets were sold out. Which was disappointing. The website did however tell us that there were some rush tickets available every day, and after seeing the length of the queues on Tuesday, 'Lyle' very generously offered to get up early on Thursday morning to queue, which he duly did, getting tickets for us both.

Infinity Mirrored Room - Phalli's Field

The key elements of the exhibition are several tiny rooms, each of which only admits 3 or 4 people at a time, which does mean that there is a lot of queuing even once you are inside.

Dots Obsession - Love Transformed into Dots

We learned, however, that there were separate 'singles lines' - if you were willing to go into the rooms to make up the numbers, with strangers, rather than insisting on going in with your companion, you could do so, and skip most of the queue. We did this, which meant that we spent about an hour less queuing, than the estimate.

It wasn't all mirrored rooms. There were also lots of paintings and some sculptures, and a room full of giant pink spotty beachballs, although you are not supposed to touch them!

One of the balls contains mirrors and more balls, another is full of mirrors, and instead of going in, you peer through spy-holes into a large(pink) kaleidoscope

There are some gloriously mesmerising tentacles, too.

The individual rooms are pretty small, but feel much larger, and rather disorientating at first, as it's hard to see where the walkway ends and the mirrors begin!

Even the staircase taking you from one part of the exhibition to the other was covered in spots...

Infinity Mirrored Room - Love Forever

There was another kaleidoscope, which was, I think, Octagonal on the inside. You were encouraged to look into it in pairs, from opposite sides, but when you do, you don't, as yo might expect, see the other person peering in, but instead see yourself!

Infinity Mirrored Room :
The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away

My personal favourites, however,(except maybe the tentacles) were the twp mirrored rooms, Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away and Infinity Mirrored Room - Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity, like being inside a star-scape.

There were canvases and smaller sculptures, then, right at the end, you go into the Obliteration Room - it's a completely white room, with completely white furniture, but every visitor to the exhibition is given a sheet of stickers in primary colours, to stick wherever they want. (You are sternly warned not to stick the sticker on other people, and not to climb things or lift each other up to stick them anywhere, but other than that, you have a free hand!

The Obliteration Room

It's strange and fun and I would have liked a few more stickers!

I really enjoyed the exhibition, and despite the queuing, if the exhibition ever comes over here, I'd be booking tickets to go again!

(If I have any readers in Toronto, the exhibition closes on 27th May, and I'm pretty sure would require a lot of queuing to get tickets)

Oh, and the pumpkins? They were in a final mirrored room, but you were not allowed to take pictures. Maybe dotty pumpkins are shy.

And in a sad, missed marketing opportunity, the gift shop did not sell pink, dotty beach balls!

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Spots and Pumpkins (or, What I did on my holidays Part 4)