In this week's episode, Dylan Gauthier speaks with Toronto-based artist and educator Chris Mendoza and artist, curator and writer Parker Kay, who is also founder and director of the non-profit gallery space Pumice Raft. Incorporated in 2018, Pumice Raft's activities begin from an ecological activist approach to the display of visual art and the facilitation of related education. This means that the guiding principles of the organization are rooted in a conception of place that begins with the protection of people and the planet. Recorded in the fall of 2022, Gauthier spoke with Mendoza and Kay about their ongoing engagement with the Don River and the ravines, and their recent series of public events, field trips, and performances – Implicit Choreographies & Relational Topographies – a processional public program sited within the Don River Valley led by invited artists, researchers, and writers in the Summer and Fall of 2022.

(The episode begins with an excerpt of Chris walking up the Don River recorded by Maria Hupfield, referred to in Episode 7: upstreaming with Maria Hupfield and Charlene K. Lau which also feeds into Episode 9, comprising interviews conducted by Hupfield, to be released later in March).

Guest Bios

Parker Kay is an artist and writer. He is also sometimes known as Pumice Raft.

Chris Mendoza is an artist and educator whose work moves between performance, sculpture, image-based work, and writing as affective inquiries into belonging, inheritance, and embodied relations to place. Chris values presenting work and performing both in and outside of formal art spaces—the former of which include the FOFA gallery (Montreal); University of Toronto Art Museum; Craft Ontario; Crutch Gallery (Toronto); and the Icelandic Textile Center (Blönduós). Chris holds a BFA from Concordia University, a Master of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto and currently resides in Tkaronto/Toronto.