Celebration '84: A Sense of Occasion

Virginia Gillham is Associate Librarian in the Public Service Library at
the University of Guelph.

Orwell’s predictions aside, 1984 was a time for celebration in many areas for many reasons. The province of Ontario celebrated its bicentennial in 1984 and simultaneously its capital city, Toronto, celebrated 150 years. The Toronto International Festival 1984, a programme of music and dance, was planned in honour of these two anniversaries. “Celebration ‘84” was a joint exhibition of the handiwork of Canadian and U.S. artisans intended as a complement to the International Festival and exhibited first by the Art Gallery at Harbourfront.

“Innovative,” “functional,” and “non-traditional” seem to have been the descriptive parameters for this display, and the resulting contributions included jewellery, articles of clothing, designer textiles, and certain kinds of functional three-dimensional art such as pottery and art-glass vessels. Nearly fifty such items have been photographed in magnificently realistic colour, reproduced and described in this catalogue, which also includes biographical information about each of the artists.

The exhibition itself was truly a “celebration of the special gifts of our hands and eyes, mind and spirit — mysterious and wonderful.” The outstanding quality of the photographic reproductions in the catalogue makes it a significant record and a highly acceptable substitute for those who were not fortunate enough to see the exhibition.