hic is the nickname and acronym of the Hart House Installation Collective whose members are Carlo Cesta, John Dickson, Gordon Hatt, Catherine Heard, Lisa Neighbour, Lyla Rye and Max Streicher. These six artists and a writer have come together to organize an exhibition of contemporary installation, intervention and performance art at Hart House, University of Toronto. hic is also the Latin word for here, and in a single word makes reference to classical education's ancient roots and contemporary art's insistence on the present. In a word, hic represents the collective's desire to situate contemporary art within the life of the university community, infecting the academy with free association and situational play.
hic brings together 18 contemporary artists with histories of exhibiting contemporary art in non conventional spaces. Installation, intervention or site specific art as practised by these artists resonates and reverberates within the ambient histories of industrial sites, domestic interiors, public hotels, commercial store windows, thoroughfares, libraries, and prisons among other unlikely locations for the exhibition of art.
With its architecture, its history and its variety of activity spaces Hart House provides a fascinating venue for contextually sited interventions and installation art. Hart House is a unique social, cultural and recreational facility on the St. George Campus of the University of Toronto with a rich history and student-driven governance. It was opened in 1919, a gift of the Massey family, and named for Hart Massey. The historic limestone building features the Great Hall, an impressive three storey, wood panelled, neo-gothic nave; the Justina M. Barnicke Art Gallery; a reading room; a chapel; two restaurants; a fully equipped athletics centre, several reading rooms, and a theatre. Thirty-two special interest clubs and committees operate out of the facility. It is open 365 days a year.
The installation works are situated throughout the building and have been negotiated directly with the users and the managers of the spaces in question. Rather than forming a barrier or hazard in the normal functioning of the house, the exhibition was produced by enlisting the support of the immediate community and to communicate what artists do and how and why they do it.