April Hickox, Vantage Point-Passing Series, n.d.

What’s on at Onsite Gallery

You’re warmly invited to experience an exciting month of exhibitions and public programs at Onsite Gallery this May. Discover a dynamic lineup of thought-provoking exhibitions that bring together innovative voices from across contemporary art, alongside engaging events designed to spark conversation, creativity, and community connection.

From immersive in-gallery installations Becoming (in the light of the miracle) + The Delaney Family Emerging Curator’s Prize: Metabolic Loop to striking outdoor works including the newly unveiled exterior mural, April Hickox | Vantage Point–Passing.

Onsite Gallery continues to expand how art is experienced, both within and beyond our walls. Visitors can explore diverse artistic practices, attend artist talks, and participate in interactive programs that deepen engagement with the ideas shaping today’s cultural landscape.

Come and check out Onsite Gallery’s exciting lineup of engaging talks and interactive experiences!

Whether you prefer to attend in-person or virtually, these events are free and open to all.

April Hickox | Vantage Point–Passing
Part of CONTACT Photography Festival
Guest curated by Meera Margaret Singh and Ursula Handleigh
Exterior Mural, May – August 2026

April Hickox’s long-term photographic series Vantage Point–Passing, reflects her continued exploration of the relationship between humans and the land. A long-time resident, community member and activist for the Toronto Islands, Hickox photographed and filmed a single groyne for almost two decades, returning to the same vantage point to observe shifting water, sky, climate, and season, and to note how people, animals, and boats moved through this sustained frame. Her unwavering, repetitive practice became an act of deep looking and a meditative focus on life’s one constant: change. These images invite viewers to pause, observe, and consider their own connection to the land and to experience the quiet reverence that animated Hickox’s lifelong, prolific practice.

Images (left to right): Luisa Ji and Benjamin Lappalainen

Cultural Fermentation & Other Messy Practices of Illegibility
Saturday, May 2, 10am – 4pm
Onsite Gallery, Toronto
Space is Limited | Visit Registration Page

What can you see that algorithms can’t? In an age of constant surveillance and predictive technologies, this immersive day-long gathering invites participants to explore perception as a living, evolving practice. Drawing on the logic of fermentation—where transformation emerges through time, bodies, and unseen processes—we’ll engage in collaborative experiments with human and machine vision to question bias, visibility, and what escapes algorithmic notice. Together, we’ll cultivate new ways of seeing that embrace complexity, irregularity, and the power of the unpredictable.

No technical experience required—just bring your curiosity and your body.
The lecture is co-presented with UKAI Projects.

In the Light of the Machine: Toward a Relational Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
Friday, May 8, 12 – 2pm
Online
Visit Registration Page

As AI systems become increasingly entangled with our cultural, economic, and ecological worlds, how do we negotiate an ethical landscape of emergent intelligence? Moving beyond familiar debates over risk and safety, this conversation brings together panelists who will explore how art can help us sense, critique, and reimagine the systems shaping our technological present. By situating AI within broader epistemological and cultural contexts, moderated by Onsite Gallery Senior Curator, Lisa Deanne Smith, this panel seeks to expand AI discourse and understand machine learning as a site of relation.

Photo by Zenab Kazmi

Creative Writing × Onsite Gallery GradEx 2026
Friday, May 8, 5pm – 7pm
Onsite Gallery, Toronto
Visit Registration Page

Join us for an evening to celebrate this year’s OCAD U Creative Writing graduating cohort. Experience a diverse showcase of poetry, music, theatre, and more as students share selections from their thesis projects. Come support and enjoy an inspiring night of words, storytelling, and performance.

Current Exhibitions

Guest curated by Farah Yusuf, Becoming (in the light of the miracle) is a group exhibition about emergent phenomena, spanning deep time to AI with works featured by artists Alexander McLeod, Catherine Blackburn, Camille Jodoin-Eng, Diane Landry, Ingrid Bachmann, Meryl McMaster, Robert Hengeveld, Sarah Friend and Zev Farber.

Guest curated by GAS Collective (Steffi Ng & Gizem Candan), The Delaney Family Emerging Curator’s Prize: Metabolic Loop explores the in-betweenness of natural and artificial environments through the concept of metabolism. Metabolic Loop is a two-person exhibition featuring immersive works by artists Alyssa Alikpala and Maria Simmons.

On view until May 16, 2026

About Onsite Gallery
www.ocadu.ca/onsite
Onsite Gallery, OCAD University’s flagship professional gallery, presents contemporary, Indigenous, and public art and design to advance knowledge creation and stimulate local and international conversations on the urgent issues of our time.

Onsite Gallery
199 Richmond Street West
Toronto, ON M5V 0H4

Gallery Hours
Wednesday: 12 – 7pm
Thursday to Saturday: 12 – 5pm

Gallery admission and all events are free.

Onsite Gallery is an accessible venue with all-gender, single-user washrooms.
» Detailed accessibility information found here

About OCAD University (OCAD U)
OCAD University (www.ocadu.ca) is Canada’s university of the imagination. Founded in 1876, the university is dedicated to art, design and digital media education, practice and research and to knowledge and invention across a wide range of disciplines.

Contact Information:
Susan Jama
Programs & Community Coordinator, Onsite Gallery
susanjama@ocadu.ca

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