along a foundation, the weeds

This artwork draws from field and underwater recordings and performed sounds from within private property in King City, a township 30km north of Toronto that contains the sculpture Shift by well-known American artist Richard Serra. The township is situated in the Oak Ridges moraine—a landscape shaped by sediment deposited from the movement of former glaciers and a large conservation area that has been the site of development disputes and ecological conservation legislation in Ontario. Commissioned by a private collector in 1970, Shift is a large concrete sculpture installed in a field that is now owned by the Toronto investment company Hickory Hill Investments, who wanted to remove the artwork and develop the land. In 2013, Shift became designated as a protected cultural landscape by the Ontario Heritage Act, which means it cannot be demolished or developed. Chris Mendoza’s commission builds onto this history, asking what the role or value of public art can be in relationship to land, development, and private ownership.