Kensington Market: Globe | Part 1

My name is Shirley Yanover and I created this sculpture for Kensington Market with my partner David Hlynski. It is a globe that is on a 20 foot pole and ringing the globe are many of the items that you might find in the market, the range and diversity of everything that you can find there. There's a cup of coffee, there's ginseng, there's entwined fishes, shirts, fruits and vegetables, cheese, there's a chicken leg and several other items that you might find in the market.

The piece is called, "To Market, To Market", and it is derived from the nursery rhyme:

"To market, to market to buy a fat pig,

Home again, home again jiggety jig".

This sculpture is one of 4 sculptures that act as the gateways to major streets to Kensington Market. This sculpture represents the market and it has the sign, so that anybody sees that sign, they know exactly where they're going.

When David and I were working on our ideas for this sculpture, we walked through the market and looked and looked and took many, many photographs and reduced all of our images and our thinking down to this concept that the market is a global market. And we tried as much as possible not just to represent all of the things that you can find in the market but the diverse groups of peoples that are represented in the market. So, we decided to put the two hands that are shaking hands at the top of the ring. Because we really want to say that this is a market that is not just about shopping but this is a people-based market, it's a community.   

Want to hear more? Check out part 2.

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