CC: When was AWOL formed?

AWOL: AWOL Collective formed or met initially in the Florence program at OCAD in the 1996/97 school year and I guess we all connected pretty well there and became friends there was an open-concept working space that we were all involved and the initial concept of AWOL Collective and Gallery came from that experience and that working environment where we could have shared studio space and show space available at our disposal.

So we had already been in a studio environment together and it was hard to find a space individually so why don’t we get a really large space and we’ll share and we’ll have a gallery as well and find a large space that wasn’t expensive and Ossington was kind of this unknown strip. It was the cheapest area.

At that time we just graduated from school and we wanted to get into the gallery scene but unfortunately at that time there weren’t a lot of galleries that were accepting of the emerging artists. Nobody wanted us. It was rejection after rejection so we said, ‘You know what we should just take on the whole do-it-yourself attitude and then we got another space on Ossington.

We were going to call ourselves AGOO.

CC: How has Ossington has changed over the years?

AWOL: From karaoke bars to restaurants now, bars and galleries it’s the place to be at whereas before when we first moved in we were the only gallery among karaoke bars and one bakery and all the other galleries meanwhile were forming on Queen Street. That’s why we were called AWOL, because we were still on the scene but not on Queen.

CC: Tell us about setting up AWOL with only seven members and exercising control.

AWOL: I mean, It’s a fine tradition, in Canada, having a collective and also you get a measure of control. Instead of relying on submitting to galleries and patrolling the scene, so to speak, by having a collective and having your own space you’re able to take control of your career, the direction you want to go in. We set up AWOL a bit differently – just seven members and we weren’t accepting of anybody else. We wanted to keep it as tight as possible.

CC: What about the isolation on Ossington?

AWOL: There was a sense of isolation… When we first landed on Ossington and opened the space it very much felt like we were away from the scene. There wasn’t really much happening around us. There was us, and Jamie Angel and there was Katharine Mulherin and Spin. Up on Ossington it was like we felt like there’s not much happening around here.

CC: How did the space work and get funding?

AWOL: We set it up so the studio’s pay for themselves, we rent them out. We run AWOL as a rental space. We jury the space. The income from the gallery and the studios basically fund our operations. As well, we try to have at least one big show a year also to try and generate income. Usually offsite.

CC: How did the Square Foot show came about?

AWOL: Well, we were drinking, (laughter), in the studio. We were brainstorming on group show ideas the idea was to get a large group show on our space and keep it on Ossington. And Ross was doing some faux-finishing work and he was getting paid by the square foot. And we were pricing jobs so like, “this finish is $7 a square foot. So you go in and do this wall and it’s $7 a square foot or $4 a square foot”.

How can we do this to fill this space up right? And we came up with ‘well let’s just floor to ceiling’ and open it to anybody. And we were like, ‘if we get 30 people’ (laughter), that would be like 37 artists. And so we put out the call and I think we got 185 people on the first week. So for our first opening we had close to 200 artists and we filled our relatively small gallery floor to ceiling with square foot pieces on a grid.

So like let’s tell the artists the pieces are $200, pay off our debts.

CC: And you think Queen West is too popular? 

AWOL: The gentrification of Queen Street, Lamborghinis and the explosion of art galleries on Queen West.

CC: How might it all end?

AWOL: If the landlord got an offer from Starbucks.