September 21 – December 1, 2019

Small Arms Inspection Building (2019)

New Mineral Collective, Pleasure Prospects, 2019, columns, casts of prospecting bore holes, rammed earth, hand-pulverized black copper slag, copper, zinc, steel, aluminum, fine gold and silver shavings, concrete. Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art. On view at Small Arms Inspection Building as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art (2019). Photo: Sue Holland. Courtesy Toronto Biennial of Art.
New Mineral Collective, Pleasure Prospects, 2019, columns, casts of prospecting bore holes, rammed earth, hand-pulverized black copper slag, copper, zinc, steel, aluminum, fine gold and silver shavings, concrete. Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art. On view at Small Arms Inspection Building as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art (2019). Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid. Courtesy Toronto Biennial of Art.
New Mineral Collective, Pleasure Prospects, 2019, columns, casts of prospecting bore holes, rammed earth, hand-pulverized black copper slag, copper, zinc, steel, aluminum, fine gold and silver shavings, concrete. Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art. On view at Small Arms Inspection Building as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art (2019). Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid. Courtesy Toronto Biennial of Art.
New Mineral Collective, Pleasure Prospects, 2019, columns, casts of prospecting bore holes, rammed earth, hand-pulverized black copper slag, copper, zinc, steel, aluminum, fine gold and silver shavings, concrete. Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art. On view at Small Arms Inspection Building as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art (2019). Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid. Courtesy Toronto Biennial of Art.

New Mineral Collective is the largest and least productive mining company in the world. The company provides counter-prospecting operations and geo-trauma healing therapies at Small Arms as well as 259 Lake Shore Blvd E. A new series of sculptures, Pleasure Prospects, investigates the shifting boundaries between deep time and the conditions of contemporary resource extraction. The sculptures represent the Earth’s scars and a folding of space and time in which absence becomes presence.

With special thanks to James Blackman, Tapial Homes, Minister of Energy, the Mines and Resources Canada, Andrew Spatafora, Spencer Syme, and the Lassonde Institute of Mining at the University of Toronto.

Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art.

Bio

New Mineral Collective

New Mineral Collective is an artist duo formed by Tanya Busse (born in 1982, Moncton, Canada; lives in Tromsø, Norway) and Emilija Škarnulytė (born in 1987, Vilnius, Lithuania; lives in Tromsø, Norway). Their work looks at contemporary landscape politics to better understand the nature and extent of human interaction with the earth’s surface. As an organism, NMC infiltrates the extractive industry with alternative forces such as desire, body mining and acts of counter-prospecting.

Exhibition Site

Small Arms Inspection Building (2019)

Small Arms Inspection Building was originally part of a large munitions plant built in 1940 before it was acquired and renovated as an art centre by the City of Mississauga in 2018. With its female dominated workforce, Small Arms Limited manufactured thousands of rifles daily for the Canadian and Allied forces in WWII. In 1990, the TRCA conducted an environmental audit of the site, revealing the presence of polychlorinated biphenyl, volatile organic compounds, and combustible gases across nineteen acres. More than 70,000 tons of contaminated radioactive soil was removed to eventually transform the Arsenal Lands into a park.

1352 Lakeshore Road East
Mississauga ON
L5E 1E9