Photos by Cait McKinney

The Artscape Wychwood Barns is a multi-purpose, not-for-profit community centre located near St. Clair Avenue West and Christie Street in Toronto’s midtown area. Housed in a series of renovated maintenance barns built by the predecessor to Toronto's Transit Commission between 1913 and 1921, the space features office and meeting space for 12 non-for-profit organizations, 15 artists studios and 26 artist live/work studios, all offered by application at affordable, below-market rents. The centre also houses a public community art gallery which features the work of local artists and barn residents.

Prior to the collaboration of Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak, both were known as prolific and industrious artists. Steele launched her artistic career in 1974 with the video Birthday Suit - with scars and defects, which has become a seminal video in the canon of works dealing with body art. Steele’s work in the 1980s moved from highly personal and intimate videos towards lengthier works dealing with contemporary social issues such as The Gloria Tapes (1980), in which Steele herself intelligently and sympathetically portrays a pregnant woman who learns how to affect change in her own life whilst navigating troubling familial problems and difficult social service bureaucracies. Tomczak worked as a photo/video artist in Vancouver at the artist-run centre Pumps and first collaborated with Steele on the 1983 video In the Dark.