Downtown Yonge Artwalk

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To Serve and Protect

  • Bronze, masonry, painted steel
  • 1988
  • 40 College Street, Toronto

About the artwork

This sculpture is an allegorical trinity of elements in three distinct sites of the Police Headquarters building in downtown Toronto. The three elements may stand alone but together they form a unified narrative. There are three life-size realistically rendered figures performing three actions.

In the central square of the building is a policewoman, police radio in one hand, a trowel in the other constructed a stone base. At the northwest corner of the building is the rendering of a child pulling an oversized child’s wagon. An obelisk sits on the wagon. The wagon is constructed of metal with a two-inch-thick base plate on which the obelisk floats.

At a side entrance, walking into the building is a male figure carrying a primitive support on which are balanced two books and two stone blocks on his shoulders.

About the artist

Eldon Garnet is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Toronto. Surveys of his sculptures and photographic work have been held at the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and the Amsterdam Center of Photography. He is represented by the Christopher Cutts Gallery in Toronto and Torch Gallery in Amsterdam. Garnet is also a professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University.

Constructing an unsettling ambiguity by using whatever means of expression Garnet deems suitable is probably the only connecting thread in his works. Instead of defining himself as an artist with a central medium, he tries to create an allegory of words, images, sound and time.

His projects often take on the qualities of a contemporary gesamtkunstwerk (the German term “Gesamtkunstwerk”, roughly translates as a “total work of art” and describes an artwork, design, or creative process where different art forms are combined to create a single cohesive whole) that surpasses both the obvious narrative and the postmodern ironic.

He uses tools like humour, erotic triggers and commonplace semiotic patterns, but never lets them reach their perceived conclusion. The effect is best described as a recognition of the joke but never getting to the punchline, or feeling disgusted or aroused but never quite understanding why.

Fun facts

  • The obelisk is polished Canadian granite 21 feet high, 3 foot square at the base.

Engagement questions

  • How does this work make you feel?
  • How do you engage with the subject of the work?
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