In the cold winter of 2008, Gintas Tirilis and Alison S. M. Kobayashi explored the Mississauga, Etobicoke suburbs desperately in search of a warm place where they could smoke cigarettes. What the pair discovered was a strip of motels along Lakeshore Blvd, just on the edge of Toronto, abandoned. Further exploration into these dilapidated structures became a nightly routine as they dared to gain greater access and eventually removing some of the discarded vestiges for preservation.

MOTEL is a collection that archives these salvaged objects including documentary photography, carefully constructed dioramas, artist multiples, and a narrative video installation, all inspired by their “break and enter” experiences. It is at once a faithful, if sometimes humourous, record of the illicit navigation and an attempt to deal with the disappearance of these largely family-run establishments.

MOTEL does not claim to be a complete investigation or a particularly reliable document. It cannot help, however, but speak loudly to the decline of independent businesses, the deterioration of border towns, and failed attempts to revitalize business zones. And while the beauty and strangeness of the ruin arouses nostalgia for a simpler time, the delinquent artists have a sense of satire and play in their preservation. It’s a memorial, but it’s also the opening of an adventure.

Alison S. M. Kobayashi is a Toronto-based visual artist working in video, performance, installation and print. A recent graduate of the University of Toronto at Mississauga, Kobayashi has also shown her videos internationally at the DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival in Washington, The Flaherty International Film Seminar and the Hong Kong Independent Short Film Festival.

Gintas Tirilis is a Mississauga-based visual artist working in video, installation and sound. He graduated from the University of Toronto at Mississauga in 2008 and is studying early childhood education at Nipissing University. His sound sculptures and video installations have been exhibited in the Young and Restless at Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (Toronto) and Lennox Contemporary (Toronto).