iArt Gallery of OntarioGrange Park
Melissa Auf der Maur: My '90s Rock Photographs
The former Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist's intimate backstage, onstage and crowd photographs: a love letter to the last analogue decade.
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A decade before the selfie, Melissa Auf der Maur was photographing herself every day: dressed to go on stage, with bandmates, in the bath with a bloody nose. She shot on point-and-shoot 35mm cameras, had the film developed at one-hour labs between tour stops, and sorted the prints into puffy plastic albums as she went.
Just over 200 of those pictures, out of roughly 15,000, fill three rooms on Level 1. They run loosely in order from her Montreal art-school years through her time as bassist in Hole and the Smashing Pumpkins: motel rooms, tour buses, crowds seen from the stage, and Courtney Love, again and again. The show ends by putting you inside the Bass Womb Room, a mirrored pyramid of video set to her own 4-track demos.
The free Bloomberg Connects guide has Auf der Maur narrating the stories behind the photographs. AGO entry is free for Ontarians under 25, and on 15 January 2027 she plays a live set in Walker Court inspired by the installation.
Editor's pick
Courtney Love on a bike backstage, motel rooms, crowds seen from the stage: just over 200 of the 15,000 snapshots the Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist took in the 1990s. Closer to a tour diary than a photo show.
Look for
Courtney Love on a bike
Love pedalling a bicycle backstage on Nine Inch Nails' Self-Destruct tour in 1994, one of the show's many pictures of Hole's singer.
The Bass Womb Room
A mirrored pyramid wrapped in video and sound, set to demos she recorded alone in her '90s apartment and held together by a recurring heartbeat.
The tour photo albums
Facsimiles of the small, puffy plastic albums she filled with one-hour lab prints, editing her archive on the road as she travelled.
Side stage with Billy Corgan, 1993
A self-portrait with the Smashing Pumpkins' singer at Club Metropolis in Montreal during the Siamese Dream tour, years before she joined his band.
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- Going Solo
- Out-Of-Town Guests
- Teenagers
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AGO admission is always free for Ontarians under 25.
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Image credits
8
- Melissa Auf der Maur: My '90s Rock PhotographsCourtesy of Art Gallery of Ontario
- Always In FashionPhoto by Darren Rigo.
- Made By Many: 50 Years of the Textile Museum of CanadaPhoto by Darren Rigo
- Retracing Tatreez: Palestinian Thobes through the 20th CenturyCourtesy of Textile Museum of Canada
- Art Gallery of OntarioOwen Byrne / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Textile Museum of CanadaRaysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0
- Campbell House MuseumJK Liu / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary PhotographyEWilson (Volunteer), Wikimedia Commons, CC0