Making a park under the Gardiner Expressway was a great idea and the site has been an incubator of creativity and home to many festivals, events and art installations. Plus it's like being under a giant pergola or umbrella if it rains or is too sunny. There are a couple of pieces of artwork right now under the elevated expressway - such as Atmospheres and the massive installation Balete Bulate Bituka.


From the Bentway's website "An otherworldly creature germinates at The Bentway, its parasitic tentacles emerging from the history of waste materials used as landfill to create the solid ground where the Gardiner now sits. Woven together with bamboo, living plants, and hundreds of locally-sourced plastics, Leeroy New’s first North American commission (co-presented with Fort York) presents nature reasserting itself amidst our concrete infrastructure. /baˈlete/ : (botany) any of several Philippine figs with aerial roots; believed to be a favourite abode of supernatural beings, /buˈlate/ : [noun] worm; earthworm and /biˈtuka/ : (anatomy) intestine; bowel; entrail.

Combining science-fiction and ancient Philippine mythologies with organic and human-made materials, Leeroy New’s first North American commission Balete Bulate Bituka explores the tangled relationship between nature and our waste. With its parasitic tentacles wrapping around the architecture of the Gardiner, New’s woven bamboo structure mimics the vampiric growth patterns of the Balete, a tree considered to be mystical and otherworldly in South East Asian culture. The installation, clad in hundreds of discarded plastics from Toronto and intertwined with living plants, presents nature reasserting itself amidst our concrete infrastructure."

See more of the art installations after the jump.
There are a lot of animals depicted in Bentempus Gardinus: A Long-Exposure Ecological Portrait Geometric with animal sculptures built around the expressway supports.