As I’ve said before, London is a pretty fun place when you know where to look.
This week ride through the Banana Kingdom dressed in yellow, play with a giant claw machine inside an art gallery, eat ice cream at a summer soirée and discover one of the city’s most overlooked cultural gems.
And, everything in this week’s column is FREE. Let’s go!
The Loon Recommends for August 20-26, 2026
Banana Day Ride 2026
Summer Soiree at the McIntosh Gallery
Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins: Three Dimensions Exhibit
Meet the People Behind the Events - An Interview with Ruth Skinner
Banana Day Ride 2026 - Go Bananas on Two Wheels 🍌🚲
Tuesday, August 25 | Meet at Western University at 6:00 PM | FREE
Here’s a London event that seems incredibly fun! Tuesday, August 25 is National Banana Split Day, and London Cycle Link is celebrating with their 2nd Annual Banana Day Ride.
This all-ages, all-abilities group ride will travel through a stretch of the Thames Valley Parkway near Western and Gibbons Park officially known as Baldwin Flats (which I didn’t know, I had to look it up).
I’ve ridden this beautiful stretch of cycling path a number of times and often wondered aloud why there were bananas painted on the pathway alongside the words “Welcome friends, to the Banana Kingdom.”, but it made me smile every time I rode the path. Banana Kingdom is obviously a MUCH better name for the path than Baldwin Flats.
Not everyone agreed though, including the City, who in 2020 PAINTED OVER the bananas and words, saying it was graffiti. Soooo sad! I mean really, this is very grinch-like behaviour. Who was this hurting?
Luckily, intrepid Londoners have painted back what should be rightly there. Phew and thank you! Not all heroes wear capes.
I’ve tried to research the name Banana Kingdom many times, but it seems to be a mystery – which maybe makes it even better? If you know why it’s called this, let me know in the comments below!
Now back to the ride. Cyclists will meet outside Western’s Talbot College at 6 PM, roll out at 6:30 PM, cross University Drive Bridge and then head south along the TVP before finishing at District Ice Cream/London Bicycle Café (a sponsor of The Loon), because naturally a ride celebrating National Banana Split Day should end with ice cream.
The pace is a leisurely 15 km/h, and banana-themed clothing and accessories are highly encouraged. So dig out something yellow, grab your bike and go bananas! 🍌
Further Information
Register for the 2026 Banana Day Ride (it’s free, but registering helps volunteers understand how many people will be riding)
Has London’s so-called ‘Banana Kingdom’ been painted over by ‘joyless bureaucrats?’ - CBC article from 2020 by Colin Butler
Yes, You’re Allowed to Play With the Art -
Jennifer Marman & Daniel Borins: Three Dimensions
McIntosh Gallery, Western University | Monday - Friday, 10AM - 5PM (Summer hours) | Show Runs Until December 5 | FREE
McIntosh Gallery is one of those London gems that far too many people don’t know exists. It’s been sitting on the Western University campus for 84 years, quietly putting on terrific exhibitions, and yet I’d bet that most Londoners have never set foot inside.
To be fair, you don’t exactly stumble across it, as it’s tucked away in the middle of Western’s campus. You have to know it’s there and make a point of going. But you really should.
And the current exhibition, Three Dimensions, is a particularly great excuse to discover it. It’s colourful, playful, interactive, thought-provoking and, most importantly, really fun.
So if you have little kids at summer camp at Western, big kids heading back to university this fall, or no kids whatsoever, go find the McIntosh Gallery. This is a great show for your first visit.
And when I say you can play with the art, I mean that quite literally.
There’s a giant claw machine sitting inside McIntosh Gallery right now. And unlike most things in an art gallery, you’re not only allowed to touch it, you’re actually encouraged to play with it.
It’s part of Three Dimensions, a wonderfully quirky, colourful and thought-provoking interactive exhibition by Canadian artists Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins. The show features two installations combining painting, sculpture, video, sound, technology and audience participation.
The first exhibit, Balancing Act, turns the gallery into something resembling an oversized arcade. Visitors operate a large-scale claw crane to pick up brightly coloured sculptural blocks and attempt to stack them into their own creations.
Paintings on the walls depict what look like seemingly perfect arrangements of those same shapes, as you can see in the image below.
There’s more going on here than a giant art toy, though. Balancing Act plays with ideas around control, chance and authorship. You actually become part of the artwork—and whatever you create changes it for the person who comes along next.
THX2020, the exhibition’s second installation, combines colourful abstract paintings with video and an accompanying AI-generated narration. On the walls are flat paintings that look like they could be product labels or ads, but are really visually pleasing and fun to look at.
Paired with the video and its narration, the combined effect is definitely unsettling and makes you think about the place of advertising, technology and Big Pharma in today’s world.
In the corner of the room is a pink interactive headset that uses your body’s bio-feedback (and looks like a Devo hat) to move shapes on surrounding screens. It’s very fun to try.
Three Dimensions runs until December 5, and like many of my favourite things to recommend in The Loon, it’s free.
Note that parking can be a bit tricky at McIntosh. Your best bet is probably the Social Science Centre or Weldon Library lot. The gallery has good info on how to get there by walking, cycling, LTC or car here.
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Art, Ice Cream & a Summer Soirée
Thursday, August 20 | McIntosh Gallery, Western University | 4PM – 6 PM | FREE
If my recommendation of Three Dimensions has you curious, tonight, Thursday, August 20, is an excellent time to check it out.
The McIntosh Gallery is throwing a Summer Soirée to celebrate the exhibition, and artists Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins will be on hand to meet visitors and talk about their work.
Along with getting to play with the exhibition’s giant claw crane and explore THX2020, there’ll be food and drinks from Great Hall Catering, District Ice Cream, and live music from a string trio from Maple & Spruce Music.
Art, live music, ice cream and a summer evening on Western’s campus? That sounds like a pretty lovely Thursday night to me.
The event is free, but McIntosh is asking people to RSVP if possible.
Art is for Everyone - An Interview with Ruth Skinner
I had the opportunity to talk to McIntosh Gallery Curator (Interdisciplinary Initiatives) Ruth Skinner, this week about breaking down barriers, meeting visitors where they’re at and making the gallery a place for the whole community.
Note this interview has been edited for length.
1. Three Dimensions has travelled to galleries across Canada and the U.S. before arriving at McIntosh, but this is the first time it’s been in a university setting. Does the exhibit change from venue to venue? Is anything being done differently with the show at the McIntosh?
Traveling exhibitions will always evolve with their venues, and this one is no different! We have two exhibition spaces here at the gallery, so we chose two of the three works that tour with this exhibition: “Balancing Act” and “THX 2020.” The artists are very excited for this work to be showing in a university setting for the first time because their installations will have an immediate audience of students, faculty and staff who work across disciplines.
That cross-disciplinarity is Jennifer and Daniel’s mode of working as well. They’re very interested in knowing how folks are thinking about, and responding to, the installations.
We’ve already had a big response from the broader community. A bunch of young summer campers enrolled in Western Engineering’s Discovery Western camps were our first audience for this show. We had no idea what to expect, but it was amazing to get kids of all ages interacting with and talking about the works. Some of them even made art to send back to the artists!
Public Programs Created Around the Exhibit
We’re being intentional about how we build public programs that offer a variety of pathways into the exhibition. To start, we’ve created a Faculty Info Package to hopefully inspire instructors from across the university (and beyond) to consider this exhibition as an avenue for demonstrating their course materials in new ways.
We’ve also developed a big list of readings and films that reference themes, inspirations, and interests from the exhibition.
List of Related Recommended Movies:
Editor’s Note -I pulled this list out of the doc above. It’s a fabulous viewing list regardless of whether you see the show or not (but I can see how they would add to your appreciation of the exhibit).
The Conversation (1974), Francis Ford Coppola
The Matrix (1999), Lana and Lilly Wachowski
Three Days of the Condor (1975), Sydney Pollack
The Parallax View (1974), Alan J. Pakula
THX 1138 (1971), George Lucas
Videodrome (1983), David Cronenberg
When the Fall semester begins, we’ve invited Jennifer and Daniel to be in a public conversation with colleagues from Museum London, Sarah Munro and Devon Elliott, about their work.
Throughout the fall semester, we’ll be hosting Insight Out, a new series of informal gallery walkthroughs that invite folks from different faculties and the broader community to discuss their own expertise in relation to what they’re seeing in the exhibition.
[With Insight Out…] This means that the public can enjoy the exhibition and hear from local community members on a broad variety of topics.
We’re particularly excited for this series because we’ll get to hear from experts from anthropology, neuroscience, pharmacology, business, film, the digital humanities, the video game sector, and more. One of the sessions will be in partnership with the Rotman Institute’s Fall Public Lecture Series with a focus on agency and AI.
Finally, we have our Mindful Mondays series, which encourages folks to slow down, relax, and reconnect with the assistance of mindfulness facilitators.
2. There are some fairly big ideas behind this exhibition—technology, consumer culture, pharmacology, surveillance, perception, control and our increasingly blurred relationship between the physical and digital worlds.
For someone who walks in knowing none of that, what do you hope they experience or take away from the show?
I think the immediate appeal of this exhibition is how it initially grabs you—pun intended—with a seemingly light-hearted and friendly activity. As you spend time with the works, your perspective of what they’re communicating starts to evolve and shift.
That experience is very much in line with how Jennifer and Daniel are thinking about the power of suggestion and the way that our experience of reality is quite contingent. We’re already hearing a variety of responses from visitors: for example, the imagery in THX 2020 is operating as a bit of a Rorschach test for folks, which makes sense for an artwork that explores chemical substances that are designed to shift and control our perceptions.
At the same time, we’re just as enthused if someone simply wants to dip in to operate the crane machine in order to blow off some steam between classes.
We’re big believers in the power of art to recalibrate and refocus our attention, particularly in this present moment.
We’re excited to chat with folks, provide context or answer questions, and pass along their thoughts and responses to Jennifer and Daniel.
3. This is an unusually playful exhibition. Do you think that sense of fun and interactivity can make contemporary art more approachable for people who might otherwise feel that galleries aren’t really for them?
Yes! Absolutely. This is a big factor in why we wanted to host this particular exhibition.
Contemporary art, and art galleries more generally, don’t always feel like accessible spaces for everyone. We’re also usually told that we can’t touch the art, which creates another level of distance.
“Three Dimensions” breaks down a lot of those barriers, while still being all the things that impactful art can be: thought-provoking, daring, beautiful, relatable, and unexpected.
4. The giant claw crane in Balancing Act is obviously going to grab people’s attention, and visitors can have a great time operating it without knowing anything about the ideas behind it. You mentioned that the crane is based on equipment used in building the Panama Canal and references extraction. Once you know that, you start looking at the work, and its connections to the world today quite differently.
How important is that balance between creating something people can simply experience and enjoy, while also giving them the opportunity to dig deeper into the ideas behind it?
From our perspective, the goal is to meet people where they’re at: for some visitors, there will be a lot of questions and hopefully a desire to dig deeper into the artists’ reference points, themes, inspirations, technical processes, etc. For others, having a briefer encounter is the objective, but those brief encounters can be just as impactful.
For instance, the younger campers that visited the exhibition in July weren’t familiar with histories of technological development, nation-building, and state surveillance, but they immediately started to make surprising connections to hypnosis and mind control based on their own understandings of the world.
One kid saw the construction and destruction of the crane work and immediately observed: “That’s just life. Sometimes you try to stack things together and they fall over anyway.”
We all found that to be a pretty impactful summation of things.
5. McIntosh Gallery has been part of Western since 1942, but I suspect a lot of Londoners have never visited, or may assume it’s primarily a university gallery for students and faculty. What would you like Londoners to know about McIntosh?
Thank you for this question! It’s true: we’ve been around for a long time, and yet a lot of our own campus community are not always aware that we’re here or that you can just walk in our big red doors to experience art—let alone folks from beyond campus.
We’d love folks to know that all McIntosh programs are free and open to the public.
We’re the oldest university art gallery in Ontario, founded in 1942. Our space was initially dedicated to supporting the arts, music and public speaking. In the 1960s, the gallery became very focused on contemporary art. We also have a significant collection of historical and contemporary art with a strong regional focus.
Eight decades in, we continue to be an institution that champions creativity, education, research and knowledge-sharing. Our goal is to be a connecting space for campus and for the broader community to experience creativity and discovery.
Looking forward, our mission is to underscore art’s capacity to move across boundaries—temporal, geographic, cultural, and disciplinary—in order to inspire mutual care, change, and a deeper appreciation of the world we all share.
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Love the LOON and thanks for another great column. It's called Banana Kingdom from the early days of Google Maps. If you look at the park, it is in the shape of a banana, with the TVP serving as the seam (or whatever it's called on the fruit). While I am on the board of LCL, I will take a pass on the ride since I can't eat ice cream, chocolate, or bananas :(
I've had this Banana Kingdom image on my computer since 2008 or so: https://imgur.com/xad4KM3
And I remember it being called by that name well before that. My best guess is that someone noticed the shape on a map, the name caught on, and eventually the street art followed.