Winnipeg Arts Council

Loop, Cycle, Passage & Eyes at Nuit Blanche

In partnership with Nuit Blanche, the Winnipeg Arts Council presents family-friendly interactive artworks, designed to delight and engage Winnipeggers in our public spaces downtown. Come play with us...

Loop
Sep 28 – Oct 6, 2019
Old Market Square

Created by Olivier Girouard, Jonathan Villeneuve and Ottoblix
Produced by Ekumen and Quartier des Spectacles, Montreal

Loop is a cross between a music box, a zoetrope and a railway handcar. Working the hand-lever in tandem, Winnipeggers, young and old, will set the pace for these retro-futuristic machines, lighting up the cylinders and animating fairy-tales in Old Market Square. The images, tinted through a strobe effect, recall the earliest movies and are visible inside the cylinder as well as outside it, so that they can be watched from up close or far away. 

Cycle
Sep 28 – Oct 6, 2019
Old Market Square (Bijou Park)

Created by Serge Maheu
Produced by Illuminart, Montreal
Tour produced by Creos

Inspired by the revolutions of the sun and the moon, Cycle is an interactive installation that illuminates Bijou Park. The modules come to life as people transmit their energy to Cycle and transform it into a larger-than-life musical sequencer.

Passage
Sep 28 – Oct 6, 2019
The Forks (Railway Bridge)

Created by Serge Maheu
Produced by Illuminart, Montreal
Tour produced by Creos
Presented in partnershp with Nuit Blanche Winnipeg, the Downtown Winnipeg BIZ and The Forks

Passage is an immersive, contemplative artwork that explores the emotional connections we develop with light and sound as we pass through the tunnel. The concept of the artwork takes root in the definition of the word passage itself: the act of moving through or past something on the way from one place to another, and also the process of transition from one state to another in a temporal dimension. Passage refers to this enigmatic moment between life and death, figured here as a pleasant space as part of another temporal dimension. It is a personal and sensory experience that remains playful.


Eyes
Sep 28, 2019
Waterfront Drive

Created by Filthy Luker and Pedro Estellas (Luke Egan and Pete Hamilton)

Filthy Luker and Pedro Estrellas turn their playful ideas into seriously large sculptures as some kind of personal vendetta against the mundane confines of the city in a heroic effort to make the world a brighter, more surreal place for us all. They are driven by their passion for innovative design, public art and mischievous intervention. Their pop-up installations never fail to turn heads, raise smiles and create epic scenes that shifts the everyday towards the surreal, the sublime and often the downright ridiculous.

Oliver Girouard & Jonathan Villeneuve; Serge Maheu;Filthy Luker & Pedro Estrellas

Oliver Girouard & Jonathan Villeneuve
Olivier Girouard goes off the beaten path to find inspiration for his works: a link between two co-occurring ideas; a sound profile undergoing a transformation. He strives to reinvent our relationship with hearing, by working with artists in dance and visual arts. A producer and promoter of audio works, he is the artistic director of Ekumen. He has won several awards, including first prize of the Hugh Le Caine Prize (2008) presented by the Socan Foundation, and the JTTP first prize (2009). His works have been presented in North America, South America and Europe.

Jonathan Villeneuve is an artist with DIY sensibilities who creates poetic machines by assembling familiar materials and giving them new functions. His works move, emit light and make sounds, allowing viewers to come to their own conclusions about the device’s imaginary function. He is a graduate of the media and visual arts program at UQAM (2006) and of the MFA/Open Media program at Concordia University (2009). His solo work has been presented regularly in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada. As well as participating in numerous collaborative digital-art projects presented at festivals and events in Europe, in June 2014 he presented his solo work at the International Triennial of New Media Art at the National Museum of China in Beijing. In September 2015, he unveiled a monumental digital public artwork, Le grand bleu du Nord, created for the new multi-purpose arena in Quebec City.

Serge Maheu
Trained as a computer engineer, Serge Maheu has followed a more creative path that led him into arts and, therefore, to become a multimedia director. By bringing together his experience in film, animation, photography, sound & music, computer programming, mathematics, interactivity, electronics and design, Maheu’s practice is cross-disciplinary. An avid-lover of straight and obliques lines, squares, pixels and concrète, minimalist and repetetitive music. He is interested in creating innovative art based on a certain digital poetry while pursuing the relation of mankind with the digital world. He’s open to fresh ideas, collaborations and new art (or non-art) explorations. He also enjoys the maple syrup that he produces with his father every spring, but that’s another story.

Filthy Luker & Pedro Estrellas
Designer Pete Hamilton AKA Pedro Estrellas began making inflatable sculptures from scrap hot-air balloon material in 1994. Realizing that he was on to something special he immersed himself in the medium and created a series of spiky sculptures that could be hung up at events. His fascinating geometric creations, in particular his self-illuminating stars made Pete’s company, Star Virus an overnight sensation in the emerging international night-club scene of the era.

Artist Luke Egan AKA Filthy Luker happened to be creating prints and mixed media sculptures in the same open-plan workshop as Pete in 1996. Attracted by the magic of the medium and with previous experience in sewing and textiles, Luke was invited to collaborate and within a couple of months was designing his own sculptures.

Using only maths, geometry and an artistic eye to design their patterns, the duo meticulously stitched their own sculptures on industrial sewing machines and installed them at the events too. The pieces were made with passion, excitement and an ever-deepening understanding of the inflatable medium. Over the years they mastered their craft through their prolific creativity, honing their techniques and skills.

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