Plug In ICA presents a series of temporary public sculptures & performances throughout Winnipeg. Featuring new work by 9 international and local artists.
Une collection de sculptures temporaires et de performances dans l’espace public à travers Winnipeg. Présentant les dernières œuvres de 9 artistes internationaux et locaux.
August 18 to September 4, 2017
du 18 août au 4 septembre 2017
Launch Party:
Friday, August 18th, 7pm to late
Vernissage :
vendredi 18 août, de 7pm jusqu’à tard
• DRAG PERFORMANCES @ 8:30PM (PHARAOH MOANS) AND
10PM – (LADY QUINNZARR)
• DJ SET WITH CHLOECSUPREME (7-9PM) & CRAB SKULL (9-11PM)
• CASH BAR
• FOOD
• ARTISTS IN ATTENDANCE
• DIVYA MEHRA’S: NOBODY PRAY FOR ME, THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS (MAPPING IDENTITY: THE CHALLENGES OF IMMIGRANT CULTURE) ON VIEW
• PRINTED PROGRAMS WITH MAPS, PROJECT DESCRIPTIONS, SCHEDULES AVAILABLE
PLUG IN ICA
UNIT 1–460 PORTAGE AVENUE
WINNIPEG, MB
STAGES: DRAWING THE CURTAIN
Stages: Drawing the Curtain is a constellation of temporary public artworks to be launched in August 2017. This large-scale public art project asks artists to locate a site within the city of Winnipeg from which to contemplate the stage – its function as a platform; its meaning as a point of attention; and its physical design. Directed by their individual interests and material preferences, the artists will build sculptural ‘stages’ ranging in shape and form, connected as platforms for audiences to occupy, physically engage and contemplate.
STAGES: DRAWING THE CURTAIN
Stages : Drawing the Curtain (Tirer le rideau) est une constellation d’œuvres d’art temporaires au sein de l’espace public, qui débutera en août 2017. À travers ce projet artistique public d’envergure, on a demandé aux artistes de choisir, dans la ville, un site d’observation de la “scène” – d’où la contempler et s’interroger sur sa fonction de plate-forme – sa signification en tant que point de convergence de l’attention – ainsi que sur sa conception matérielle. Guidés par leurs intérêts individuels et leurs préférences quant aux matériaux, les artistes vont construire des « scènes » sculpturales, de formes et de configurations différentes, connectées comme des plate-formes, afin que le public les occupe, se les approprie physiquement et les contemple.
INTRODUCTION:
After extended engagement with the artists and the city of Winnipeg, Plug In ICA is proud to present STAGES: Drawing the Curtain, a public art project that situates nine temporary public sculptures and performances throughout the city. This public exhibition develops from the concept of the stage – as an active site for performance, a structural or sculptural space, and a point of attention. From this point of departure, the artists have produced artworks that merge their material and theoretical concerns with reflections on the stage, different notions of “public” and “space”; and finally, the city itself as a performative site of fluctuating and active meaning.
Winnipeg is the setting for all the artwork, the site where everything takes place and as such is a character in each of the artworks. It shifts between stable ground and decentered meaning. STAGES is presented on Treaty One Territory, the traditional territories of the Anishinaabe, Métis, Cree, Dakota and Oji-Cree Nations. There is a beginning from which many narratives are manufactured about this place, and although most of the works do not directly reference the city they engage Winnipeg as a site and its citizens as performers and audience members.
Projects will take place over the span of two weeks between August 18th and September 4th and occupy assorted spaces including the historic Hudson’s Bay Company building in its abandoned basement and on the fourth floor; CKUW radio station; the highly ornate and embellished central hall of Fort Garry Place, a public park fountain void of its original monument, an unused amphitheater and a roving flatbed truck.
It is implausible to sum up the aims of the exhibition and the artists within it. Locating it within the frame of the audience who receives it is an even a larger unknown. So STAGES is grounded in a place, reflected on by the institution of Plug In ICA and the artists its invites, and hinged on the romance of chance encounters both open and awkward, and an interested audience who will see ‘the stage’ set as a whole with its mix of objects and performances, moving, breathing.