Public Art Lab
The Public Art Lab was launched as part of Culture Days and ran from September 27 – October 25, 2019. Seven artists transformed spaces across Burlington with temporary public art installations. By placing art in unexpected spaces such as parks and community centres, the Public Art Lab brought free, contemporary art to new audiences.
Brant Hills Community Centre
Jimmy Limit, Photos for Brant Hills Community Centre
Photographic Murals
Photos from Brant Hills Community Centre is a series of large-scale photographic murals inspired by the functions and surroundings of the Brant Hills Community Centre. Materials associated with sports, the gym and library have been combined with materials found in the natural park surroundings of the community centre. By using the language built around commercial photography and advertising, Limit’s images document unlikely assemblages, which cause the viewer to question the motives of the imagery when placed in the public realm.
Jimmy Limit is a photo-based artist living in St. Catharines. Limit has exhibited throughout Canada and the United States including Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, Temnikova & Kasela, Tallinn Estonia, Rodman Hall St. Catharines, Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto and Printer Matter, NYC. Recent public works have included Photos for a Project in Progress at the Bentway in Toronto and Photos for Vacant Storefronts, for CAFKA16 in Kitchener, ON.
Burloak Waterfront Park
Tyler Muzzin. The Great Dark Wonder
Sculpture + Audio Play
Using cellphones, visitors to Burloak Waterfront Park can listen in on a dialogue between two fictional ornithologists who are eternally confined to the research station by unknown forces. Muzzin’s installation explores ideas of the “Natural” through the lens of ecocriticism. The installation focuses on the representation of physical environments and the ways in which these environments are depicted and, in turn, consumed by mass culture.
Tyler Muzzin holds an MFA from the University of Lethbridge (2019). Recent exhibitions include Flower Arrangements for the Hillcrest Mine Disaster Cemetery, a solo project at the Iceland Academy of Arts (2019), and Of Surroundings, a group exhibition at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge, Alberta (2019). A folio of photographs from the series Sentinel was selected for publication in Spring 2019 by 89books, Palermo, Italy.
Lowville Park
Thomas Sokoloski, Listening to the Walls
Photo and Sound Installation
The expression “If these walls could talk…” comes to life with Listening to the Walls, a site-specific interactive installation inspired by the memories of the Lowville community. In the tradition of a community ‘barn-raising’, residents were invited to participate in a ‘memory-raising’ to build and structure an oral history about their experiences. Adorning the upper walls of the barn will be photographic portraits of these storytellers, and below them designated areas where the public can listen to walls tell these stories from within.
Thom Sokoloski is a multi-disciplinary artist whose career spans over 45 years. He co-founded The Theatre Centre, the Native Theatre School and Autumn Leaf Performance. He directed and toured the music-theatre works of R. Murray Schafer as well as his own theatre and opera creations to LaMama NYC, COC, Montreal Opera, Lyon Opera, The Banff Centre and Toronto’s World Stage Festival. His large-scale art installations were commissioned by Toronto’s Nuit Blanche, Art Toronto, McMichael Canadian Art Gallery, Art Spin and Socrates Sculpture Park (NYC).
Norton Community Park
Lambchop, Typographic Fencing
Flagging Tape Installation
Typographic Fencing defines space and prompts conversation by creating large-scale text in areas where it is not expected— around the edges of parking lots, near ravines, off divided highways, around a fenced-in playground. These temporary installations are woven out of flagging-tape, a simple, inexpensive material used to mark boundaries. Squares in chain-link or vertical-bar fences become pixels on a screen or canvas, the medium for messages. The messages are installed anonymously and removed without ceremony. By transforming large-text into large questions, aim to spark a dialogue.
Lambchop is a street artist and designer based in the American South, specializing in permanent and ephemeral public installations investigating the relationship between place, typography, and interaction. Lambchop’s work has been exhibited internationally and recognized with a Communication Arts Award, a Society of Typographic Arts “STA 100” Award, has been featured through DesignMilk, NotCot and SHFT.
Spencer Smith Park
Troy Lovegates, Hide and Seek
Wood Sculptures, Scavenger Hunt Map
Hide and Seek is a series of folk art wood sculptures that have been hidden throughout Spencer Smith Park. Park visitors are invited to participate in a “scavenger hunt” to find the sculptures and collect a stamp at each location. Visitors can pick up a map with clues from the birdhouse box located beside the gazebo and start their adventure. The first people to turn in their completed map to the Burlington Visitor Centre (414 Locust Street, 9:00 am 0 4:00 pm) will receive a special prize!
Troy Lovegates is an internationally prolific street artist who begins his process by immersing himself within the project’s immediate area, breathing in its surroundings and passersby. His public art centres on the holistic importance of community, frequently featuring images of residents taken on early expeditions around a project site. Lovegates has spent many years exploring the nooks and crannies of Lake Ontario, its nearby railway corridors and green spaces.
Spencer Smith Park
Arianna Richardson (AKA The Hobbyist), Garbage Party
Mixed Media Sculpture + Performance
Garbage Party is an interactive project that invites visitors to engage with a 10ft long, handmade waste receptacle as its physical form would suggest: as a fully functioning garbage bin with a wide variety of collection categories. This installation prompts the public to consider their own relationships with waste and recycling, presenting a playful and absurd site in which to engage in conversations about our consumer society and the impact of the waste it generates.
From October 22-25 from 1-5pm each day, The Hobbyist will be performing on site maintenance, collecting and documenting trash in the area, and conducting a short survey with participants.
Note – the October 22nd performance has been cancelled due to weather.
Arianna Richardson is a sculptor, performance artist, and mother from Treaty Seven territory (Lethbridge, AB). Richardson most often works under the pseudonym, The Hobbyist, employing hobby-craft techniques to work through an investigation of ubiquitous consumption, gendered labour, waste, excess, and spectacle.
Tansley Woods Community Centre
Kristina Bradt, Intersection
Soundscape Projection
Intersection is a soundscape projection installed in the lobby of the Tansley Woods Community Centre. Bradt visited the facility at different times throughout the season to collect sound using a field recorder. By capturing the sounds of the activities, events, and people that move through the space, Bradt captured that which often goes unnoticed. Bradt then uses these recordings to create a large-scale floor projection that features bright, abstracted imagery that has a contemporary feel and brings a sense of wonder and curiosity directly inspired by the energy and livelihood of those who inhabit the space. What you see is the artists’ interpretation of the sound data, turned visual art.
Kristina Bradt is an artist and public art enthusiast living in Windsor, Ontario. Bradt earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of Windsor (2017) with a focus in Sculpture, Drawing and Digital Media. Her interest in 3D printing inspired her research into art that depicts the visualization of sound over the past 2 1/2 years and led her work at Artscape Gibraltar Point for her first residency this past February (2019).
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