Kate Taylor on some of the best art installations at the sixth annual Luminato festival, which runs in Toronto June 8-17
-
A passenger walks past Blue Republic's Delightful and Permanent Conditions of Impossibility, an installation art piece on display in Terminal 1 at Pearson International Airport, a part of Luminato, in Toronto, June 6 , 2012. Long lines at Pearson
Blue Republic's Delightful and Permanent Conditions of Impossibility
"Two truly straight and parallel lines will never intersect not even in eternity,” says Toronto collective Blue Republic in this text work mounted in the U.S. departures area at Pearson. Brightly coloured, the long straight lines of text – which never intersect, of course – are cheeky things, with their lingo of pseudo science and poetic whimsy commenting on the cool architecture and hot emotions of an airport. Until Aug. 31 at Pearson International Airport, Terminal 1, U.S. departures area, post-security.
-
Luminato Text installation by Toronto group Blue Republic in the Brookfield Place atrium in Toronto, June 07, 2012. Deborah Baic Words and the city
Blue Republic’s aMAZEd
Toronto artists Anna Passakas and Radoslaw Kudlinski, who work together under the name Blue Republic, have covered the floor of downtown Brookfield Place with a text about our relationship with the city written for them by philosopher Mark Kingwell. “Have you ever wondered whether a city can make you happy?” To make anything of that question, the denizens of King and Bay will need to spend some time looking at their feet, following the giant text through the space, piecing together the lines and working their way around purposeful typos and misspellings. “This is not a destination but an invitation.” Indeed. aMAZEd is at the Allen Lambert Galleria in Brookfield Place, 181 Bay St., Toronto, through Sunday. Luminato runs in Toronto until June 17 (luminato.com).
-
![Passengers look at LAb[au] MetaDeSIGN group's S/N (Signal to Noise) installation art piece on display in Terminal 1 at Pearson International Airport, a part of Luminato, in Toronto, June 6 , 2012.](http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/377/incoming/article4256569.ece/ALTERNATES/w620/luminato+signaltonoise.jpg "Passengers look at LAb[au] MetaDeSIGN group's S/N (Signal to Noise) installation art piece on display in Terminal 1 at Pearson International Airport, a part of Luminato, in Toronto, June 6 , 2012.")
Passengers look at LAb[au] MetaDeSIGN group's S/N (Signal to Noise) installation art piece on display in Terminal 1 at Pearson International Airport, a part of Luminato, in Toronto, June 6 , 2012. Signal to Noise
Step inside the fairy ring erected on the departures level of Terminal 1, and prepare for a trip. The Belgian art collective LAb[au] has resurrected old split-flap display technology from a European train station and computer-engineered 512 pieces so they randomly flip through letters, only pausing when the program coincidentally generates an English word of three letters or more that it will recognize from its dictionary. Encircled by the once-familiar clicking sound of those flipping letters, the viewer may be gripped by nostalgia for the pre-digital jet age – or grasp some deeper meaning about information and globalization. S/N runs until June 30 at Pearson International Airport, Terminal 1, in the domestic departures area, pre-security.
-
Luminato instillation Windscape consists of the large blue banner running through David Pecaut Square at King and Simcoe Streets and then a series of orange windsocks in the south-west corner of the square in Toronto, June 07, 2012. Deborah Baic Windsocks and ribbons
Windscape
A festival looking for definition, Luminato is increasingly anchoring itself in David Pecaut Square and this year is animating that downtown public space with a new installation by Diamond Schmitt Architects. The giant blue ribbon takes you by the hand and invites you through the square, but look out for the orange windsocks by artist Mitchell F. Chan installed in the southwest corner. Inflated by large fans and programmed to move both up and down and side to side, the windsocks are a troupe of animatronic dancers who, every half hour, will be performing short dances created for them by local choreographers. Windscape is open daily for the duration of Luminato at Toronto's David Pecaut Square (admission free).
-
The Encampment, a unique form of sculpture on a grand scale that vividly evokes the War of 1812's personal toll, that launches as part of Luminato at Fort York in Toronto June 7, 2012. This large-scale art installation from art duo Thomas+Guinevere, conceived as a "temporal village", The Luminato Encampment comprises 200 A-frame tents pitched on the grounds of Fort York. Each tent contains an installation by one of 100 artistic collaborators who have created a visual representation of an aspect of the war's civilian history, gleaned from real-life stories of family, love, loss, survival, patriotism, collaboration and betrayal. Deborah Baic Ghost city of 1812
The Encampment
Aided by 125 volunteers, artists Thom Sokoloski and Jenny-Anne McCowan have erected 200 white, A-frame tents on the grounds of Fort York. Their collaborators, who include visual artists, architects, designers and history buffs, have then created their own art installations inside the tents, each one inspired by a story of a real citizen in early 19th-century British North America. Illuminated at night, the tents will form a kind of ghost city, commemorating hard times and forgotten lives from the War of 1812. The Encampment is at Toronto’s Fort York until June 24, daily from 7:30 p.m. to 11 p.m.
