{"id":4933,"date":"2017-02-27T13:32:33","date_gmt":"2017-02-27T13:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.siteandinsight.com\/?p=4933"},"modified":"2017-02-27T13:32:33","modified_gmt":"2017-02-27T13:32:33","slug":"north","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/north\/","title":{"rendered":"North"},"content":{"rendered":"

North is a direction, an idea, an experience. North<\/em> as designed by the architects Suresh Perara and Julie Charbonneau of the Montreal firm PER.CH is a triumph.<\/p>\n

Using familiar\u00a0materials, PER.CH turns the idea of north\u00a0on its head. Literally. Thirty-nine fir trees hang upside down from a metal framework, their soft green triangles pointing down to a bare Toronto beach.<\/p>\n

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Photo courtesy of Suresh Perara.<\/p><\/div>\n

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North<\/em> is one of eight installations that make up Winter Stations, an exhibition on the shores of Lake Ontario. Now in its third year, the project\u00a0challenges designers to use\u00a0Toronto’s lifeguard stations as the basis for winter art. This year’s theme, Catalyst, asks them to \u00ab\u00a0disassemble and re-shape our notions of Toronto’s waterfront, with particular attention to the sand and materials strewn across the beach…[to be] a catalyst for change.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n

North<\/em> does this, in spades.<\/p>\n

When I saw a photo of North<\/em>\u00a0in The Globe and Mail, I immediately thought of an inverted map of the world. Instead of an arrow pointing upwards to the north, the arrow formed by the top of the tree was pointing downwards. North flipped to point\u00a0south? On a closer view, other reversals\u00a0and tensions\u00a0became apparent, between the stark setting and the lush growth of the trees, between the soft, dripping branches\u00a0and the chopped off trunks. Dead carcasses hanging from hooks in a butcher’s shop came to mind, discarded Christmas trees transformed to sides of beef, swaying slightly as the butcher’s fan rotated.<\/p>\n

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Photo courtesy of Suresh Perara. The ladder of the lifeguard station is clearly visible in this photo.<\/p><\/div>\n

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When I met Perara and Charbonneau\u00a0at their studio in Montreal late last week, they described the thinking\u00a0that led to their design: the idea of a northern forest, a quintessentially Canadian landscape, set against the image of an empty, frozen beach that was,\u00a0at the same time, a place of nostalgia, tinted playfully with childhood\u00a0memories.<\/p>\n

Putting these images together produced a work that speaks to change and alters our perceptions of a\u00a0familiar landscape.<\/p>\n

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Photo courtesy of Suresh Perara.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The fir trees they’ve used are re-purposed Christmas trees, two months later still surprisingly green. Other elements are equally surprising. The trees are dead yet they\u00a0seem alive. As you stand on the beach, they sway gently overhead, mimicking the movement of the water at ground level. As you walk through them,\u00a0pushing them aside, they\u00a0rustle gently like a bead curtain. But perceptions really flip when you climb the lifeguard station ladder. Moving through the fairytale forest, you reach a clearing at the top. But instead of seeing out over tree\u00a0tops, you look out\u00a0across chopped off trunks. Brutality at one end, fragility\u00a0at the other.<\/p>\n

Suresh and Charbonneau were in Toronto for the opening of Winter Stations. On an unseasonably warm day, the deserted beach they had pictured was full of people. They saw\u00a0a young girl, 5 or 6 years old, stop and stare. It’s so weird, she said, I love it! They heard a father ask his young son what he thought the installation meant. The boy didn’t answer, or if he did, they didn’t hear.<\/p>\n

Neither child was\u00a0interested in analyzing or assigning meaning to\u00a0the installation — it isn’t necessary to do that in order to enjoy its\u00a0surreal quality. And while seeing photos\u00a0of North<\/em>\u00a0makes me smile, the images also\u00a0raise questions, about the commodification of nature, the brutal disregard we too often have towards our surroundings\u00a0and the effect our actions\u00a0have on our environment.<\/p>\n

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Photo courtesy of Suresh Perara.<\/p><\/div>\n

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PER.CH is founded on the notion that architecture can allow us to experience the everyday world in richer and deeper ways. Art installations like North<\/em> or Forest SQUARE Sky<\/em>, a 2009-2010 installation at the International Garden Festival at M\u00e9tis, Quebec, reinforce this notion. They give the creative team\u00a0room to experiment and even to fail.\u00a0For Perara and Charbonneau, part of doing these projects is discovering what will happen. They are interested in the interaction with the public in public spaces. And they wonder, will the canopy of trees provide a gathering spot? Will the space be a catalyst for public debate? Will it provoke changes, in attitudes or behaviour?<\/p>\n

Finding the title for the installation gave Perara and Charbonneau\u00a0the focus necessary to create a project on a very tight budget. For me the title gave entry to\u00a0a gathering place\u00a0of ideas. I hope I’m fortunate enough to be in Toronto before March 27 when Winter Stations ends. If I am, I expect that North<\/em>\u00a0will once again make me think about what I’m seeing. On the spot I expect it will oblige me to feel what’s going on around me. And that, I believe, is a hallmark of a good work of art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

North is a direction, an idea, an experience. North as designed by the architects Suresh Perara and Julie Charbonneau of the Montreal firm PER.CH is a triumph. Using familiar\u00a0materials, PER.CH turns the idea of north\u00a0on its head. Literally. Thirty-nine fir trees hang upside down from a metal framework, their soft green triangles pointing down to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,20,22],"tags":[668,669,670,671,672,673,674],"class_list":["post-4933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-people","category-reviews","tag-art-installations","tag-julie-charbonneau","tag-north","tag-perch","tag-suresh-perara","tag-the-beaches","tag-winter-stations","category-34","category-20","category-22","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}