TILT
by ATLRG (Chris Wiebe, Sean Radford, Brian Pearson)
TILT is an original garden celebrating the inaugural Winnipeg Cool Gardens exhibition. Finding roots in the formal geometries of the labyrinth and the many informal camping traditions in the Manitoba landscape, TILT is a transformable and inhabitable place for visitors to act, or to idle, however they may be inclined. It’s movement conjures a school of fish, or a flock of birds, flitting in opposite directions, remaining as a whole. TILT provides simple intimate spaces in congregation, retrieving memories of long days in short seasons, time spent alone and among neighbours, to embrace the feeling of shared disconnection, together.
Blue Stick Garden
by Claude Cormier et Associés
Blue Stick Garden made its debut in 2000 at the first edition of the Métis International Garden Festival in one of Quebec’s most renowned historical gardens. Two iconic symbols of the Métis garden are the Himalayan Blue Poppy and the famous English mixed border garden called the ‘Long Walk’. The Blue Stick Garden abstracts the Victorian garden precedent with pixelated precision and a shock of colour drawn from the nuances of the blue poppy itself. Visitors enter a landscape that is familiar, and leave in an altered state from the unexpected combination of colour and movement. Simple yet complex, and universal in its appeal, the award-winning Blue Stick Garden has had an incredible effect on public perception as a contemporary experience firmly anchored in the context of traditional gardening practices. It has sparked renewed dialogue about the possibilities of what a garden can be.
Carrousel
by BGL
Carrousel is a multi- component performance to enchant and engage the public. BGL’s project includes a handmade carrousel constructed of recycled crowd barriers and metal fences attached to an old timey lamppost. The carrousel is activated by audiences who also have the opportunity to ride the sculpture, as well as by acrobatic Parkour athletes who perform complex and exciting maneuvers on and around the carrousel.
100 Elms
by Scatliff+Miller+Murray
100 Elms are placed in a grid directly in front of the Hotel Fort Garry to celebrate its centennial birthday. Upon completion of the Cool Gardens exhibit these Elm become the next legacy for new communities as upon the project completion they will be transplanted into their new homes for the next 100 years and beyond. Taking the concept of "cool gardens" literally, the trees provide a shading canopy to the hot urban landscape of downtown Winnipeg, as the Elms on Broadway have done for decades. Using surveyors tape wrapping the main stem, the image and colour of this synthetic material recognize the strong geometry used by the surveyor overlying the natural gracefulness of the tree itself.
Beachscape
by SPMB (Eduardo Aquino, Paul Dolick, Karen Shanski)
Within the collection of urban overflows there is the beach as the territory for idleness. The beach reveals the image of a pleasure field. Yet that same territory can be identified as a place where differences are negotiated. The beach as a model can be extended to all kinds of urban spaces, producing multiple sites of encounter and release. Its accommodating infrastructure encourages multiple occupations, an open framework in support of urban life. Beachscape was a transformation of one of the stepped platforms at the Fork's port into a pop-up urban beach, opening up a social and leisure pocket for rest and laziness in the busy and crowded landscape of the Forks. Fine sand substitutes the sod, and the cabanas serve as beach towels and umbrellas.
Cool Dot
by Ewa Tarsia
Ewa Tarsia envisions her world as a dot, a cool blue sphere. Flooded with sunlight, it explodes in green, coruscating life and manifests directly into her art. Tarsia's sculpting medium is grass, the living, seething tangle of blades. It represents the resilience, the tenacity of the natural world that does not give up even when the assaulted by concrete, steel, and glass. Though past grass sculptures were created from seed or sad, Tarsia now prefers to use artificial grass because of its lower ecological footprint. The grass dot represents wilderness through the intelligence of a dot, a globe, an orb. A dot, from pixel to celestial sphere, has become her symbol, a prism and a lens through which she sees her world. It shapes her perception and fuels her imagination.