Pantone Perfect

Pantone Perfect, one of two projects we developed for the 2014 Urban Lights Ruhr in Hamm Germany, has been added to our website.

With the assistance of the the Musée d'histoire des sciences de Genèves, Switzerland, we recorded the exact Pantone value of each of the original 52 hues from Saussure's Cyanometre from 1787, and faithfully reproduced them in dry colour pigments. Each hour through the duration of the project, we followed Saussure's rigourous but ultimately futile attempt to measure precisely and reproduce the blueness of the sky. 

For more information on the project please click here.

A Walk at the Edge of the World

We have just be notified that A Walk at the Edge of the World received a third place award from the Scottish Arts Club, in the best new Scottish drama performance category at the Fringe the judges said "The Strength and sheer power of drama are such that, as an art form, it continues to evolve and, with this wonderful "performance piece", Magnetic North has expanded the boundaries and taken us to a newly-crafted "edge"

The ceremony took place Sunday 24 August at the Arts Club, sadly we weren't able make it in person, but were there in spirit.

Thanks also to Total Theatre for their wonderful review of A Walk at the Edge of the World!

Another article just posted on the Pebblesshire News site 'Walk reveals hidden secrets'

You Are Here - Glasgow 2014

The commonwealth games have wrapped and You Are Here is no longer present in the skyline of Glasgow. We are very grateful to have had such a great team who made it possible. Here are a few images of the Merchant City during the games.

Cacher pour mieux montrer

Follow the link below to hear an interesting conversation on CBC Saskatoon with Janet Zweig, Jury member for American’s for the Arts', Public Art Year in Review, about our project Cacher pour mieux montrer (Hide to show better) which received recognition as one of the top public art projects in North America in 2013.

CBC RADIO LINK

You Are Here - Glasgow 2014

You are here has been commissioned for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

You are here playfully references the red arrow found on maps to identify your location, first shown at National Waterfront Museum in Swansea, You are here will now be in the heart of Glasgow, hovering over the cultural hub in the Merchant City for the duration of the Games and the Merchant City Festival.

Critical Theory Book Club

We are co-hosting Andrea Williamson’s critical theory book club tonight, this will be the second of three. Looking at site-specific Art, our second pick is an excerpt titled 'Sitings of Public Art: Integration Versus Intervention' found in 'One Place after Another' written by Miwon Kwon.
If you’re interested you can sign up here, or if your not in Calgary and would like to read along with us, we’ll keep the blog up to date with the next book selected.

A Walk at the Edge of the World

A Walk at the Edge of the World is touring again this summer. We worked on this last year with director Nicholas Bone and performer Ian Cameron. More information to come!


A Walk at the Edge of the World - trailer from Magnetic North on Vimeo.

Fire Hydrant Fountains

The weather must be getting warmer because the testing of the fire hydrant fountains has started! We will be launching the first of the season at the Calgary International Children’s Festival happening from the 21st to 24th of May. Watch for the fountains throughout the summer as they will be installed to provide drinkable water at festivals and special events.

CREATIVE CITY SUMMIT, HAMILTON 2014

Just confirmed we are Keynote Speakers for Creative City Network of Canada Summit in Hamilton, Ontario from June 11-13 and also taking part in the Public Art Round Table and panel discussions.  We are delighted to be invited and hope to see you there!

Bristol Promenade Update

Our project for the end of the Brunel Mile in Bristol is near completion and here are a few more pictures of the progress!

It started life as an exploration of spaces and planes defining a public space, and later morphed into a design responding more precisely to the particular man-made conditions to create a landscape specific to the space.

Photo Credit Cullinan Studios

Photo Credit Cullinan Studios

Photo Credit Cullinan Studios

The final design is a boardwalk promenade space along a meadowy landscape fed by the runoff rainwater from the adjacent building. In collaboration with Cullinan Studio Architects and Grants Associates the journey of the rainwater is celebrated with the visible drain pipes, collection dishes and open rills distributing the water onto the grassland slope.
The different growing conditions (slope, orientation, rainwater runoff) are highlighted by the use of a variety of biodiversity and habitats (grasses, damp grassland, marginal vegetation and woodland groundcover). Combined with these conditions the experience of the harbour side (ruderal plants and riparian habitat) is drawn up into the Promenade.


This project was commissioned by Crest Nicholson Regeneration as part of the Harbourside development.

Six Acres Update

On our way to Ruhr we stopped in to see the progress of our project Six Acres. Things are progressing along quickly! Looking forward to sharing the completed images, but for now here is a sneak peak.

Cacher pour mieux montrer

Last week we installed Cacher pour mieux montrer in Saskatoon. The temporary installation covers public art in the city for 3 weeks, bringing it back to attention and starting conversation about public art. The weather was very clement, considering the time of year, and the public's reaction was really positive and supportive. Here are a few pictures of the work in progress:

A walk at the edge of the world

We are currently developing another exciting new production with Magnetic North Theatre. We've been working with Magnetic North's Director Nick Bone and performer Ian Cameron in Edinburgh over the last 2 weeks and now heading to Mull to complete the first stage of development.

A Walk at the Edge of the World is inspired by the act of walking. During the performance, the narrator leads the audience along the many paths his mind followed as he walked and the talk leaps from subject to subject, mirroring the way the mind works when there is time only to think. The hidden secrets of the landscape and the constantly shifting border between land and sea lead the narrator to understand that the past is always with us, whether we realise it or not.

Performances: Mull — June 29th and Iona — June 30th

Limelight in Vancouver

For its first venue in 2013, Limelight: Saturday night will be in Vancouver this week end.
We're setting up the lights tonight in 2 different places along Grandville Street. The spotlight will be happening at the same time in these 2 locations on Friday night and Saturday night.
Look for the limelight on Hastings and Grandville and 68th and Granville this week end!

And on sunday night we will have an informal evening of conversation and dialogue about Limelight: Saturday night with Bryan Newson, Public Art Program Manager for the City of Vancouver and Dr. Cameron Cartiere, Dean of Graduate Studies at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
Sunday 27th January, 17.00 till 19.00, at the Metro Theatre, 1370 SW Marine Dr, Vancouver, BC V6P 5Z9.
More info here


Hope to see you in the Limelight or at the discussion!

The installation of Limelight in Vancouver is part of chART: Public Art Marpole, a creative collaboration between Emily Carr University of Art + Design and the Marpole BIA. The project aims to support public art and community engagement through creativity and innovation. This collaboration is led by Dr. Cameron Cartiere, Dean of Graduate Studies at Emily Carr.

Limelight: Saturday Night in Vancouver is hosted by chART: Public Art Marpole, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Downtown Business Improvement Association, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Marpole Business Improvement Association and the City of Vancouver Public Art Program.

A Day at the Square

The Day at the Square event took place last week and went very well.
From the great photographic portraits of Eileen Perrier all the way to the Parkour demonstrations and the film screeenings the day was really busy and the rain almost absent. The day was really useful in informing the development of the work for this place.

Here are a few snaps of the day:

A day at the square

We're finishing the last details on an event we're setting up in Finsbury Park (London) on Saturday.
A day in the Square will take place on a purpose built platform at the heart of the main public space in Six Acres. The platform will be in place for just 12 hours, hosting a changing program of free events: talks, screenings, demonstrations, food... The event will directly inform the permanent work we'll be designing for this place, activating the space and engaging people, testing possibilities.

A day in the Square serves as an introduction, a discussion, an experiment, a learning exercise to understand uses and users, and sets the tone of the permanent works to come. This day-long event will celebrate the future of the space and become a pre launch for this public space.

This event is part of The Secret garden Project by Up Projects commissioned by One Housing Group in partnership with Islington Council

Fire Hydrant Fountains

The fabrication shop have been working hard and have been fantastic at making this project happen, they finished the three different fountains and they're almost ready to be put in place for Canada Day this week end. Here's a sneak preview of the two other designs and the first one - "strangers" or the "dating fountain" - being used this morning for a TV interview.

More pictures of them in use next week.

W+ residency call

We just released a call for the artist residency with Watershed+: www.watershedplus.ca/residency/res-call01.pdf Feel free to share it widely! Looking forward to reading through the applications.

University of Oxford

Last week we took part in a seminar at the University of Oxford, Creative ecologies: conditioning inventiveness.
The other people invited were eminent geographers, archeologists, political theorist, musicologist, philosopher and anthropologist, an amazing combination of knowledge.
To put it simply, we were looking at creativity in its wider sense, basing the discussions on some of the objects from the awe inspiring Pitt Rivers Museum which hosted us for 3 days. The objects used, which we were allowed to manipulate,
included a tupilak,
a mandrake root,
a desiccated heart encased in a heart-shaped lead container and a Micronesian Nautical chart.pictures from the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

From the introducing paper by Charlotte Bates, Joe Gerlach, Thomas Jellis, Wendy Morrison, and Sefryn Penrose, the seminar aimed to engage "with objects which are in some ways unfamiliar to us, which will stimulate us to engage and to talk in ways unusual in an academic meeting. As we have stressed above, the idea of mutual making of people and objects is key to many current approaches to the material world. Academics tend to write and talk about this mutuality, rather than engage with it. There is risk as well as potential in such engagement, but we are hoping not just to consider creativity from a distance, but also to set up some of the conditions in which creativity occurs."
As part of our engagement for the seminar we devised a workshop session looking at the importance of individual recollection of objects and their personal meanings.

We felt very privileged to be able to spend a week discussing and exploring such notions in the company of fascinating people and with the access to such unusual objects.