SIDIM 2018

SIDIM - Salon du Design
30th Edition

April 26 - 28, 2018

This annual Show - Salon is a gathering place for Quebec designers and artists to present to the public their ideas and concepts, and to showcase their latest products. It is also a common ground where an exchange between various design creators and organisations takes place. The event takes place every spring. It offers an opportunity to discover new design trends and guidances.

There are over 250 products at the SHOW designed by more than 50 Quebec designers, artists and artisans. The Show is a big market where the trends of 2018 and the creativity of local creators are be brought together to offer new objects useful for everyday life.

If one like beautiful objects and is passionate about design, or is planning to renovate and refurbish their living quarters, this is the place to find many interesting ideas and objects that might attract attention and inspire. There are art objects, new design concepts of any sort, decorations, lighting, kitchen accessories, stationery, ambiance products.

The Show is open the public and design experts and lovers. The SIDIM offers the opportunity to meet various experts to ask questions, to get new creative ideas, and get inspired by the latest interior design trends.

Click on any image to enlarge it.

All photos by Nadia Slejskova

For more information, visit SIDIM website.

View all SIDIM previous posts here and also here. 

MMFA 2028: From the Hands of the Masters II

FROM THE HANDS OF THE MASTERS II: 
FROM PARMIGIANINO TO MATISSE
April 10 – August 12, 2018

On April 13, 2018, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) unveiled 55 drawings from a Montreal private collection that span from the 16th to the 20th century. As part of this exhibition, the MMFA also presented some twenty other master drawings from artists including Delacroix, Greuze, Ingres and Romney that were recently given to the Museum by the anonymous collector.

FROM THE HANDS OF THE MASTERS II: FROM PARMIGIANINO TO MATISSE brings together works on paper by François Boucher, Agostino and Annibale Carracci, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Juan Gris, Katsushika Hokusai, Victor Hugo, Henri Matisse, Jean-François Millet, Amadeo Modigliani, Gustave Moreau, Berthe Morisot, Parmigianino, Camille Pissarro, Giorgio Vasari, James McNeill Whistler, and Antoine Watteau.

The exhibition also features a selection of 20 drawings by François Boucher, Eugène Delacroix, Ciro Ferri, Charles de la Fosse, Théodore Géricault, Jacopo Palma il Giovane, Anne-Louis Girodet, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, le Guerchin, Charles-Nicolas Cochin le Jeune, Michel Corneille le Jeune, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Jacob Jordaens, Carlo Maratti, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Domenico Piola, Sebastiano Ricci, George Romney, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin and Orazio Samacchini, among the artworks given to the Museum by the same anonymous Montreal collector. Many of them are being displayed at the Museum for the first time.

The subjects range from studies for religious compositions to sensuous female nudes, from the Virgin to a ballerina, from male portraits to battling Japanese warriors. Also on display are a variety of landscapes, from a wintry sixteenth-century Northern European village scene to a lush tropical jungle in Venezuela, from the rocky coast of Guernsey to the fields of Normandy and an Impressionist vision of the countryside near Paris, and even the picturesque crossing of an arched bridge in nineteenth-century Japan. Still-lifes from the early period of Cubism also are presented, as is a black paper cut-out of an eagle by the renowned French author Victor Hugo.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is the repository of one of the most important graphic arts collections in Canada, encompassing prints, drawings and photographs that survey over five centuries of graphic achievement and include masterpieces by a broad diversity of artists spanning the history of European and North American art.

Click on images to enlarge them.
All photos above by Nadia Slejskova.
The last image in this article below courtesy of MMFA.

The exhibition is located at the MMFA's Graphic Arts Centre
Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion, Level S2 

This exhibition is a successor to a MMFA 2013 exhibition. You can read about the original FROM THE HANDS OF THE MASTERS  here.

Théodore Géricault (1791-1824), Study of a Man Gesturing on a Barrel,
Supported by Another Figure for The Raft of the Medusa, 1819,
pen and ink, heightened with gouache on blue paper.
On loan from a private collection.

Successions

Centaur Theatre /49th Season

Successions

World Premier 

Written by Michaela Di Cesare

Directed by Tamara Brown

April 10 - May 6, 2018

This is the first time that a female Italian Canadian playwright joined the ranks of two other Italian Canadian Centaur playwright luminaries Vittorio Rossi, and Steve Galluccio.

Michaela Di Cesare's play is about a family drama that takes place when the departed parent's estate has to be attended by the family survivors. Many in the audience would relate to this play since they themselves went through personal variations of the same situation.

In Successions, it is the conflict that unfolds between two second generation Italian Canadian brothers from the St. Leonard borough in Montreal. After the sudden death of their both parents, they must decide whether or not to hold on to the rundown family home, stuffed with memorabilia and worthless but sentimental junk. Their conflicting memories and emotions, overshadowed by their parent's plethora of unpaid bills, leads to a drama that unfolds - what to do with their parent’s debt ridden estate. At the end they realize they need to move forward, each deciding what they are willing to give up and at what cost to their relationship.

Successions with Gita Miller,Davide Chiazzese, Carlo Mestroni &
Tara Nicodemo, Photo Andrée Lanthier

All play's action takes place in the cluttered basement and garage of a typical St. Leonard bungalow. The home, with a palpable character in of its own, and with its hold over the brothers, makes it difficult for them to break free of their history and each other.

Michaela Di Cesare also used an interesting device: by using the house memorabilia items she brings back the brother's parents, or rather their personalities, by portraying - enacting them briefly on stage. 

Successions with Davide Chiazzese, Gita Miller & Carlo Mestroni
 Photo Andrée Lanthier

The play also elaborates in a conflict of brothers belonging to two different social spheres. Anthony Di Ciccio, the older brother, is a hard-working lawyer who is running for political office. His wife Christina put her career on hold to be his campaign manager. The ambitious couple refers to themselves as DINKs: people with “double incomes, no kids”.  Enzo, Anthony’s younger brother, is headstrong and impulsive. He is planning to embark on his latest career choice as a plumber. Whereas he is planning to have his own family, Nat, his very pregnant, a beautician and an internet savvy girlfriend, is quite content to live independently in her own condo. At the end,regardless to the social strata the brothers belong to, it is the concept of family, of a family microcosm, that synthesises all their conflicts and arguments.

Michaela Di Cesare refers to the genre of this play as "dramedy". She explained that she thought she wrote a drama. But when she attended several previews of her play, she was startled that the audience began to laugh during the scenes or monologues that she considered dramatic. It was only then she perceived the comical side of the situations she conjured on the stage.

Successions with Gita Miller,Davide Chiazzese,Tara Nicodemo &
Carlo Mestroni, Photo Andrée Lanthier

CREATIVE TEAM

Actors - Davide Chiazzese, Carlo Mestroni, Gita Miller and Tara Nicodemo

Dramaturg - Micheline Chevrier

Set & Costume Designer - Diana Uribe

Lighting Designer - Audrey-Anne Bouchard

Sound Designer - Peter Cerone

Fight Choreographer - Anita Nittoly

Stage Manager - Merissa Tordjman

Apprentice Stage Manager - Brandon Hepworth 

Successions with Davide Chiazzese &
Gita Miller, Photo Andrée Lanthier

Successions with Carlo Mestroni &
Davide Chiazzese, Photo Andrée Lanthier

Click on images to enlarge them.

All images above are courtesy of Centaur Theatre.

For more information, visit the Centaur Theatre website.

 Playwright Michaela Di Cesare and members of the production crew

Photo Nadia Slejskova

SUNDAY CHAT-UP:

In Centaur’s Ted T. Katz Family Trust Gallery

April 15th, 2018 at 12:30pm

Montreal Gazette Editor-in-Chief, Lucinda Chodan, is joined by Successions

playwright, Michaela Di Cesare

Admission to the Chat-up is free and open to the public, with complimentary refreshments courtesy of Bonaparte Restaurant.

Successions, Centaur Theatre 2018, Michaela Di Cesareis interviewd by  Lucinda Chodan,
Photo Eloi Savoie

TALK BACKS:

Following the evening performance on Thursday April 26^th

and the matinee presentation on Sunday April 29^th

audiences are invited to stay after the show for a lively Q&A with the cast and director.

MAC 2018: New Museum Plan Unveiled

MAC Transformation

On April 9, 2018, the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art (The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal - MAC) has unveiled the winning project of the architectural competition launched in June 2017 for the museum's renovation and transformation. The images in this article show the design and preliminary drawings for MAC's new look.

MAC enters a pivotal stage in its development. Museum attendance has increased steadily over the last 5 years, culminating with this year’s record of over 600,000 visitors. As an important national museum dedicated exclusively to the promotion of contemporary art, the MAC in its current condition faces a desperate lack of space to exhibit its vast collection.

It was the proposal of Saucier+Perrotte Architectes / GLCRM & Associés Architectes, a consortium of Quebec architects, that captured the top honours. This proposal was selected unanimously by the jury as inspiring, luminous, and relevant, and as resulting in a striking contemporary construction fully coherent with the Museum’s raison d’être. With this transformation, the MAC will embark on a new chapter in its existence and to embrace its full potential. 

Highlights of the new MAC:

• Close to a 100% increase in exhibition spaces and rooms, including three new exhibition rooms.
• Every space, from lobbies to circulation areas, has been redesigned to showcase contemporary art.
• New and expanded educational spaces.
• An exterior façade that has been transformed by the expansion of the main entrance and the added area on the 2nd floor.
• The optimization of the Beverly-Webster-Rolph multimedia room.
• New spaces for the Restaurant du MAC, including an outdoor terrace on the 2nd floor.
• New spaces for the MAC Boutique, including a bookstore and a coffee shop.

The new Museum’s architectural vision

The proposal by Saucier+Perrotte Architectes / GLCRM & Associés Architectes builds on open and light-filled spaces to strengthen the special connection that joins the MAC to the quadrilateral defined by Place des Arts and to the Quartier des spectacles. In particular, the essential link between the MAC and the Place des Festivals will be maintained with a new transparent, light-filled expansion. On level 2, a large window will showcase the Museum restaurant, a double-height space that will open onto an outdoor terrace.

The museum will enjoy far greater visibility on the lower, Sainte-Catherine Street of the Esplanade, with the angular overhang of the expansion. Under this jutting structure, the museum square will naturally guide visitors to the main entrance, while freeing up the space necessary for holding the festivals.

From an urban planning perspective, several features will link the new MAC to its context. On the ground floor, the Museum will glow with transparency and the hustle and bustle of its public spaces, while on the Place des Arts Esplanade level the architectural proportions and expression will integrate with the existing architecture. he upper section will be composed of an envelope of folded metal blades revealing the interior spaces and filtering natural light. The created verticality will express and harmonize - in a contemporary manner - with Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier and Théâtre Maisonneuve.

A new Museum in 2021

On the current timetable, the main project phases are scheduled as follows:

• April 2018 Start of architects’ mandate
• January 2019 Temporary closure of the Sainte-Catherine Street MAC
• Spring 2019 Opening of the temporary MAC
• Summer 2019 Start of the Sainte-Catherine Street MAC construction
• Fall 2021 Opening of the new MAC

The temporary MAC

The MAC must remain active and on hand throughout the construction period in order to maintain its relationship with the city and community presence. Between the closing and reopening, the MAC will set up headquarters in a permanent location and all the while make its influence throughout the city with multi-site and ephemeral exhibitions.

The programming, while limited, is nevertheless planned to be of excellence and rigour. None withstanding that this transition period will come with its share of challenges, it will also give the MAC an opportunity to explore both new partnerships and new exhibition spaces, and will challenge to display greater creativity.

Click on images to enlarge them.
All images in this article courtesy of @ MAC

For more information about MAC, visit the museum's website.

FIFA 2018: L'Homme de l'isle

Fragment of Riopelle's Tribute to Rosa Luxemburg

L'HOMME DE L'ISLE

Documentary

Official Competition Art FIFA 2018

Director: BRUNO BOULIANNE

72 minutes | Québec, Canada | 2017

RELEASE date in Quebec cinemas - March 23, 2018.

The film elaborates how the hunting trips of the renown Quebec painter Jean-Paul Riopelle with Gilles Gagné, a geese hunting guide on Isle aux Oies, contributed to the artist's imagery, and how the brutal act of shooting, the death of geese and their blood found an expression in the Reopelle's monumental work Tribute to Rosa Luxemburg, a legacy piece, which he began in his studio on Île-aux-Oies in November 1992 after learning of the death in Paris of his former close companion, the American painter Joan Mitchel. The work was displayed in full at the MNBAQ (Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec - Quebec Museum of Fine Art) exhibition between January 29, 2014 - January 3, 2016.

Gilles Gagné in front of Riopelle's Tribute to Rosa Luxemburg

With this film, Bruni Boulianne brings into focus St Laurence River, especially its Isle aux Oises and Isle aux Grues which are actually two ends if the same landmass - the same long and narrow island in the middle of the river. He presents a skilled hunter Gille Gagné, a living incarnation of the place where he lives and practices his profession of the hunting guide in close connection with the elements, and of the times past, preserving the island's history and memory.

For thirty years, Gilles Gagné had guided the painter Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923 – 2002) to the most spectacular goose hunts. More than an accomplice of hunting, he became an ally to some of Riopelle's artistic creations, a witness of the passing time. Now, in the film, he hunts on similar trails with another French Canadian visual artist Marc Séguin.

Marc Séguin and Gilles Gagné (right) 

In addition to artistic allusions and art connections, the film presents Quebec regional nature and also an ethnographic study of the life on the island, featuring even a local Pierrot costume festival. The island's  inhabitants French also differs from the standard or Montreal French, not only in pronunciation but also in some vocabulary. For the Anglophone viewers, even those who speak French, future English subtitles would be helpful.

The photography aspect of the film is quite stunning. The orchestration of the nature camera shots, sounds, and the dance-like movement of the birds and branches form a visual and auditory symphony that is hypnotic and induces an almost meditative state.

Click on images to enlarge them.

The film might be of great interest to hunters and could be promoted in hunting clubs across the continent. On the other hand, it might create too great an interest, many wanting to coming to hunt on the island where the geese population is drastically diminishing and is no longer plentiful even for the local hunters.

CREATIVE TEAM

Les Films du 3 mars

With participation of GILLES GAGNÉ, MARC SÉGUIN, GINA VÉZINA

Editing: VINCENT GUIGNARD

Photography: ALEX MARGINEANU, FRANÇOIS VINCELETTE

Sound: STÉPHANE BARSALOU, MÉLANIE GAUTHIER

Sound Director MARTIN ALLARD, SIMON GERVAIS

Audio mixing: SERGE BOIVIN

Director, Script and Producer BRUNO BOULIANNE

FILM TRAILER on Vimeo

https://vimeo.com/252349740

For more information and FIFA film festival and scheduling, visit the Art FIFA website.

The Daisy Theatre

Ronnie Burkett, The Daisy Theatre, Photo Vanessa Rigaux

Centaur Theatre

49th Season

The Daisy Theatre

Quebec Premier 

Created and performed by Ronny Burkett

NOTE: For adults ONLY, 16 years and over.

February 20 - March 24, 2018

A world renowned puppeteer Ronnie Burkett makes his Centaur Theatre debut with over 40 personally hand-crafted marionettes. This is Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes' 13th production which follows previous international successes.

The audience will be surprised by the skill and mastery of the puppet manipulation and impersonations techniques displayed by Rony Burkett. Every puppet has a distinct personality and a unique voice, all their specific characteristics are portrayed and reproduced without skipping a beat. Spectators will also appreciate the puppets' many detailed movements and expressions, and the dexterity with which they are conjured. The vocal ranges and volumes Burkett projects are quite impressive. One only marvels how he manages not to over strain or injure his voice, regardless of the agility and diapason of his vocal cords.

Burkett puppets are the classical string-manipulated marionettes. Unlike some other puppeteers who prefer to remain hidden to the public, Burkett lets the audience to observe how he controls and animates his puppets from above. In this way, not only his puppets but he himself becomes a personage to look at, especially since he interacts directly with the audience, becoming the key character of the show he stages. At some instances, the puppets appear as a pretext to display his vocal and gestural choreography and to express, with an ironic twist, his take on many issues, mundane and political.    

Ronnie Burkett, Old Lady, Photo Vanessa Rigaux

The situation vignettes performed by the puppets were all written by Burkett himself. Yet he does not strictly adhere to any text but rather improvises according to his own and/or audiences's reactions and mood. Although he has a great number of puppets, he stages only a few such vignettes, and in the course of the evening he either chooses himself what he is going to present next, or asks the audience which particular personage they would like to see. This makes each performance quite unique.

Recognized as one of Canada’s foremost theatre artists, Ronnie Burkett has been credited with creating some of the world’s most elaborate puppetry. He designs and constructs all of his marionettes in a combination of hand-moulded papier maché pulp and hand-carved wood. Defining characteristics of each puppet, such as eye glasses, wrist watches, hats, and shoes, are fastidiously crafted with intricate detail. Though he works on several puppets concurrently, Mr. Burkett approximates that each one takes six weeks to make and an entire show roughly one year to mount, from concept to opening night.

Ronnie Burkett, Jolie Jolie, Photo Vanessa Rigaux

CREATIVE TEAM

Creator and Performer - Ronnie Burkett

Marionette, Costume and Set Design by Ronnie Burkett

Music and Lyrics and Sound Design by John Alcorn

Production Manager / Artistic Associate – Terri Gillis

Stage Manager – Crystal Salverda

Crystal Salverda, Ronnie Burkett and Eda Holmes at the Opening Night
Photo Nadia Slejskova

Click on images to enlarge them.

For more information, visit the Centaur Theatre website.

Sunday Chat-ups

Sunday, February 25 @ 12:30pm

FREE

Join Lucinda Chodan, Montreal Gazette’s editor in chief as she speaks with designer, director and puppeteer Clea Minaker.

In collaboration with the Montreal Gazette

Talk-Backs

Thursday, March 8

Following the performance.

FREE

Audiences are invited to stay 

after the show for a lively Q&A session