Editor's note: For the next five weeks, Coast Reporter will be presenting features on the 2010 Winter Olympics and how Sunshine Coast residents are getting involved in the Games.
The Richmond O Zone will come alive in the next few weeks, thanks in no small part to Roberts Creek artist Gord Halloran.
Halloran and his team of volunteers, many of whom who are also from the Sunshine Coast, have been commissioned to create a monumental installation called Ice Gate for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
Themassive artwork boldly coloured paintings made with ice and inspired by Canada's winter landscape will measure 30 metres across and four metres high and will be attached to a uniquely constructed wall of refrigerated aluminium plates, designed to keep the artwork pristine in all kinds of weather. The wall of paintings will be held in place against the plates by water frozen to the plates.
Halloran created and developed this art form of Paintings Below Zero.
He was Canada's only official representative at the Cultural Olympiad at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy and has been at work with a crew of artists in a cold storage studio-warehouse since early December 2009 in Richmond working on his latest creation. Here, in minus 28 degrees, he creates the paintings in large moulds pouring, freezing, breaking and re-shaping the ice into thick slabs of brightly coloured sculptural forms. These paintings are then attached to the wall, creating the finished artwork.
Halloran began this series with paintings on ice rinks in the early '90s. Exhibits include the Calgary Olympic Plaza, the World Figure Skating Championships in Edmonton, Toronto's Nathan Phillips Square and Millennium Park in Chicago, where more than 176,000 people came to see the work during one of the city's most inclement winters.
Ice Gate will be unveiled on Feb. 9 in Richmond at City Hall as Richmond is an official venue city for the Games. As part of Ice Gate, Performance Ice Gate (see page B1) will also be unveiled. More than 75 Sunshine Coast residents will participate in a specially-choreographed short dance, created by four Coast choreographers, to open the painting.
Visitors to Richmond will be able to view the work at city hall for the duration of the Olympics. For more information and photographs of the current work-in-progress, see http://theicegate.blogspot.com and for previous projects, see www.paintingsbelowzero.com.
