FANFARE

FANFARE is a public artwork comprised of 24 concrete pillars that are wrapped with collaged archival photographs. The work documents a historical timeline of Minoru Arenas and Minoru Park that begins with the Brighouse horse-racing track, built and opened in 1909, and ends with a nod to the Holland Heineken House, hosted in this arena during the 2010 Winter Olympics. This project pays tribute to a 101-year span of sporting history; the horse track is depicted on the first pair of columns while the second pair documents early aviation on the Brighouse field. Each successive pair of pillars pushes forward in time with its own sport or event theme. Archival images of actively engaged athletes, horses and planes have been digitally removed from larger images to create collages that are meant to suggest the energy, excitement and noise of athletic endeavour. The images, because they are wrapped in three-dimensional space move into the area of abstraction. The viewer would need to move around each pillar to receive the “whole story” of the images. Each pillar is unique with small moments to discover. In a nod to photographic history, an image by Russian constructivist photographer, Alexander Rodchenko, who was an early pioneer of photographic collage has been added to the work. There is also an image by English photographer Eadweard Muybridge who is most remembered for his stop-motion images of running horses which were taken to prove that, while running, all four of the horse’s feet leave the ground — an appropriate metaphor for the breathless rush and freedom felt by skaters gliding quickly over ice for the pure joy of it.