Sunshine Coast artist Gordon Halloran, creator of the Ice Painting, will take Canada to the world with his ice art installation Pitture Sotto Zero to the XX Olympic Winter Games as the only Canadian visual artist in the official line up of the 2006 Cultural Olympiad.
Paintings Below Zero, a collection of abstract paintings in ice, will be featured as a special homage to Canada as the next host of the Olympic Winter Games. The Fortezza di Fenestrelle, the largest military fort in Europe, located in the mountains outside Turin, is slated to host Halloran and his huge, icy, colourful paintings. Halloran's works will stretch across floors, up walls and in the windows of the ancient church on the site. The entire chiesa will be brought to below freezing to accommodate the artwork. This kind of installation - the location, the art form - has never been tried before. Jan. 28, 2006 is the date for the opening.
From his studio in Roberts Creek, Halloran is now planning the ambitious exhibit. A huge shipping container, packed with the essential refrigeration substructure (which will provide the base for the paintings) left Wednesday from Victoria. The artist will load the container, insulating buckets of ice paint with bubble wrap, for the three-week ocean journey to Italy. He's packing tools, machinery and hockey gear, among other things.
Pitture Sotto Zero/Paintings Below Zero takes its inspiration from the Canadian winter landscape and the artist's experience playing hockey as a boy on homemade, backyard ice rinks. This new art form blends colour, composition and new technological processes developed in Canada into a showcase of the imaginative energy of Canadian art.
The 450-year-old fortress where Halloran's work will be showcased stretches across the mountain top for 3.5 km and is the symbol of the people and the region of Piemonte. The artist's work will be featured solo as the only Olympic event at the site.
In August of 2004, after years of proposals, Halloran received the official invitation from the Turin Olympic Committee to create an installation of ice paintings for the Cultural Olympiad of the 2006 Olympic Winter Games.
Because of Olympic regulations, Halloran was not given any financial assistance to produce the work, although the project is widely supported in media and marketing materials produced by the Turin Olympic Committee. With little more than a year to raise the funds, Halloran attracted a number of cultural sponsors, through the non-profit Ice Painting Project Society, including the Province of British Columbia, Legacies Now, Foreign Affairs Canada and the Sprott Foundation.
