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Past Event

BigArtTO at Richmond-Adelaide Centre

ShowLoveTO Event

Event Location: Richmond-Adelaide Centre, 130 Adelaide Street West, Old Toronto, M6K 1E4

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Event Dates & Times:

Nov. 23 2021, 5:00 p.m - 8:00 p.m

Nov. 24 2021, 5:00 p.m - 8:00 p.m

Nov. 25 2021, 5:00 p.m - 8:00 p.m

Nov. 26 2021, 5:00 p.m - 8:00 p.m

Nov. 27 2021, 5:00 p.m - 8:00 p.m

Event Image for BigArtTO at Richmond-Adelaide Centre

Film still from Cradle, directed by Warren Du Preez & Nick Thornton Jones in collaboration with Philip Beesley, music by Salvador Breed, 2021

BigArtTO presents Cradle by Philip Beesley, Warren du Preez, Nick Thornton-Jones & Salvador Breed

Presented with OCAD University.

Supported by Oxford Properties Group.

Tuesday November 23 - Saturday November 27, 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm nightly.

The film was recently shown as Cradle and the Grove installation at the 2021 Venice Biennale of Architecture.

The film and sound composition of Cradle offers viewers an intense experience inspired by the forms of Philip Beesley and collaborators' “living architecture” sculpture environments. The expressive material moves from inert crystalline minerals into surging life forms, creating an emotional passage that cycles between suffering and innocent wonder. Innumerable worlds can be seen falling into chaos and rising again in new life. Cradle's imagery is expressed in cycles. Although it contains deep hope, it also embraces the fears that are flooding through humanity today as we witness planetary-scale destruction. The short work is adapted from a longer projected work entitled Grove Cradle presented at the 2021 Venice Biennale of Architecture. Senior Canadian artist Philip Beesley returned to the Biennale with this CGI-based high-resolution film, created in collaboration with Cannes Lion-winning London-based directors Warren du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones, with sound by Amsterdam-based composer Salvador Breed and 4DSOUND.

Messages within the experimental architecture of Cradle offer restorative and healing qualities. The film starts with glimpses of the emergence of life forming in intricate worlds. A vision of a child is gently held within a delicate lace-like network, and we suddenly cut to a tangled image of innumerable smashed and broken forms, flooded with the bilious red colours we recognize as the fog of war. In a blink of an eye, we cut again, to a fleeting glimpse of a glowing garden-like reef. Are we seeing the future or only our lost past? Might the new life that we saw emerge from the almost unspeakable disasters now unfold in our world? In vast movements within the film, we accelerate outward to the scale of an entire alien planet. The surface of the world slowly turns. Still moving backwards, the planet recedes into dark, open space. A bloom of light rises from deep within the centre of the spherical nest and falls again. We are moving into distant outer space. The camera cuts to a final outward motion cast over the shattered field that we first saw early in the film. As the film closes, we are flooded by dark, cold, alien light and see one last fading vision of a seemingly endless silent desert accompanied by glimmers of light that imply new beginnings.

About BigArtTO: Explore Art Across The City

Experience art illuminated at BigArtTO, a city-wide public art celebration featuring free access to temporary public artworks projected onto local buildings and landmarks. Created by Toronto artists, the projections will play on a loop so that visitors can arrive at any time. Part of ShowLoveTO.

BigArtTO is the result of a collaboration between the City of Toronto with OCAD University and AVA Animation & Visual Arts Inc.

View all BigArtTO events here.