New winter art festival will light up Exchange District

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This article was published 08/12/2022 (704 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Exchange District will flick the switch on a new winter festival in January.

Lights on the Exchange, which will begin Jan. 21, 2023, and run until March 21, aims to shine a spotlight — not to mention projections, LEDs and other bits of brightness at some of the historic district’s landmarks and businesses — while highlighting the artists who design the luminescent displays.

“How do we use this environment as a canvas and see what artists can do with it?” David Pensato, the executive director of the Exchange District BIZ, asked at a press conference Thursday at Artspace, one of the likely locations for the lighting displays.

The festival, which is being presented by the Exchange District BIZ, Artspace, the Winnipeg Arts Council and Manufacturing Entertainment, a city audio-visual company led by artists Julie Gendron and Emma Hendrix, is inspired by similar events around the world, such as Luminothérapie in Montreal and Fête des lumières in Lyon, France. However, organizers say Winnipeg, and the Exchange District in particular, is also ideal for a winter celebration of lights.

Several city artists, including award-winning visual artist Diana Thorneycroft, have been commissioned to design the installations, which will use many types of lighting, from LED bulbs to video projections, to highlight storefronts, historic buildings — the Artspace building is 122 years old — and other places where people gather in the summer, but less so in winter.

“Winnipeg in general has embraced that winter does shape who we are,” says Eric Plamondon, an artist and Artspace’s executive director, who calls the Exchange District the city’s creative campus. “When you think about where you want to be and where can different voices be heard through art, your mind automatically goes to the Exchange District.

“It’s not only about, ‘Hey, come into our galleries’; we’re inviting people to come into our space and we’ll meet you there.”

Pensato says the illuminated installations can serve as a beacon for people to explore the neighbourhood before and after attending entertainment and sporting events in January, February and March.

“We have a special ecosystem in the Exchange District with all the arts groups, organizations and community groups,” Pensato says. “Things don’t have to be specifically focused on business for it to be good for business. I see the arts community and the business community in the Exchange District being symbiotically aligned.”

The installations will be illuminated in stages, with the first ones being lit on Jan. 21 and others to be turned on as the festival progresses.

He offered no details about what the installations would look like, nor where precisely where they would be located.

“We will be concentrating it along Bannatyne (Avenue) and Old Market Square as the spine,” he says. “It’s the give-and-take between the artists and the locations. It should all be visible within walking distance (of each other).”

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @AlanDSmall