The sun comes out and we forget — for a few months at least — how much we hated Canada during the snowstorms, hail, sleet and bitter cold. The stage is set, then, for an exhaustive exhibition of our country’s love for the great outdoors: Play>Nation, appropriately opening on Canada Day (tomorrow) at the Design Exchange.
Covering a melange of disciplines — from industrial and graphic design to apparel and Canadian icons — the show explores how the objects used by early settlers and First Nation peoples for survival have been transformed into items of sport and leisure in modern culture, like canoes. Work by the likes of multidisciplinary artist and writer Doug Coupland, painter Charles Pachter and sculptor and photographer Diana Thorneycroft, among others, redefine the concept of play and explore the “universal language” of the Canadian outdoors. Show-goers looking for their five minutes can also email photographs of themselves enjoying the out-of-doors to be included in a photo wall being erected at the entrance of the exhibit.
And while you’re at the DX, stop by the Out Of Sorts exhibit, on display for free until August 21; in the wake of the (allegedly) dying print medium, the show explores the world of book design, from the cover design to typography.
Play>Nation, July 1 – October 10, at the Design Exchange.
