Le village imaginé (The Imaginary Village)
Le renard l'emporte, le suit à la trace…(The fox lunges, and follows the tracks...)
« Tendre des fils entre les maisons, tissus d'humanité.
Un village imaginaire.
Le noeud et ses maisons.
Une sculpture comme un phénomène: "L'esprit des lieux".
Une sculpture comme un conte.
Une sculpture qui habite.
Une sculpture que l'on habite. »
Houses bound together by sons and daughter, fabric of humanity
An imaginary village.
The knot and its dwellings.
A sculpture as a phenomenon: "The spirit of the place".
A sculpture as a story.
A sculpture that inhabits.
A sculpture in which one dwells.
Municipal public art collection
Title
Le village imaginé. "Le renard l'emporte, le suit à la trace..." (The Imaginary Village)
Artist
Pierre Bourgault
Materials
Weathering steel and aluminum
Completed
2004-2005
Installed
Inaugurated on June 15, 2005
Acquisition
The work was commissioned to mark the 350th anniversary of the arrival of Marguerite-Bourgeoys and the Great Recruitment of 1653.
Location
Marguerite-Bourgeoys Park
Borough of Le Sud-Ouest
Note on the artist
From a large family of sculptors in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Pierre Bourgault is a self-taught artist whose work can be viewed in one sense, among many, as offsetting the tension between concepts such as tradition and modernity. He remarks, "I do not want to stick to a traditional image…that is, the tradition adopted by my father who was also an artist…I had to reject these things to exist…not only to exist but to belong to my time."
Note on the work of art
The borough of Le Sud-Ouest presents Le Village imaginé. "Le renard l’emporte, le suit à la trace...", a work by artist Pierre Bourgault from Saint-Jean-Port-Joli. Acquired from an open public art competition, this sculpture commemorates the 350th anniversary of the Great Recruitment of 1653 and the arrival in Montréal of Marguerite Bourgeoys, founder of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame.
In this work, housing, an important element in Pierre Bourgault’s artistic vision, represents the difficult beginnings of the colony, then called Ville-Marie. The artist’s creative starting point was an Inuit string toy. The knot symbolizes the heart of the village, while the houses represent the cultural diversity of the neighbourhood.
Weathering steel or corten steel is a material that contains a percentage of copper that allows its surface to oxidize. Corten imparts some of its colour when touched, giving people a sensory reminder of its history before it fades.
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