Public Artwork

Le jardin secret de Spica

Rober Racine, Le Jardin secret de Spica, 2001
Location:
The National Gallery of Canada, 380 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1N 9N4, Canada
Artwork creator(s): 
Racine, Rober
Text author(s): 
Racine, Rober
Installation year: 
2001
Description: 

Fifty deep blue plates are arranged in the courtyard. They all feature the names of stars - some familiar, others less. Spica, for example, is a magnitude 1 star in the Virgo Constellation, according to the brightness scale invented by Hipparchus. Attached to walls or set on metal supports planted in the ground, these plates evoke the labels that identify plants in a botanical garden. A garden of words, Le Jardin de Spica is part of a larger project by Rober Racine, a work in progress that also includes Le Parc de la langue française. But the grouped plates also evoke a starry sky. Inspired by the Apollo missions in a number of his works, the artist, like astronauts, remains driven both by scientific curiosity and by a sense of wonder at the immensity of the universe.

Text of the artwork: 

Acrab

Alamak

Alaraph

Albireo

Alderamin

Alioth (on wall)

Alkaid (on wall)

Alpheratz

Altaïr

Alula

Boreale

Antarès

Arcturus

Atlas (on wall)

Bellatrix

Betelgeuse

Capella

Cor

Caroli

Denobola

Deneb

Cygni

Dschubba

Dubhe (on wall)

Enif Gemma

Genia Izar (on wall)

Kochab

Kuma

Lesath

Maia

Markab

Merak (on wall)

Mira (on wall)

Mirach (on wall)

Mizar (on wall)

Mufrid

Phekda (on wall)

Pherkad

Polaris (on wall)

Ras

Elased

Australe

Regulus

Sadr

Sargas

Scheat

Seginus

Sirius (on wall)

Spica

Véga (on wall)

Vindemiatrix

Wezen

Zosma

Artwork theme: 
French language, stars, music
History: 
Artwork designed on behalf of the National Gallery of Canada, as a tribute to the Jeux de la Francophonie, which took place in Ottawa-Gatineau in 2001.

Dimensions:

Height: 
0.23m
Width: 
0.148m
Note(s): 

The names of the 50 stars are printed on 50 plates and installed on the ground and walls of the museum's courtyard. The names are listed here alphabetically. They are distributed randomly on the plates on-site. "When the name of a star contains the name of a note on the music scale [in French: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, ut], it is written in italics," explains Rober Racine.

 

There were some artistic precursors to the Jardin secret de Spica project, including a mural in the Rober Racine exhibition at the National Gallery (November 23, 2001 - February 24, 2002) and a series of four pages in the magazine Parachute ("Spica," in Parachute, no 96, October-December 1999, no page number). Rather than "plates" (such as the work is described on-site), the installation consists of "word-steles," as the artist calls them. On each deep blue, shiny-as-the-night-sky word-stele, the name of a star appears. The one on which the name "Spica" is written is the centerpiece of the work. It appears discreetly in the middle of a square of pinkish stones, a marked difference from the grey pebbles that are mostly used in the couryard. The other forty-nine metal plates are planted in the ground or attached to the stone walls of the courtyard (see example of the Merak word-stele in the photograph above).

Propriétaire(s): 
National Gallery of Canada
Document(s): 

Racine has a way of defining things

Lehmann, Henry (2002).  Racine has a way of defining things. The Gazette. (January 19), p. H4