More than thirty years in the making, the 200-acre Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park is home to over a hundred steel sculptures – artist Jeffrey Rubinoff’s life’s work.

Podcast about the 2023 Forum on Art and Music

Fiji Mermaid Radio Program Episode Sep 13 2023
Topic: 2023 JRSP Company of Ideas Forum on Art and Music
Produced by: Pascalle Sabine Ricard, MA Candidate, Art History & Visual Studies University of Victoria

Description: Ricard presents excerpts from the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park Company Of Ideas Forum. This years Forum was on the theme of Art and Music.

Click here to listen

2023 Park Openings Dates and Concert Performances

Jeffrey Rubinoff wanted the Park to be a place for the appreciation of non-commodity values of art. As such, there is no charge for admittance, or for tours, concerts, or events. The sculptures are permanently sited. They are not for sale, and cannot be shown in another museum or any other context.

2023 Public openings are 9:30 am to 1:30 pm on the following days:

Tuesday July 4
Thursday July 6

Tuesday July 11
Thursday July 13

Tuesday July 18
Thursday July 20

Tuesday July 25
Thursday July 27– GO FISH 10am to 230pm

Friday July 28 – GO FISH – 10am to 230pm & Artist Talk Event 7-9pm
Saturday July 29 – GO FISH – 10am to 230pm
Sunday July 30 – GO FISH – 10am to 230pm

Tuesday August 1 — 12pm Concert – See below for Details
Thursday August 3 — 12pm Concert – See below for Details

Tuesday August 8
Thursday August 10

Masters of Counterpoint Series August 1st and 3rd, 2023
Tuesday August 1 @ 12pm
Edvard Grieg, String Quartet No.1, Op.27
Intermission
Beethoven String Quartet No. 4 in C minor (Op. 18, No. 4)  [ Movements 1 & 2 only] 

Thursday August 3 @ 12pm
Dmitri Shostakovich, String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110
Intermission
Beethoven String Quartet No. 4 in C minor (Op. 18, No. 4)  [ Movements 3 & 4 only] 

The Borealis String Quartet will perform the selected repertoire to highlight the connection between counterpoint in musical and sculptural form.

Please bring a blanket or folding chairs and enjoy the performance outdoors in our amphitheatre. We encourage visitors to arrive early, reserve a spot, and then peruse the park. We also encourage visitors to bring sunscreen and water, it will be a hot day. Washrooms will not be available during the concert.

Guided Tours
Custom Tours can be booked on any opening day, other than concert openings. Tours generally depart around 10am

Please email curator@rubinoffsculpturepark.org to book a spot on the tour.

Anahí González selected as Rubinoff Guest Curator to develop exhibit on White Oaks Sculpture

Anahí GonzálezAnahí González is a visual artist, scholar and curator based in London, Ontario. She was selected in December 2022 to produce an exhibit at the JRSP on Rubinoff’s 70’s era White Oaks sculptures.

Most recently, she was part of the AGO x RBC Emerging Artist Exchange program working on the Latin American collection. She guest curated Migration Stories Whispered in My Ear / Me Susurran Al Oído Historias de Migrantes at McIntosh Gallery and co-curated Symphony of Lights at the ArtLab. Gonzaléz graduated with a Master of Visual Arts from Western University. She is currently working towards a Ph.D. in Art and Visual Culture at Western University, with an interest in photography and human labour.

She has held programming and juror positions at Forest City Gallery, Museum London, and UAdeC (Universidad Autonoma de Coahuila, Mexico). She is Contributing Editor at Embassy Cultural House and a Research Associate of the Creative Food Research Collaboratory. Her work has been included in exhibitions and screenings in countries such as Mexico, Norway, Canada, Spain, and France.

JRSP featured in Canada wide listing of sculpture parks

Canadian national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, has featured The Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park among its list of eleven sculpture parks of Canada.

Link to Globe and Mail article published May 12, 2021

2023 Forum on Art and Music - Proceedings on You Tube

ABOUT THE 2023 COMPANY OF IDEAS FORUM ON ART AND MUSIC
—Download Proceedings—

The arts have been compared for thousands of years. From Horace’s notion of ‘ut pictura poesis’ and the paragone debates of the Renaissance, theorists and practitioners have long been fascinated by the similarities and differences between painting and sculpture, poetry and music. Some, such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, believed these disciplines were fundamentally different: the former being ‘spatial’ while the latter being ‘temporal’. Others instead stressed their affinities: at the end of the nineteenth century, Walter Pater famously claimed that ‘all art constantly aspires to the condition of music’.

Jeffrey Rubinoff was himself profoundly influenced by music. He aimed to give his sculpture ‘rhythm’, ‘harmony’, ‘melody’ and ‘syncopation’, and even nicknamed one series his ‘Brandenburg Concertos’. In many respects he worked like a classical composer: creating motifs then developing and recapitulating them sequentially. Above all, he drew on the musical notion of counterpoint. Just as a composer combines multiple voices in one work, so he attempted to create a conversation of visual polyphonies, within and between sculptures, and with the spectacular landscape that surrounds them.

Over the last hundred years, old distinctions between the arts have become increasingly blurred. From Luigi Russolo and Marcel Duchamp onwards, a number of modern and postmodern artists experimented with sound and music. Contemporary practitioners now move freely between disciplines, artforms and media, combining visual, aural and textual dimensions. Many no longer even use categories such as painting, sculpture, poetry or music, but speak of ‘sound art’, ‘audio art’, ‘sonic art’ and ‘transmedia’ or ‘multi-media’ practices.

At this year’s Forum, we’ll explore the complex and fascinating relationship between visual art and music. Over two days, delegates will interrogate a cluster of related questions. These include but are not limited to:

  • How have theorists compared art and music over the centuries?
  • How have visual artists used the dimension of time?
  • Did abstraction bring these artforms closer together?
  • How have visual artists and musicians collaborated?
  • How far have multi-media practices dissolved old cultural categories?
  • How have digital technologies altered the relationship between these and other artforms?
  • How have artists used sound to raise awareness about non-western cultural traditions, colonial histories and climate change?

 

DAY 1 PRESENTATIONS

Dr Vanessa Brassey, King’s College London
Time for Beauty

 Samantha Chang, University of Toronto
Listening to Painting: Music Inside the Painter’s Studio

 Dr Michelle Liu, Monash University
Abstract Art & Music

Seth Kim-Cohen, Art Institute of Chicago
We’re Trying To Get A Light On Him Now

Pascalle Ricard
Squeaking Chairs & Mechanical Clatter: The Puppets Forsaken, Sculpture Informed by Noise Music

Miranda Carroll
Art as Instrument: Exploring Urban Sonic Spaces in Étienne Paquette’s Instrument à Vent

Lewis Nicholson
The Sound of Clay: The Curious Life of The Ocarina

Shaylin Allison
Anishinaabe drumming and visual art: engagements and influences

 

DAY 2 PRESENTATIONS

Prof. Paul Walde (University of Victoria) in conversation with James Fox
Notating Nature: Reflections on Scoring Techniques

 Jess Conn-Potegal & Karun Koernig in conversation with Josh Fitzgerald
Sculpture in Elastic Space

Daniela O’Fee
Transmissions: Sonic Improvisations on the Sculptures of Jeffrey Rubinoff

 Vaughn Neville in conversation with James Fox
Making Paintings and Making Music

Vithória Konzen Dill
The S(ex) Tapes (2020): Conveying the Rawness and Vulnerability of Heartbreak Through Film and Music 

 McKaila Ferguson
“Raynershine”: Gordon Rayner, Abstract Expressionism, and The Artists’ Jazz Band

Megan Austin
Finding Rhythm: Melodic Interventions of the Body in Naamsa Tsabar’s Sculpture

Anna O’Meara
A Space Beyond Space: Arnold Schönberg, Isidore Isou & the Kabbalah

 

The Rubinoff sculpture collection

The  Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park is the permanent site for over a hundred works by sculptor Jeffrey Rubinoff. Rubinoff spent over three decades reshaping the land to best showcase his artistic output.

He established the Sculpture Park to ensure perpetual access to and interpretation of the collection. The Park was also founded to promote the study and understanding of art as a source of knowledge.

Rubinoff believed that ‘art was an act of will in accord with a mature conscience’, and that the knowledge it contained and expressed could play an important role in the evolution of ideas, as well as its viewers’ consciences.

RUBINOFF COLLECTION OVERVIEW

Early Works

Series 1

Series 2

Series 3

Series 4

Series 5

Series 6

Series 7

Series 8

Series 9

Early Works

Series 1

Series 2

Series 3

Series 4

Series 5

Series 6

Series 7

Series 8

Series 9