Press Dossier BilbaoJardín 2007 Table of contents Page 3: Contest information Page 4: Presentation Page 5: Gardens from invited creatives Page 13: Project’s statistics Page 14: 20 selected projects Page 16: Gardens location Page 18: Designs 2 Contest information Bilbao City Council and Fundación Bilbao 700 – III Millenium Fundazioa organizes 1st Gardening Contest, BilbaoJardín 2007. 1st Gardening Contest BilbaoJardín 2007 Garden’s execution from May 28th to June 3rd Contest’s opening on June 4th Jury’s verdict in the opening on June 4th Garden’s Exhibition from June 4th to August 5th 3 Presentation There are important international gardening contests in the world, but they are all rurally focused. The Bilbao contest, however, is particularly interesting because it takes place in the middle of the city, in an urban environment. The jury will select 20 projects, which will be carried out and remain exhibited for a period of two months. This way, people will see the gardens as they walk around the city streets and squares, a fascinating, formative and fun route of urban discovery. The winner will be given the opportunity to design a new garden in the city; this way, the efforts of the contestants will not be forgotten. Also, five prestigious creators will design an off-contest garden and form part of the jury. 4 Gardens from invited creatives In this edition, four creators design their own gardens: Oscar Tusquets and Cerabella Javier Mariscal Ailanto Ouka Leele The fifth garden is executed by the Contest Consultant, prestigious landscape gardener Artur Bossy, with the ideas from five emblematic cooks from the city which express the essence from Bilbao cooking. Fernando Canales, Etxanobe Daniel García, Zortziko José Martínez Arija, Guggenheim Víctor Montes, Víctor Montes Santiago Díez Ponzoa, El Perro Chico The assigned places for these five gardens are: Diputación – Arbieto Oscar Tusquets Ramón Rubial Statue– Abandoibarra Javier Mariscal Euskalduna Ailanto Paseo Campo de Volantín (in front of city hall) Ouka Leele Plaza Arriaga Artur Bossy 5 Oscar Tusquets Architect by profession, designer by adaptation, painter by vocation and writer out of the need to make friends, Oscar Tusquets Blanca is the prototype of the all-round artist brought on the verge of extinction by the specialization of the modern world. Born in Barcelona in 1941, among other awards he has received the Premio Nacional de Diseño, the Medalla de Oro al Mérito en las Bellas Artes, the insignia of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and the Creu de Sant Jordi. At the present time he is working on a new extension for the Palau de la Música Catalana in the project Porta Firal in Gran Via from Hospitalet and in a proposal from Metropolitana di Napoli. In 1994 he appeared on the writing scene with Más que discutible (Tusquets Editores); in 1998 he published Todo es comparable and in 2000 Dios lo ve (both titles issued by Editorial Anagrama). He has recently published Dalí y otros amigos and Anna (RqueR Editorial). 6 Cerabella Born in 1862 in a candle workroom in the Raval quarter in Barcelona, Cerabella has actually become in an enterprise over five generations working in design and creation of candles. Their collections (Boutique, Parfum, Garden, Celebration, Christmas, Sybilla, Art Collection) are presented in national and international trade exhibitions and they collaborate with creators such as André Ricard, Sybilla, Òscar Tusquets, Javier Mariscal and Martín Ruiz de Azúa. That never ends to bring new visions on shape, on texture, and on usefulness about lighting with candles. Their interest for culture has brought Cerabella to take part in different projects as the exhibit of “Icar” by Peter Greenaway, performances by Muma, lighting cities with candles, or the lighting of the gardens of Festival Grec de Teatro de Barcelona. 7 Javier Mariscal Javier Mariscal (Valencia, 1950). Since he took up a pencil in the 1970s to earn his living, the life and the career of Javier Mariscal have been characterized by his creative incontinence, by his need to express himself through multiple disciplines, whether artistic ones or not. Furniture design, painting, sculpture, illustration, interior design, graphic design, landscape painting, gardening, horticulture and so on have been the object of his professional, vital activity. Mariscal expresses himself by means of a personal language that is complex in its intention and simple in its declaration, innocent and provocative at the same time, which serves him to innovate, to risk himself and communicate, to carry on tickling the eyes of those who gaze upon his work and to create complicity with the other person. 8 Ailanto Ailanto is the trademark for the designs of the twin brothers Iñaki and Aitor Muñoz sited in Barcelona since 1992. Born in Bilbao in 1968, they moved to Barcelona, where they both got graduated in Fine Arts at the Barcelona University. Meanwhile Iñaki studied Fashion Design at IADE. The Ailanto universe is mainly visual, distinguished by its combination of colors, geometry on its shapes and the references to vanguard artistic movements. In 1995 Ailanto begins its introduction into the national fashion market through its participation at Barcelona Fashion Week – Gaudí, and Madrid Fashion Week, by distributing its collections throughout the main sales outlets in the country. Their international debut is in 1999, by participating at the fashion show Prêt-à-Porter Paris (Atmosphères) and the Designers Week at Workshop Paris and Tranoï. Their main market is Japan, UK, United States, Belgium and Italy. Since 2002 Ailanto collections have been presented at Pasarela Cibeles in Madrid. In June 2004 Ailanto joins to Asociación de Creadores de Moda de España, presided over by Modesto Lomba. In November 2004 Ailanto is awarded “Premio al Mejor Diseñador” by the fashion magazine Glamour ad as well the Premio Llongueras de Moda e Imagen (which jury was formed by the directors of the main fashion magazines in Spain). 9 Ouka Leele Born in Madrid on June, 1957. Since she was a child she had spent the most of her time drawing. She studied painting and discovers photography by herself at Photocentro, and her need of painting and black and white leaded her to fuse painting and photography. She met Ceesepe, Alberto García Alix and El Hortelano and then she decides to be a self- taught person. In Barcelona she met Mariscal, Nazario, Barceló (and some other) which will be modeling for her in the series PELUQUERÍA (1979 Barcelona and 1980 Madrid). She moved to New York and Mexico and comes back to Madrid in the middle of the movida in 1981, and then she where she designs the hats for Almodovar’s film Laberinto de Pasiones. In 1984 she began to be represented by Vu, and from that moment she exhibits her work in Sao Paolo (Biennale), Madrid, (Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo), Paris (Fondation Cartier), and after her daughter was born she turned into pure painting with a great success. She obtained the Bibliophile National Award for her drawings and serigraphy for El cantar de los cantares; she design a mural which will be the basis for the film La mirada de OUKA-LEELE by Rafael Gordon. In 2004 she is awarded by the Comunidad de Madrid Culture Award for its career achievements. She designs her retrospective “Pulpo’s Boulevard” and issues Floraleza (by editorial Ellago); she executes the works for “Don Quijote de la Mancha” and the anthology Ouka Leele’ that obtains the National Photography Award. In 2007 she gets closer to the stage and designs the costumes and the stage design for Curlew River, an opera by Benjamin Britten. 10 Artur Bossy Artur Bossy, Barcelona 1964, begins on landscaping very young, through his grandparent in their lands. Born in a remarkable dentists family, being at the crisis point of choosing a future, he finally decides (against his parent will, who otherwise would praise this choice over the years and) bohemia as a way of making a living and having fun at the same time. As one can read at the prologue of his first book, by Antoni Sala i Bohigas “his creative incontinence brings all of us to vibration”. That definition of his personality shows the aim that his work gets impregnated of and defines his relationship with his clients, who are the real “manna” of his works “a work will be much better as good as it gets the feeling with the client” Artur Bossy, enrolled at Escuela Nicolau Maria Rubió i Tudurí under the auspices of one of the great masters on landscaping and gardening in Spain, Joan Pañella, who always trusted him and his enthusiasm. At that time there was not any degree, so in that school is where he soaks up all the passion for botanic and for the “creation of the emptiness” mystery. Later, he becomes the first Spanish granted at the US, at the extraordinary gardens of Longwood, Kenneth Square, and he accedes to the northern Europe botanic with a large stage in the Netherlands where he improves his acknowledgements on tropical horticulture. Artur Bossy had only worked in one corporation as long as he always directed his own business, after underestimating countless proposals: it is his choice for future. He was contracted as a curator of Jardí Botànic Mar i Murtra in Blanes, where he also impulses the germoplasm bank and the works in order to recuperate the endemic flora at the Iberia Peninsula. Among his achievements, the cloned reproduction, the recovery of the number of individuals of a extinguished specie in Menorca Lysimachia minoricesis which has been reintroduced in the Balearic Islands and also in Jardí Botànic Mar i Murtra of Blanes and in the Jardí Botànic de Barcelona.