In 2018, Near North Mobile Media Lab, White Water Gallery and Aanmitaagzi once again teamed up to present the seventh biennial installation of the Ice Follies arts festival. For this year’s Ice Follies, Aanmitaagzi presented a series of installations from their ongoing Serpent People project alongside artists Aylan Couchie, Reece Terris, Chris Kosloski & Andrew Ackerman, and others.

Ice Follies is biennial festival of contemporary and community-engaged art on frozen lake Nipissing. Ice follies takes art out of the gallery and puts it on display on frozen Lake Nipissing, inviting audiences to engage with works situated off shore from the North Bay waterfront (Marathon Beach) and along the shores of Nipissing First Nation.

The theme for 2018 was Exposing to Strengthen: The creation of ice roads requires the clearing of snow to expose the ice to the cold. The snow is cleared well beyond the used roadway to ensure safe ice thickness from the center to the edges of the used portion of the ice road. What do we bring to light, allow or expose so a strengthening can occur?

Ice Follies opened to curious audiences with nine installations to explore off Marathon Beach in North Bay. Warmed with chili, hot chocolate, and by gathering in the heated prospector tent or by the fire in the tipi, community members took in the show with temperate weather. Artists were on hand to talk about their work, and visitors got to interact with some of the pieces first hand.

Ice Ollies, a snow skate park, had a crew of skate and snowboarders getting maximum air while checking out the scenery. Reece Terris’ piece invited visitors to come inside and get a peak down into the depths of the lake in the Darkhouse. Aylan Couchie’s formidable netted ice house sculture now is time to see the truth lit up from within as night fell on the shoreline. Aanmitaagzi’s interactive four piece installation series The Serpent People, allowed visitors to experience storytelling as form, and add their own experience to the pieces.

Visitors peaked their head into the every expanding vista of Eric Robillard’s Infinite Patterns. Andrew Ackerman and Chris Kosloski’s Embodied Terrains as seen upon entering the site, appears as floating orbs of light and motion, only to be revealed on closer inspection as buried pipelines to surreal projections. Melanie Atkins’ She Spoke Peace set further away toward the expansive vista of the lake, invited audiences to reflect on what peace means to them. Part performance, part live action install – Northern Ontario’s Drew Gauley penned his mark in the snow via snowblower to reveal Frozen Messages for Nipissing.