Sometimes, a symbol is enough. In this case, a red sail. Many red sails, which color the streets of Venice, its navigable canals, skirt the islands of the lagoon and cross the San Marco basin. It had happened in 2019, but there is still a need for red sails and so Melissa McGill’s artistic performance returns on Sunday 20 June, at 2 pm About thirty are expected, strictly sails to the third.
A “revolutionary” regatta
In reality, it was and will be a sail, without winners, except Venice. The starting point is the performance of 2019, when about fifty boats went into the water. About thirty are expected for Sunday 20.
The event is organized on the occasion of the presentation of McGill’s book “Red Regatta”, which will be presented later. “But it is also a tribute to all the protagonists of the Red Regatta held in 2019 and in particular to the memory of Giorgio Righetti, the president of the Vela al Terzo Association of Venice, one of the key figures for the realization of the performance, who passed away last May” , explains the artist.
In the volume, 200 pages and over 250 color images, McGill tells the genesis of the 2019 project, which involved the Vela al Terzo Association, the only one in Venice to involve shipowners. A performative and site-specific work, an artistic action born from McGill’s bond with the lagoon city and designed to raise the urgency of preserving the balance between the human dimension, urban landscape and natural environment through the transversal link given by water . “In the course of my life – explains MGill – I have witnessed the dramatic changes that have involved Venice and I have heard my Venetian friends express deep concern about the transformation of the city due to the rise in sea level, mass tourism, climate change, pollution and rapid population decline ”.
Today that tourism finally returns to animate the streets of Venice, retracing the steps of that project – says McGill – “becomes the offer of a reflection on the importance of facing the so-called” return to normality “in a sustainable and conscious way” .
On the occasion of the book’s release, the artist will also present an exhibition in London at the Mazzoleni gallery, whose first location is in Turin