Print Recalls Old Winnipeg Airport

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Simon Hughes, "John Grahamʼs 1963 mural Northern Lights at the Winnipeg International Airport (now destroyed)," 2017

edition of 15 serigraph prints on Stonehenge paper printed by Andrew Lodwick, 14" x 52"

Winnipeg's Martha Street Studio has launched a new print edition based on John Graham’s abstract mural, Northern Lights, which graced the city's old airport terminal for almost 50 years. The edition of 15 serigraph prints by Winnipeg artist Simon Hughes is a scale replica of the massive abstract made from tile, aluminum and coloured Plexiglas."The airport was a classic international-style modernist building that was torn down recently," says Hughes. The mural, originally commissioned for the airport, which opened in 1964, was taken apart and sent to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa, which plans to display it. Hughes says his project was driven by frustration over public indifference to the city's loss of something he considers beautiful. "It expresses a nostalgia for a kind of golden age of ambitious public art in Canada, when artists, government and architecture seemed to share a common purpose within the project of modernism." The serigraph, based on a watercolour Hughes completed in 2014, was  reconstructed digitally and then printed by master printer Andrew Lodwick.