Sunfest 2025 unveils artist lineup
Sunfest 2025 will be packed with music, dancing, food, and drink when it returns to Victoria Park from July 3 – 6.
In its 31 years, Sunfest has grown from a small local event to an international attraction and brand.
It is also an economic driver for the city.
'We have the economic studies that show that, you know, 20 to 25 per cent of attendance are coming from outside of London and other parts of Canada, and even all over the parts of the world,' said Alfredo Caxaj, the founder of Sunfest.
Sunfest began with a focus on international acts, and this year it will feature more than 20, including groups from Cuba and Africa.
'We have a great band from DR Congo this year,' highlighted Mercedes Caxaj, the artistic co-director. 'They make all of their outfits and all of their instruments. They're known as an Afro-futuristic, punk, eco-friendly collective.'
She added that the international sounds of Sunfest will be met equally by homegrown talent.
'This year we are really seeing a big focus on Indigenous voices, especially from across Canada and internationally. We also have women-led voices as well,' explained Mercedes.
Sunfest Chair Paula Jesty hopes all featured artists will bring smiles to attendees' faces amidst an increasingly polarized world.
'I think now more than ever in the world we live in, we need organizations like Sunfest. We need to remember and to celebrate,' said Jesty.
And if people take time to do just that, Alfredo concedes he would be moved, 'By all of you, by the local community, international people. This is so beautiful because it's so meaningful.'
A free kickoff block party for Sunfest will be held this weekend at London Brewing Co-op on Burbrook Place.
More information on Sunfest acts can be found online.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CTV News
2 hours ago
- CTV News
‘To come home': Back to Batoche Days wraps up
Image shows 71-year-old Marion Gonneville in the jigging finals on Sunday. (CTV News/Stacey Hein) After four days of celebrating Métis culture and community, Back to Batoche Days wrapped up Sunday evening. Elder Norman Fleury described the festival as one big family reunion. 'We're bringing people home here,' said Fleury, a provincial elder with Métis Nation–Saskatchewan. 'This is a place to connect with your distinction, with your identity, your music, your stories, your dance, your languages.' Fleury says roughly 40,000 people attended the event to reunite and connect with their community. Back to Batoche Days features cultural music, dancing, entertainment and competitions. Many Métis artists also set up shop during the festival. Miguel Vielfaure owns Etchiboy, a Winnipeg-based business specializing in a variety of Métis items, including arrowed sashes. 'It's probably where there's the most amount of Métis people gathering in one weekend. So, for me, it's my biggest weekend of the year,' Vielfaure said. Back to Batoche Days is internationally recognized as a significant Métis cultural celebration, welcoming people from across Canada and beyond. Marion Gonneville, 71, travelled from Vancouver to attend the festival and take part in the jigging competitions. 'To come home and to be among your own people, you feel really good,' Gonneville said. Ron DesJarlais travelled 710 kilometres from Rocky Mountain House, Alta., to attend the festival for the second time. 'Everybody's just so friendly and gives you that welcome feeling,' he said.
CTV News
3 hours ago
- CTV News
Award-winning filmmaker and playwright Michael Melski dies at 56
Award-winning playwright and filmmaker Michael Melski, from Sydney, N.S., is pictured. (Source: IMDB) Family and friends of award-winning playwright and filmmaker Michael Melski, from Sydney, N.S., have shared news of his death and messages of condolence on social media after he died Friday. He was 56. Melski's plays were featured on stages across Canada, including his 2001 Merritt and Dora-nominated play, 'Hockey Mom, Hockey Dad', which was named one of Canada's top 10 plays of the year by the Toronto Star. His award-winning films included 'The Child Remains', 'Charlie Zone', and the documentary 'Perfume War'. He served as an artist-in-residence at the Shaw Festival, Neptune Theatre and Eastern Front Theatre, where his play 'Creepy and Little Manson' debuted in 2016. In addition to his other achievements in film, television and theatre, Melski received the Halifax Mayor's Award for Achievement in Theatre in 2006. Family members said they were surprised and saddened by his passing and that funeral arrangements will be announced soon. Michael Melski Award-winning playwright and filmmaker Michael Melski from Sydny, N.S., is pictured performing outside with a guitar and a microphone. (Source: Facebook) For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page
CBC
5 hours ago
- CBC
How AI, robotics and late artist Morrisseau are helping fight art fraud
Social Sharing Famed Indigenous artist Norval Morrisseau was browsing a Vancouver gallery with his longtime friend Cory Dingle around 1993 when a painting stopped them in their tracks. The pair asked who created it. The answer? "Norval Morrisseau." The trouble? The artist had never seen the work, let alone painted it. "We had a little chuckle and we left," Dingle recalled. "Then, I said, 'What do you want to do about this?' He said, 'You know, you can't police the world.'" Morrisseau, who died in 2007, was a self-taught, trailblazing artist known for his pictographic style and membership in the Indian Group of Seven. He was the first Indigenous artist to have his work shown in a contemporary gallery in Canada and now his paintings sell for millions. But the incident Dingle remembers proved to be an omen. At least 6,000 fake paintings have since been uncovered, costing Morrisseau's estate $100 million in losses. The phenomenon amounts to what police have called the biggest art fraud in world history. Canadian artist's estates thinking of leaving Canada, says Morisseau estate 2 years ago Finding fakes is time consuming work. It requires co-operation from galleries and private collectors, a trained, critical eye cast on anything purporting to be made by the late artist and the patience to keep pursuing justice through the court system. But now a new tool has emerged to help the battle: artificial intelligence. Bogged down by the enormity of the task at hand, Morrisseau's estate, which is run by Dingle, partnered with two art-loving professors to build software nicknamed "Norval AI" about three years ago. It can analyze art pieces and determine the probability that they're a genuine Morrisseau. "Because the fakes were so terrible ... we got to a point with our AI that it was so good at picking them out," Dingle said. "There was no problem." Yet the estate knew fakes were still out there. They were just getting harder to detect because court hearings were revealing the tell-tale signs of a fake Morrisseau — thinner paint lines, for example — which allowed fraudsters to make their works even more convincing. Enter Chloë Ryan. The then-engineering student loved making large-scale abstract paintings. Even though such works could sell for a decent amount, they often take weeks or months to create, narrowing the odds that she could make artistry a viable career. She could make prints of her pieces, but they just weren't the same because they lacked the texture of a real painting. The conundrum became a source of inspiration for Ryan, leading her to start tinkering with robots and paint on her Montreal balcony. She eventually developed Acrylic Robotics, a company that uses technology to paint pieces at the behest of an artist. The process starts with an artist painting with a stylus on a drawing table, which acts like a massive tablet. Amazon Web Services software analyzes and logs every movement, detecting millions of details in the piece, including the strokes, brush pressure, pigment and speed. "We like to think of AI as a powerful magnifying glass," said Patricia Nielsen, AWS Canada's head of digital transformation and AI. "It can detect those patterns and the anomalies that might be invisible to the human eye ... so art experts, historians, can dig in further." With that data, Acrylic's robotic arm can then paint a replica so precise, Ryan says it's indistinguishable from an original — exactly what Dingle needed to put Norval AI to the test. A mutual connection put him in touch with Ryan last August. Shortly after, they got to work. Because Morrisseau isn't alive to paint images on Ryan's tablet, Acrylic's robot (Dingle affectionately calls it Dodo) had a more complicated feat to accomplish. Dingle would send Ryan a hi-resolution image of one of Morrisseau's works. Acrylic Robotics would then have an artist learn about eccentricities of his style and paint the piece before Acrylic's robot would give it a try. Everything the robot painted was analyzed by the estate and Norval AI. The two sides have been going back and forth for about a year, picking out errors in the robot's execution and poring over new works. Early editions had several spots where both the estate and Norval AI could tell the robot had stopped a long stroke to pick up more paint — something uncharacteristic of Morrisseau. "If you look at one of our works randomly on the street, you wouldn't be able to say that's made by a robot, but we can't yet do all art under the sun because there's a lot of techniques that we haven't yet built in," Ryan said. "We can't use every tool in an artist's arsenal yet. If an artist is out here finger painting, obviously we can't do stuff like that." Concerns of harming artists Newer editions of the Morrisseaus are about 69 per cent accurate and expected to improve even more. But Dingle admits, "I have kind of been holding back on getting to 100 per cent." He's scared of developing anything too perfect before he and Acrylic Robotics have found a foolproof method for ensuring a Morrisseau recreation can't be passed off as the real thing. It's a concern Ryan shares. "The worst thing that could happen is that we release this without consultation with groups that have been harmed by art forgery and this technology is used against artists," she said. WATCH | Winnipeg Art Gallery painting part of Morrisseau fake investigation: Painting in Winnipeg Art Gallery collection part of investigation into Norval Morrisseau fakes 1 year ago A case investigators have called Canada's largest art fraud investigation has revealed one of thousands of paintings falsely attributed to renowned Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau was once on display in Winnipeg's biggest art gallery. They're currently exploring markings or other features that can be embedded in pieces to denote they're not originals. Once they settle on an ideal method, they'll have an avenue to disseminate recreations of Morrisseau's work — responsibly. While some might think that's the last thing an estate plagued by forgeries would want to do, Dingle sees it as a way to bring Morrisseau's work to the people who would value it most. "There's two schools named after Norval. There are healing institutions. There are academic institutions. There are remote Indigenous communities," said Dingle, sitting in front of a rarely-shown Morrisseau.
