Le carrousel de l’île is formed of 12 sculptures made of galvanized steel and brass portraying human behaviours around two themes: “island” and “archipelago.”

In this project, as in his other projects presented in Montréal, Goulet transposes into the public space objects drawn from everyday life. Viewers may recognize, among other things, chairs, a Morris column, a cover of the Beatles album Abbey Road, and a ladder. The context imposes a fleeting contact, in rotation around the work; the “12 scenes” are experienced as a “sequence shot” repeated each time one passes in a car.

The installation thus transforms the island in the centre of the traffic circle into an “elsewhere” that encourages introspection. By merging nature and culture, sculpture and landscaping, it creates a fiction, that of Goulet’s “island,” in the midst of the asphalt.

“This artwork marks the passage from the turbulence of life
to a haven of peace, and vice versa.”
– Michel Goulet, 2004

This artwork was produced for integration with a new traffic circle on Boulevard René-Lévesque in L'Île-des-Sœurs. The goal was to provide the island with an urban image that matches the quality of its development.