Arty McFly? A Back to the Future Day gallery

It's October 21, 2015. Welcome to the future. 

As everyone everywhere who's ever seen Robert Zemeckis' time-travelling trilogy will remind you, today is Back to the Future Day. October 21, 2015 is the date Doc Brown plugged into the DeLorean in Back to the Future 2, and while we're still waiting for the invention of self-tying sneakers (and the resurrection of the fax machine), the world is celebrating this pop-culture holiday with movie screenings... and art.

Marty McFly as muse? Great Scott, you bet. Gallery exhibitions, GIFs: Back to the Future-themed art work is everywhere, and CBC Arts has collected a few examples, many pulled from group shows happening around the world to honour the year of the hoverboard.

Back in 2015, Nicolas Amiard

So maybe we don't have flying cars and holograms, but French artist Nicolas Amiard is doing something that would feel a little like magic in 1989, the year Back to the Future 2 came out. All the movie gadgets that had you dreaming of 2015 when you first watched the flick on VHS? Amiard's imagined what they would look like in the present day — adding hoverboards and other film fantasies to these GIF street scenes of New York and L.A.

Back to the Future, James Flames

In addition to their Austin, TX gallery, Mondo produces all sorts of fandom wares: screen prints, toys, and vinyl movie soundtracks — including one for the Back to the Future trilogy. Over the years, they've released pop-art prints inspired by the time lords of Hill Valley, including this DeLorean triptych from Toronto studio Phantom City Creative.

But today, just for Back to the Future Day, they've released a special print by James Flames. The variations pay tribute to the artist's favourite moment in the first movie. As he wrote in a statement: "At the heart is this kid and this car, and the amazing adventure they get into together. And that's what I wanted to focus on with my poster. That moment where Marty meets the DeLorean…his life, and the entire world, are changed forever in that very instant. And of course, it was fun to play with the two time eras and split them apart in the background (and then reverse them for the variant edition)."

Back to the Future: A 2015 Art Tribute

Set your destination time for March 2015 and flash back to this group show, presented at the Nerdist's showroom in Los Angeles' Meltdown Comics store. The space regularly hosts pop-culture themed shows, and some 88 artists contributed to the tribute exhibition. They were on the challenge like a rat on dehydrated pizza, submitting watercolours and sculptures and prints and even a crocheted pillow inspired by the most beloved vanity plate in movie history.

Time After Time

OK, now set your destination time for May 2015. Yet another group show for you, though this one — which took place at the Rothick Art Haus in Anaheim, Calfornia — was about time travellers of all kinds. Tributes to Doctor Who, Outlander, Terminator and more appeared alongside Back to the Future–inspired paintings, prints and even a LEGO sculpture.

Great Scott!

Yes — Great Scott! — the Back to the Future-themed group shows keep coming. This one, which is called Great Scott, by the way, opens in Scranton, PA tonight. We were promised hoverboards in 2015. Instead, we got paintings ... and pinatas? One of the local artists involved has apparently made one for the show. Also featured? Artist Adam Lister, who had previously created pixellated prints like these, which commemorate some of the most coveted gadgets from the movie.

Bootleg to the Future, Callum Preston

If we learned anything from Doc Brown, if you want a time machine, you've got to build it yourself. For Bootleg to the Future, a solo exhibition and tribute to the Back to the Future films, Australian artist Callum Preston has created paintings and illustrations and signs — and his very own DeLorean, made out of wood. Imagine a soapbox racer with a flux capacitor, or, in Preston's words: "Peter Pan's lost boys treehouse mixed with Mad Max." The collection, described as "a blend of tribute art, crossover concepts, fan fiction, continued explorations, missed endorsement opportunities, replica prop design and more," is on display in Melbourne, Australia.

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