Public Art

The City of Vancouver Public Art Program and Engineering Services announce the completion of a new permanent public artwork on Knight Street at 33rd Avenue: Abundance Fenced (29kb) (2011) by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas. The steel fence is a permanent installation developed as part of the Clark-Knight Corridor Public Art Plan.

 

Althea Thauberger, Ecce Homo, 2011.
Director of photography: Robert Keziere

The City of Vancouver Public Art Program announces a new art project for the west wall of the Canada Line Vancouver City Centre Station on Georgia Street. Ecce Homo (17kb) by Vancouver artist Althea Thauberger was installed on September 12, 2011. The commission is presented by the Public Art Program in partnership with the Canada Line Public Art Program of InTransit BC.

 

Civic projects celebrating the City of Vancouver's 125th Anniversary in 2011: The 125th anniversary of Vancouver provides a context in which to view the city in all of its multiple aspects and associations, and to experience the dynamic potential of projects by artists in urban space. The Public Art Program requested ideas from artists for temporary and permanent artwork proposals up to $150,000 for Changing Times. Over 100 submissions were received, eight were short listed by a peer panel and six were selected. Two-dimensional video and print Platforms were also offered, for which seventy-six proposals were received and eight were commissioned. Another civic project celebrating City of Vancouver's 125th Anniversary in 2011 is the Mural Program.

 

As Host City for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Vancouver has initiated an Olympic and Paralympic Public Art Program.

Facets of the program include the Mapping and Marking of the City's public spaces; Partnership Projects with the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad; the Bright Light series animating the Carrall Street Greenway; and the Legacies Series which will endure into the future.

 

Solar Bike Tree by Spring Gillard with ie Creative Artworks is the functional art recently installed at Science World, close to the 2010 Olympics Athletes' Village. Part sculpture, part bike rack, the work replaces a street lamp at the end of an arc of large trees in planters, in effect becoming one of the "trees". It features motion-detected, solar powered lights in the treetop, and can park up to 15 bikes: 12 in the root "racks" around the base, while three more can be hung from the tree trunk. The Solar Bike Tree sits conveniently at the confluence of three major cycle paths, including the city's premiere Central Valley Greenway.

Learn more about the development and installation by visiting Spring Gillard online at The Compost Diaries.

 

The Canada Line Public Art Program was established by InTransitBC in partnership with the City of Vancouver to enhance the transit experience of transit users and to give artists an opportunity to display their art in and along the new Canada Line. All the installations are temporary for a period between three months to a year. Image: Equestrian Monument by David Robinson located at the Yaletown Roundhouse Skytrain station.

 

Three powerful and beautiful carved gateways were installed in 2008, at the entrances to the totem site at Brockton Point in Stanley Park.

The People Amongst the People by Susan Point, celebrates Coast Salish peoples, whose traditional territories include Vancouver. The artwork welcomes others to this place and is a tribute to cooperation between the Nations.

 

Bringing Art to the Public Spaces of Our City

The City of Vancouver has been commissioning original artworks for public places since 1990.

Vancouver’s Public Art Program seeks to incorporate contemporary art practices into city planning and development. The program supports art-making of many kinds - emerging and established artists, in new and traditional media from stand-alone commissions to artist collaborations.

The program is part of Cultural Services and oversees development of public art opportunities throughout the city. Civic projects at civic buildings, greenways, parks and other public spaces are funded through capital budgets. Private sector projects are funded by developments.

 

As part of their internship with the City of Vancouver, two students from the Emily Carr University of Art + Design have created a blog to encourage discourse on the topic of public art and bring awareness to the City's public art program. The blog references local public art and discusses some of the politics and poetics that are involved in executing commissions. Film/Video students Sophie Bégin and Diego Rodriguez are pleased to invite readers to join the discussion at www.ourcityourart.wordpress.com, or by joining the Our City, Our Art Facebook group.

 

The Birds is Myfanwy MacLeod’s new artwork for Southeast False Creek Olympic Plaza. The work highlights both the lighter and graver sides of what can happen when a non-native species is introduced to an environment, how the beauty of birds can sometimes mask their threat to biodiversity. Myfanwy Macleod, The Birds, 2010

 

Artist Fiona Bowie and collaborator computer scientist Sidney Fels have developed an electronic media project entitled Flow which is integrated into the new Mount Pleasant Civic Centre. The project features a 24-hour projection of changing imagery derived from the flow of many different influences and activities such as crows in their dawn and dusk migration, people on their daily commute, local landscapes and events, and the water of Brewery Creek now buried below the pavement adjacent to the site. Shadows will appear periodically, often fleetingly, superimposed onto moving background images. Learn more about the project and contribute to the images: http://flow1kingsway.com. Flow was selected as one of the best and most innovative public artworks in Canada and the U.S. by the Americans for the Arts' 2010 Year in Review: artsusa.org.

Listen to a radio interview for Flow by clicking on the play button:

 

Artist team Köbberling & Kaltwasser are working with materials recycled from the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Athletes’ Village to create an artwork at the foot of South East False Creek. The Games Are Open – The Scoop invites the participation of new neighbours to liberate the discarded, share excess, and contribute to the building of new forms and meanings.

Wheat board panels from the Athlete's Village are re-purposed as a 6m x 7m x 14m artwork sculpture which will break down and decompose from exposure to the particular conditions of Vancouver’s weather. The decomposing sculptural form will provide fodder for new growth – a temporary plant nursery claimed and nurtured by South East False Creek residents. When this site is developed further, the plants, shrubs and trees that will eventually overtake the sculpture will be offered for transplanting throughout this future development. Instigated by the artists, the future of the work lay with others, and is dependent upon how the new South East False Creek residents receive it and use it. Follow the progress of this remarkable work.

 

Park is a project for the Ontario Street Greenway by Vancouver-based artist and architect Marko Simcic. Park consists of two sandblasted stainless steel sculptural objects, each approximately the size and weight of a small automobile. They will temporarily rest in curb lane parking spots, and will be relocated from time to time to various addresses along the route. Whether adjacent to public sites, such as schools or parks, commercial properties to the north, or permitted to occupy residential parking through their “adoption” by Ontario Street residents, Park tracks the many forms by which the street, our most symbolic public space, is regulated.