By Henry Tsang A permanent public art installation with aluminum letters and fibre optic lighting installed December 1997 on Drake Street Plaza, Vancouver WELCOME TO THE LAND OF LIGHT is positioned along 100 metres of the seawall handrail along False Creek North in downtown Vancouver. This public artwork speaks about how technology promises to bring cultures together…
By Lorna Brown While much continues to change on the Number 003 bus route along Vancouver’s Main Street, the collage of text signage in multiple languages, logos and graphics picturing everything from sushi and bagels to coffee cups and books remains, appealing to pedestrians at human scale. In the shop windows, new and vintage clothing…
By Renée Mok If you walk westward on Keefer Street towards downtown Vancouver, the old buildings adorned with Chinese characters and the novel red lampposts of Chinatown begin to fade. At Keefer Place, a residential building at the historic entrance to Shanghai Alley, you will come across an abacus. The abacus, a tool for calculating…
By Eli Bornowsky That’s what it’s called: untitled; why should it be called anything, this anonymous sentinel standing tall above the pedestrians on the corner of Hastings and Bute, in an upscale office and high-rise condominium district? Of solid stone sediment, this stock-still sidewalk watchman stands on the borderlines between the business quarter, Harbour Green…
Article by Joni Low I visited the bridge at dusk, just as the clouds were breaking. The sunset reflected from the water onto the bridge’s underbelly; kayaks passed underneath, while birds migrated eastward overhead. Everything appeared picturesque; idyllic. Yet the simple chromatic blue stripes at the bridge’s base belied this reality, marking, as they do,…
Natalie McHaffie’s Solo, located in Devonian Harbour Park (Denman and Georgia streets), is an abstract sculpture of stainless steel and carved cedar planks or ‘wings’ that fan out in a spiral. McHaffie says the artwork means to show movement, but not flight. Installed in 1986, Solo was one of ten pieces in the City Shapes…
Alan Storey’s the Coopers Mews pays tribute to the industrial history of the north side of False Creek. In particular, it references the Sweeney Cooperage that operated between the 1890’s and 1981, when it closed to make way for the new Cambie Bridge, B.C. Place Stadium and the Expo ’86 grounds. The cooperage was capable…
“It was not until 2008, with the installation of People Amongst the People, that distinct art forms of the local three local communities – the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səlil̕wətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) – were represented in this highly visible location.”
Even up close the illusion is very convincing. The semblance of weathered wood, the life preserver hung by the window, the molluscs clinging to the posts – these are the first of a number of sensory tricks played by Liz Magor’s public artwork LightShed. The scale, for example, is very disorienting. The structure is situated…
Launched in 2009, Offsite is an outdoor exhibition space in downtown Vancouver at the Shangri-La Hotel on West Georgia Street. The program offers a rotating program of innovative public art projects by local and international contemporary artists. The artworks explore issues related to the surrounding urban context and the social and cultural conditions of our…
