To honour the City’s 125th anniversary, a variety of new artworks have been commissioned for installation over the 2011 year.

Changing Times

Vancouver 125 provides a context for artists to expand their practices into the public realm and to contemplate the city. The Changing Times program will commission new public art works for short-term, long-term and permanent installations located around the city. The works are in a range of media including two-dimensional images, relief and sculptural forms, projections, light, urban infrastructure. Commissions will resonate with and mark time, record change, identify unique geographic and civic spaces or characters and communities that have animated the city, or fashion visions or markers to measure its potential for the future.

Platforms

Vancouver 125 provides an opportunity to view the city in all of its multiple aspects and associations, and to experience the dynamic potential of artworks in urban space. The Platforms program commissions include new two-dimensional artworks that will be installed in Transit Shelter Advertising spaces and on several outdoor video screens (Robson & Granville, at the CBC building on Hamilton, and the outside wall of the Canada Line City Centre Station).

Some of the commissioned artists include:

• Arabella Campbell will produce a photomural of the high-water mark, a naturally occurring, perfectly level line made evident by the saltwater rising to the level of the overhanging cedar trees, making a natural reveal, a feature seen and used in architecture to visually divide the floor from the wall.

• Donna Szoke will produce a video to mark the adoption of the term Salish Sea, using an image of a canoest and canoe that are seamlessly replaced frame by frame with the background of moving water and sky yet the moving edge remains visible.

• Carol Sawyer will produce a multi-segmented video that provides a fragmentary glimpse into the history of Vancouver, employing historic locally shot film footage of the logging industry.

• Diyan Achjadi will make a series of silent animations that will follow the character “Girl” as she encounters some local tourist landmarks.

• Barry Doupe and James Douglas Whitman will compose a series of short songs for single voice and install them as sheet music into transit shelters.

• Jeremy Borsos will create transit shelter posters where Vancouver street addresses are photographed and coupled with the image of a postcard delivered to the same place many years before.

• Rhonda Weppler & Trevor Mahovsky with Richard Winchell will create transit shelter posters where found objects in the area surrounding various bus stops will be photographed to approximate a Google Satellite Map of the area.

• Tony Pantages’Polar Bear: Native to Vancouver is a tribute to the annual New Year’s Day Polar Bear Swim in Vancouver.

Watch this short video showing Arabella Campbell’s Lines in Architecture and Art, commissioned by the 125th Anniversary Vancouver Public Art Program.

Vancouver 125 Murals and Guide Map

The City of Vancouver’s Great Beginnings program was launched in 2008 and brings—among other projects—more than 20 community-driven murals to Vancouver’s Downtown East Side. The City’s Vancouver 125 Mural Program will partner with Great Beginnings to commission new community murals in neighbourhoods across Vancouver. These celebratory murals will be documented in a Vancouver Murals Map that will feature stories, images, and historical photos that inspired the creation of over 150 murals since 2003.

An estimated 10 new murals will be created through the Celebrate Vancouver 125 Murals Program during the summer and fall of 2011:

River of Crows: A 9000+ square foot mural on a two-block long retaining wall on McLean Drive (from Parker to William Streets) in the Commercial Drive neighbourhood of east Vancouver.

Portal: Three painted panels depicting iconic Vancouver architecture created by artists Christina Gray and Jon Reed and installed on the east side of the concession stand at Second Beach in Stanley Park.

St. James Community Service Society Mural: The mural, by Vancouver artists Joey Mallett and Rita Buchwitz, adorns the west wall of 315 Powell Street with images that capture the Japanese and aboriginal heritage of the neighbourhood.

Soul Gardens
Soul Gardens is a community public art project led by W2 Community Media Arts that investigates the cultural history of the Downtown Eastside (DTES) as told through stories of food, gardening, and community. The mural is located on a wall of the Astoria Hotel building and can be viewed at the intersection of East Hastings Street and Hawks Avenue.

Watch for additional Vancouver 125 mural projects to be unveiled through December 2011.

View a video about the makings of the ‘River of Crows’ mural located on the wall behind Britannia High School along McLean Drive:

Learn More

Vancouver Mural Map: Explore Vancouver’s diverse array of murals with new resources including an interactive murals map and download maps for four different tours of Vancouver murals. Visit MuralsVancouver.ca.

News release (September 9, 2011): “Murals create legacy for Vancouver’s 125th anniversary and Cultural Capitals of Canada designation.”

Learn more about these and other Public Art and Murals projects at vancouver.ca/publicart and vancouver.ca/greatbeginnings

PuSh Festival blog: “Reflections on the Great Beginnings Initiative”