Vancouver Biennale Exhibition

[jlousa]

VANCOUVER - Prepare to be mesmerized without the use of psychotropic drugs.

Between the Vancouver Biennale exhibition, the city and transit, about 50 significant public art pieces are being prepared for installation this year in the city of Vancouver alone and many more will be installed in Olympic venues and new SkyTrain stations in surrounding communities.

The Vancouver Biennale is a biannual collaboration between the arts and philanthropic communities that positions high-profile sculpture on primarily city-owned land.

While being a Biennale city — Venice is the most famous of these — gives Vancouver considerable cachet in the global arts community, those major works and the hundreds of smaller pieces in Vancouver add texture to the glass, bricks and mortar that serve as our principal urban building blocks. They combine to make us a much more attractive tourist destination. And every piece is a gem waiting to be found or a conversation starter, even for those of us who live here full-time.

Vancouver is in year one of a 10-year plan to strengthen the city’s cultural community and build the arts economy. The city is turning toward a new model that allows artists to propose both the artwork and the location for their work. The city then works to secure the location and permissions.

As a pilot project of the artist-initiated public art strategy, the city invited artists to propose sites and pieces to install as part of Mapping and Marking Vancouver 2010, which would see at least seven pieces installed in time for the Olympic Games in 2010. The cost of the projects ranges from $6,000 to $200,000.

Following the more traditional public art acquisition model, the city has further identified the Georgia Street entrance to Stanley Park, the Olympic Plaza in False Creek and the underside of the Cambie Street Bridge as locations for significant new works and has sought proposals from artists for new media and sculptural works for those locations.

“This is certainly the largest public art initiative in the city’s history,” said Richard Newirth, Vancouver’s acting director of cultural services.

The new civic public art program comes in addition to the artworks incorporated into larger real estate developments.

But wait; there’s more. In a few weeks, Vancouver Biennale will begin to turn the city’s green spaces and parks into an open-air museum of art. The biannual collaboration between the arts community, the Vancouver Park Board and corporate sponsors will erect 30 sculptures alongside the city’s walking and biking trails, public plazas and on beaches. The Biennale festival runs for two years and includes several large-scale public events. Biennale will present another 60 to 80 new media and light installations during that time.

Most of the Biennale sculptures will be removed after about 18 to 20 months, but some usually remain as legacy pieces. The installations for the Biennale 2009-2011 begin July 15 and should conclude in time for the unveiling celebration late in September.

The city’s public transit system is increasingly a vehicle for art and the soon-to-be-completed Canada Line presents a unique venue. Projects are being considered that could bring art on board the trains themselves, inside and outside of the stations.

Works inside the stations and on trains are to be installed after the line goes into operation, according to Jean-Marc Arbaud, CEO of InTransitBC, the company designing and building the line.

TransLink has unveiled a three-year program of public art along the Main Street corridor called 88 blocks. If you have ever wondered why an articulated bus was decorated in the style of your grandmother’s afghan blanket, now you know. It’s art.

Instant Coffee, the artist collective responsible for the afghan bus, has also created works that occupy space usually reserved for advertising: sandwich boards, back-lit panel ads on buses and transit shelters.

A six-week festival of new media, computer and interactive art is planned for next spring in collaboration with Vancouver Biennale. Twenty-two artists have been commissioned to create works to be installed on construction hoardings, urban centres, transit shelters and on Canada Line trains.

Biennale is the city’s most visible and interactive public art program, according to the festival’s executive director Barrie Mowatt. Biennale brings in works from artists in 25 countries, thrusting Vancouver on to the world’s cultural stage.

Talks are underway between Vancouver Biennale and the City to retain up to five pieces from Biennale 2005-2007 to be installed at new locations. The pieces were purchased by Biennale and local philanthropists.

The goal is to retain at least two works from each Biennale to be installed permanently, one a curator’s choice, the other a people’s choice.

Mowatt is hoping to see local and senior levels of government step with more money to support the festival, as is the case with the world’s most successful biennale in Venice.

“We get in kind support from the city, assistance with installation and land,” said Mowatt. “But to make Vancouver Biennale a major cultural tourism draw is going to take provincial backing from the top guy on down.”

That backing is the difference between Vancouver being a city in a nice setting to a beautiful city in a nice setting with a some of the greatest art in the world, he said.

http://www.vancouversun.com/Travel/Vancouver+scene+blossoms+public+spaces/1690712/story.html