| |
Posted Sep 3, 2009, 7:20 AM
|
|
Registered User
|
|
Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 678
|
|
|
National Post article 'Giants among men'
A recent article 'Giants among men', National Post published Wednesday Septrmeber 2, 2009:
Quote:
Giants among men
Pedestrians on Canada's West Coast will soon be feeling a little smaller.Lia Grainger gets a sneak preview of the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale
***
Barrie Mowatt thinks Vancouver's pristine urban landscape could use a little dressing up, and he's doing it with monumental sculpture. As the creative director of the second Vancouver Sculpture Biennale, Mowatt has been working non-stop for the past two years to make sure that when the Olympics touch down in Vancouver next February, people won't be thinking solely about sports -- they'll also be thinking about art.
"I don't think anyone has installed work this large, of this breadth, with this dollar value and with this international a reputation anywhere in the United States or North America," Mowatt says. The scope of the project that will invade Vancouver over the next two years is indeed impressive.
Installations are going up at a rate of two or three per week, and by the end of September, some 32 sculptures by major international artists will be stationed in the parks, plazas, Sky Train stations and beaches of the greater Vancouver area. Artists like Dennis Oppenheim, Sorel Etrog, Michael Sheng and Ren Jun are all contributing major works to this citywide event.
For Mowatt, who also owns a commercial gallery, the Vancouver Biennale grew out of a desire to see his hometown become a world-class cultural destination. "Vancouver is a lovely city," Mowatt says, "but we don't publicly show any great cultural dimension."
The term "Biennale" is used in the art world to describe major festivals where the best of the international art community gather and display new work. The Venice Biennale is the oldest and best known; Vancouver's version, in just its second season, is a baby by comparison, but Mowatt is adamant that what is happening in Vancouver is unique.
"Venice is a magnificent event and gets all the credit for being the No. 1 art event of its kind in the world, but it's not for everybody -- you pay to get in," Mowatt says. "Ours is an open-air museum where the art-making and art happening is in your neighbourhood."
Besides being entirely outdoors and free, the Vancouver Biennale is also unique in a number of other ways. One is that it is not government funded -- the city, the Park Board, BC Transit, the airport and a number of other organizations provide the space to show art, and some contribute to installation and maintenance, but it is generally up to the Biennale to cover the huge array of costs, including packing and shipping sculptures more than 30 metres long from around the world.
"These pieces don't just show up on the ground here," Mowatt says. "This has been an 18-hour-a-day job for a couple of years." One of the ways that the Biennale is able to cover costs is by selling the art through the auction house Christie's at the end of the festival, another element that is unique to Vancouver's Biennale. "We sell, and that is not in keeping with Biennale tradition. We're young and we're fighting to produce a whole new concept," Mowatt says.
The art in Phase One of the Biennale, which officially kicks off on Sept. 29, comes from around the world, but places a heavy emphasis on Asian work. Shengtian Zheng is one of six curators working on the Biennale and has been instrumental in acquiring six major Asian works for this year's event. Though he lives in Vancouver, Zheng has worked in China, Europe and the U. S., and he is excited about the opportunities the Biennale brings to Vancouver.
"Since the '80s my work has been to promote culture exchange between East and West, and I think Vancouver is the ideal place to do this," Zheng says. He points to the large Asian population of the city and the support the community provides for this creative work. "In Vancouver, this is a big event -- this has never happened before and it makes the city more international," Zheng says. He thinks that public art, especially from different cultures, will enrich the atmosphere of a city known primarily for its natural beauty: "In Vancouver it's so beautiful, but as a Chinese friend of mine said, it looks like a village."
To encourage public involvement, on Oct. 4 there will be a citywide "Bikenalle" that encourages the public to bike or take public transit from installation to installation using maps and a passport. There will also be a speaker series that will run up until the Olympics and include presentations by over 20 international artists, curators and intellectuals.
Phase Two of the festival kicks off next summer and focuses on new media, primarily from South America. There will be performance-art pieces that Mowatt says will incorporate 40,000 active participants, and 20 buses and trains will be wrapped in art by 10 different artists. In spring of 2011 there will be a major curatorial conference, which is expected to draw 150 of the world's top curators and art world personalities. The festival will culminate at the end of June 2011 with the Christie's art auction and the selection of the legacy pieces: the artworks that will remain on public city grounds permanently after the festival is over.
"The ultimate objective of the Biennale is always that the work will stay," Mowatt says. In his world, the Vancouver of the future will be one enormous sculpture park, dotted with the invaluable works of the world's best contemporary artists. "We keep talking about being a great city," Mowatt says, "but somebody has to start doing something to push it along, and we're doing that by installing great public art."
|
Looks like Canada Line should be getting their installations soon, unless some have gone in already. (Anyone?)
I am looking forward to seeing some of this art. I hope it is a success, although I have my doubts. Is there awareness, hype over this event? More often than not I find cultural enterprises often fail not due to lack of talent/drive/passion, but rather just not having the business acument to sell it to the right people at the right place in the right way and at the right time.
|
|
|
Prev
Linear Mode
