Public Art at VPL
The Vancouver Public Library announces 4 developments in the Central Library Public Art Program.
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The Aperture Project presents a series of large scale printed art works. Selected local artists will create projects specifically for the library, to be displayed in a permanent custom-designed framework in the Promenade. "Trace Ingredients" by Carol Sawyer is on display starting March 2008. Visit here for more details.
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Inside the Library is a 21 month Program of temporary library-specific artist projects, beginning in July 2006. The art program will engage diverse audiences of Library users and provide an on-going and visible visual arts presence in Central Library. Visit here for more details.
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Group Search: Art in the Library is an extended program of site-specific artworks and interventions curated by Lorna Brown. Visit here for more details.
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FLOW: Fiona Bowie, Rebecca Belmore, and Sidney Fels To be installed at the Mount Pleasant Civic Centre, 1 Kingsway, summer of 2008. Visit here for more details.
Central Library | Mount Pleasant Branch | Renfrew Branch
Central Library
The Library Square building project included a Public Art budget of $535,000.
The first phase of the public art program was a $60,000 commission for a work to be installed before the Branch opening in May 1995. A panel of five jurors chose Vancouver artist Joseph Montague from 66 applicants. The resulting art work is a mosaic pool and fountain located just outside the Preschoolers' Lounge.
For more information on this art work, visit the City of Vancouver Public Art Registry.
The remaining funds were used to create an Endowment for public art at Library Square. By the end of 2004 the Endowment had grown to more than $600,000. Interest on the Endowment supports an on-going program of public art works.
The Public Art Collection at Central Library also includes works on permanent loan from the Government of Canada Art Bank. Visit the VPL Art Bank catalogue for a full list of items, and their locations.
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March 2008 Vancouver artist Carol Sawyer was invited to create new artwork based on research conducted at the Vancouver Public Library during the summer and autumn of 2007. Installed in the spring of 2008, the exhibition of this work continues until September 29th. On Saturday, September 20th, Sawyer will give an illustrated talk about her project. The artist interpreted her role as "a miner of the Library collection: sifting and sorting veins of information, unearthing and collecting the traces left by past patrons and workers." This resulted in a suite of colour photographs that are inspired by the serendipitous relationships found in stacks of books left on study carrels by library patrons. Sawyer's exploration of the book stack as sculpture/poem can be seen in three 20-foot banners in the Library Square Promenade - part of the Aperture program coordinated by the City of Vancouver's Public Art Program - and in large framed photographs near the elevators. She also made 3 new video works in the library: a "music video" that conveys the idea that typeface fonts can evoke a tone of voice or musical genre; a live video capture of the book-return conveyer belt; and a study of the librarian stamps on issues of the New Yorker magazine from 1949 to mid 1964. Carol Sawyer (MFA from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver), has been active in the cultural field in Vancouver for over fifteen years. She has exhibited in the United States (including at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle); France (including the Canadian Cultural Center / Paris and Wharf: Contemporary Art Centre / Basse-Normandie), and many centres across Canada. Sawyer presented two solo exhibitions early in 2008: Vacant Lot at Republic Gallery and Water Park at CSA Space, both in Vancouver. She is also an accomplished vocalist. Sawyer's library project, called Trace Ingredients, is part of Memory Palace [3 artists in the library], a project for the Vancouver Public Library that presents the work of visual aritists Carol Sawyer (Vancouver), Angela Grauerholz (Montreal), and Esther Shalev-Gerz (Paris). Memory Palace is curated by Karen Love and presented from February 2008 to December 2009. The Central Library of the VPL is a facility with a collection of 1.3 million items, an average of 7,350 visitors and some 3,000 reference queries each day. Memory Palace is a collaboration between the Vancouver Public Library Central Library, the City of Vancouver Public Art Program and Doryphore Independent Curators Society. In addition to the significant support from these organizations, we are grateful for the generosity of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of British Columbia through the BC Arts Countil, the Consulat General de France in Vancouver, the Vancouver Foundation and Arts Partners in Creative Development. Carol Sawyer Artist's Talk Saturday, September 20, 2 pm Vancouver Public Library / Central Library 350 West Georgia Street / Alma VanDusen Room, Lower Level For more information: Karen Love, Curator, 604-874-9990 |
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March 2007 Red, Blue and Yellow by Karin Bubas is the fourth work commissioned for the Aperture Project, Vancouver Public Library's ongoing public art project in partnership with the Vancouver Public Art Program. Inspired by the playful and romantic work of Rococo artist Jean Fragonnard (1732-1806), Karin Bubas's installation romanticizes everyday activities like reading. "The photographic series I created for the Aperture Project intertwines the solitary act of reading in picturesque landscapes with reading's ability to transport one into another world,” explains Bubas. “On a cold rainy Vancouver day, when many seek refuge in the library, I hope these pictures will serve as reminders of what beauty our city has to offer." Taken in local Vancouver settings, such as Queen Elizabeth Park and Van Dusen Gardens, the lush images are set in rich, florid scenes of nature. The images on their own work as studies in landscape and reading, but from a distance can be viewed as an examination of primary colour. Karin Bubas is a successful Canadian photographer whose work has been shown in a numerous solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally, most notably in Montreal, Washington D.C., and Brussels. Most recently, her work has been exhibited in Portrait of a Citizen at the Vancouver Art Gallery and Studies in Landscape and Wardrobe at The Monte Clark Gallery in Vancouver and Toronto. |
Inside the Library is a 21 month Program of temporary Library-specific artist projects, to begin in July 2006. Two programs will be developed, the first beginning in July 2006 and continuing through March 2008, and the second from April 2008 to December of 2009. Primary objectives for the program are to engage the diverse audiences of library users and to provide an ongoing and visible visual arts presence.
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The artists involved examine the inner workings of the VPL, alerting us to systems of information-gathering and exchange. January 2007 Artists - Antonia Hirsch, Laiwan, and Mark Soo. Liawan - Call Numbers: the Library Recordings - on the site home page, click the treble clef to continue. September 2006 Artists - Marina Roy, Dan Starling and Jillian Pritchard, and Kathy Slade. |
Antonia Hirsch’s Anthropometrics
Lorna Brown
The visual economy of Vancouver streets includes both official and unofficial modes of public address. In locations that have a sense of transition, such as hoardings that surround new construction or buildings slated for demolition, one often sees posters for events, products and services. This ‘grey’ marketing practice occupies such contingent real estate on a temporary basis, using a strong visual impact and a sense of urgency to convey time sensitive content. Aside from their intended message, they remind us that the streets, the most public of spaces, are a strongly contested site in the negotiation of ownership, free speech and assembly. Cultural institutions such as the Library share a similar interest in the principles of democracy and access to all forms of expression and information. A non-commercial space, it must assess the interests of a multitude of individuals and organizations when regulating its visual environment.
Into this arena, Antonia Hirsch has placed Anthropometrics, a series of six large format posters. Hundreds of copies are postered throughout the city, and twelve line the windows that lead to the main entrance of the Library’s Central Library. They picture solitary figures posed in rather mysterious gestures. At first sight, they might easily be taken for some sort of clever (yet decidedly out of place) advertising campaign. Small captions indicate two websites: othersights.ca and antoniahirsch.com . Should viewers investigate further, they will learn that Anthropometrics is an inventory of colloquial types of measurement — such as “circumference of the fist = length of the foot”. These formulae are not scientific, yet have arisen through personal economic interactions within varied communities. One imagines their use in the spontaneous commerce of street markets where an improvised index of the body’s geometry compensates for unfamiliar sizing or unlabelled goods. A scientific mode of notation — the inventory — has been applied to a system in which each body sets is own standard and is neither accurate or repeatable in the scientific sense. Neither purely commercial nor scientific, Anthropometrics make temporary claims on both the Library and the street, reinforcing and contesting the democratic ideals associated with such public spaces.
Published by Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, the Vancouver Public Library and the City of Vancouver Public Art Program as part of Group Search: Art in the Library, Vancouver, Canada.© Lorna Brown, November 2006
Mount Pleasant Branch
Fiona Bowie, Rebecca Belmore, and Sidney Fels. To be installed at the Mount Pleasant Civic Centre, 1 Kingsway, following its opening.
Flow's temporally dynamic flowing imagery is made up of layers of still photographs, video background images, and moving video "shadows". The primary component involves a 24-hour projection of constantly changing images onto a large bank of windows at street level. The glass will shift from opaque to transparent according to people's activity within the Centre and layers of moving and still images will appear and disappear over the course of hours, days, weeks, months, and years. Never the same, the images will be drawn from the flow of many different influences and activities such as crows in their dawn and dusk migration to the "eastside", people on their daily commute, local landscapes and events, and the water of Brewery Creek now buried below the pavement. Shadows will appear periodically, often fleetingly, superimposed onto moving background images. The second part of the project will appear at night on the second level windows at the southwest corner of the centre. The effect of light reflecting off rippling water will be projected on the corner windows adjacent to the old creek bed area of Brewery Creek.
Find information about the Branch and its hours of service.
Renfrew Branch
Renfrew Branch Library (1994)
Renfrew branch Library features a copper, aluminum, and glass art work by Vancouver artists Brian Baxter and Markian Olynyk. All Our Knowledge Has Its Origins in Our Perceptions is a functional and beautiful sculpture integrated into the Library entrance. Visit the City of Vancouver Public Art Registry for more information
Find information about the Branch and its hours of service.
