Public Art and its Discontents

Over at Frances Bula’s blog, the commentators are having a wonderful time fulminating over this: 

It’s Michael Zheng’s The Stop – one of the first installations among the 30 that will go up as part of the 2009- 11 Vancouver Biennale which rolls around every two years and causes controversy whenever the sculpture appears.  The complaints aren’t necessarily about the art itself but often because of the ‘open space’ that it occupies. 

Here’s a tour of the last Biennale.  Take a look, and guess which work provoked the most immediate outrage.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Dum, dum, dum, da-dum.

Back again?  Nope, you’re wrong. 

It wasn’t the upside-down church – Device to  Root Out Evil.  The ruckus over Device occurred years later after the end of the Biennale, when it was proposed to be kept permanently in this location.  (And again, the opposition wasn’t really about this piece of ‘blasphemy.’  Opponents didn’t want the little green space alienated with view-blocking art.

 

 The initial controversy of the last Biennale was over The Jaquar – a great red mass of angled steel prominently occupying the southeast corner of Harbour Park. 

 Same issue: green space and views - in this case at the entrance to Stanley Park, between Georgia Street and the mountains.  Oh, of course, there’s always dispute over the quality of the art, something so inherently subjective that consensus is neither achievable nor desirable.  

The key to the Biennale is that it’s temporary. The Park Board agrees to the placements because there’s a guarantee that the sculpture is going to go away.  In the meantime, we get some really terrific art, set in places that encourage the reconsideration of public space.  In other words, one sees the sites in which the sculpture is placed differently because of the art itself.  And that can piss people off.

Said the upset South False Creek resident:

Now don’t get me wrong…I am a big supporter of public art and would have no problem having some in Charleson Park – as long as it was better located and had an iota of either artistic and/or aesthetic value. Ten stop signs stuck in concrete in the middle of a beautiful, green urban park makes no sense to me. Give me something we can interact with – something that animates the space around – and don’t put it on my 5 year old son’s baseball diamond.

Expect more of that to come as the Biennale proceeds with the installations.

In the meantime, you can check out Vancouver’s latest piece of permanent public art at the new convention centre.

It’s “The Drop” – which shouldn’t be too hard to figure out: it is meant to pay homage to the element of water and untamable forces of nature as well as the complexity of our waterfront.

I liked it immediately.  Great location, strong, iconic, clever.    

One of the next unveilings of permanent public art, required as a condition of development in Vancouver, will be a block away, when the new hotel at Burrard and Canada Place Way is opened. 

Ian Gillespie, the developer, commissioned the work, which is literally under wraps at the moment.

I believe it’s a poem, and from the line or two I saw before the covers went on, I’m guessing that this work too will encourage the viewer to reflect on the qualities of the space in which the art is found.

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