Login / RegisterNew public artwork greets transit riders at downtown Canada Line station
Transit users have a playful new public artwork to ponder when they visit Canada Line City Centre Station in downtown Vancouver.
Titled Cat & Mouse, the temporary installation was put in place in late July on a window at the station’s West Georgia Street and Granville Street entrance.
The artwork features common phrases like “beast of burden” and “bridge and tunnel”, which have been plastered on the window in different coloured fonts.
The text has been arranged so the phrases overlap and some of the words appear flipped backwards, depending on which side of the window they are viewed from.
The City of Vancouver Public Art Program and InTransit BC’s Canada Line Public Art Program worked in partnership on the project.
Mark Soo, an artist from Vancouver who now lives in Berlin, was commissioned to create the unique artwork.
City of Vancouver cultural planner Karen Henry said Soo was interested in the types of text and signage people encounter in the urban environment.
“It operates on a level of kind of how we experience text in public space,” Henry told the Straight by phone. “We see things coming at us from all angles. We see bits of things. We see them backwards and forwards.”
“He’s kind of reimagining that experience and playing with it graphically,” she said.
Henry said the Cat & Mouse project cost the city $15,000. Asked how long it would be in place, she noted similar past installations at the site have been up for six to eight months.
Better deal than the $600,000 bird statues on the seawall I guess.
Maybe this is Gregor's version of austerity?
Who pays for the public art in Vancouver?
Does "legit" (as in sanctioned by the city) public art in Vancouver have to be sufficiently bland and boring as to be readable in mere seconds (because there is only surface meaning) by anyone who looks upon it?
I think there *are* issues with public readability and elitism in contemporary art, but I don't see how this bland apparently formal work does any service to the public, seeing art as nothing more than a visual form devoid of deeper meaning.
If its formal, make it very visually interesting. If its conceptual make it both visually and conceptually interesting! I quite like the Nicolas Sassoon's work at the yaletown station, its not brilliant, but it is structurally and formally pleasing, which is much more than I can say for "Cat & Mouse".
Are artists involved in the vetting process for these works, or only public officials and members of the local community?