From the artist-run centres on the east side of downtown, to the commercial galleries lining South Granville, to the world-renowned Vancouver Art Gallery—and everything in between!—, there is no shortage of places to encounter visual art in Vancouver.
The city is home to many art traditions and practices. You will find a diverse range of contemporary artists working with a wide scope of media: painting, illustration, photography, sculpture, printmaking, as well as video, performance, and mixed media installation. Art institutions across the Greater Vancouver Regional District offer exhibits from local, national, and international artists, from heavyweights in the art historical canons to practicing artists today.
Situated on territory traditionally belonging to First Nations of the Coast Salish language group, Vancouver's art world also encompasses many Aboriginal artists from this and surrounding regions. They create work in a multitude of disciplines and styles: carving of masks, jewellery, containers, and totem poles; weaving of baskets and blankets; and painting, photography, video, performance, illustration, and sculptural works of different cultures and eras. In museums, art galleries, shops, public spaces, and even on the ferry, you can find prints and carvings by Susan Point, paintings by Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, videos, photos and installations by Rebecca Belmore, Haida manga by Michael Nicholl Yahgulanaas, and large-scale sculptures and installations with iconography from indigenous cosmologies and popular culture by Brian Jungen.
Migration; diaspora; settlement: these are themes common to this port city on the west coast of Canada. The people of Vancouver come from a myriad of cultural, national, and ethnic backgrounds, making their way here from all corners of the world. This multiculturalism is reflected in the works created by Vancouver-based artists, through their style, themes and content addressed, and methods employed in the creation of art.
Vancouver has a vibrant artist-run culture, with galleries in the downtown eastside, Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, and other venues in the city. The annual SWARM Festival of Artist-Run Culture taking place in September showcases this lively community through concurrent exhibits in participating member organizations. Independent artist collectives, workshops and studios are abundant, providing exhibition space and art-related resources to emerging and established artists.
Vancouver is also known for its group of artists working with photoconceptualism from the beginning of the 1980s. With the goal to gain wider recognition for Vancouver and to re-brand the city, art critics began calling attention to these artists, who used large-scale photography to return the focus of conceptual art to visual elements, as well as to examine society, history, and culture.
If you've ever arrived in Vancouver by plane at the Vancouver International Airport after 1994, you will most probably have encountered a large scale sculpture of a canoe, steered by 13 passengers, animal and human, from Haida mythology. The Spirit of Haida Gwaii: The Jade Canoe, installed prominently in the International Terminal of YVR, is an example of the indigenous Northwest Coast art found in this region. It is the work of celebrated Haida artist Bill Reid.
Speaking of art in public spaces, have you seen the LED cross sculpture by Ken Lum, bearing the intersecting words EAST / VAN at Clark Drive and 6th Avenue? The large photographic mural by Stan Douglas depicting the 1971 Gastown Riot, Abbott & Cordova, installed at the newly redeveloped Woodward's building located at that very intersection? Or Althea Thauberger's photo mural, The Art of Seeing Without Being Seen, across from the main entrance of Koerner Library at the University of British Columbia? How about Rodney Graham's Millenial Time Machine, a mobile obscura in the form of a landau carriage situated between Koerner and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre? These are just a few examples of local institutions supporting and celebrating the work of Vancouver artists.
There truly is much visual art to experience around the city and beyond. Whether at SWARM, the annual Eastside Culture Crawl (where visitors can tour more than 300 artist studios in Vancouver's east side), or one of the many art openings occurring from week to week, appreciators of art will no doubt find something to appeal to their tastes.
About city:
Vancouver is a coastal city and major seaport located in the Lower Mainland of southwestern British Columbia, Canada. It is bounded by the Strait of Georgia, the Fraser River, and the Coast Mountains. Vancouver is named after Captain George Vancouver, a British explorer. ''
The population of the city of Vancouver is 611,869 and the population of the Metro Vancouver region is 2,249,725. This makes it the largest metropolitan area in Western Canada and the third largest in the country. Vancouver is ethnically diverse, with 52% of city residents and 43% of Metro residents having a first language other than English. Population density is fourth highest for a major city on the continent after New York City, San Francisco, and Mexico City.
Vancouver was first settled in the 1860s as a result of immigration caused by the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, particularly from the United States, although many immigrants did not remain after the rush. The city developed rapidly from a small lumber mill town into a metropolitan centre following the arrival of the transcontinental railway in 1887. The Port of Vancouver became internationally significant after the completion of the Panama Canal, which reduced freight rates in the 1920s and made it viable to ship export-bound prairie grain west through Vancouver. It has since become the busiest seaport in Canada, and exports more cargo than any other port in North America.
The economy of Vancouver has traditionally relied on British Columbia's resource sectors: forestry, mining, fishing and agriculture. It has diversified over time, however, and Vancouver today has a vibrant service industry, a growing tourism industry, and it has become the third-largest film production centre in North America after Los Angeles and New York City, earning it the nickname Hollywood North. Vancouver has had an expansion in high-tech industries, most notably video game development.
Vancouver is consistently ranked one of the three most livable cities in the world. According to a 2007 report by Mercer Human Resource Consulting for example, Vancouver tied with Vienna as having the third highest quality of living in the world, after Z?rich and Geneva. In 2007, according to Forbes, Vancouver had the 6th most overpriced real estate market in the world and second in North America after Los Angeles. In 2007, Vancouver was ranked Canada's second most expensive city to live after Toronto and the 89th most expensive globally, and, in 2006, the 56th most expensive city in which to live among 143 major cities in the world; in the same survey, Zurich and Geneva were ranked as the ninth and seventh most expensive, respectively. In 2007, Vancouver was ranked as the 10th cleanest city in the world. |
