(Illustration courtesy Rod Filbrandt - click image to visit his site.)
So the XXI Olympic Winter Games will open here in Vancouver next week. I think it only cost us something like $1.7 Billion. And all this after the BC Liberals cut funding to the arts by nearly 95% in 2009. Ha ha! Nutty! But I digress.
During this kooky international event (which, I am constantly hearing, will “put Vancouver/Canada on the map.” We’re not already?), one thing that may be of particular interest to artists and art aficionados (that’s my big word for the day) is the “Cultural Olympiad.” What is this, you ask? Perhaps some money went to the arts, sorta? Sorta.
The Cultural Olympiad is a celebration of the contemporary imagination. [...] this amazing showcase of Canadian and international arts and popular culture will feature an unparalleled variety of music, dance, theatre, visual arts, film, outdoor spectaculars and digital media experiences.
There are really a surprisingly vast number of events taking place (almost all of them free), spreading from Vancouver, Whistler, Surrey, and Richmond, though very few involve your traditional gallery-style art shows. There are lots of giant internet-controlled spotlights, flames projected on buildings, and my partner reported seeing an “art installation” at one of the Skytrain stations consisting of, um, dozens and dozens of Coca Cola logos. Mm. “Art.” *sigh*
One interesting show during the Cultural Thingamabob involves poster art displayed across the city on bus shelters and billboards. I’d actually love to see a show like this, but not scattered god-knows-where this way. I can’t help but fear that such an exhibit will be, at best, noticed by almost nobody, and, at worst, noticed by absolutely nobody. You’ll essentially see them by accident, if you do at all. It seems like a slap in the face to the artists who created them. I dunno, maybe there’s a plan I’m not aware of here. Here’s one billboard I found on Flickr:
Another Cultural Blah-dee-blah gallery exhibit which caught my eye is Monster, at the West Vancouver Museum. It features paintings by a dozen artists of (what else?) monsters! It’s on till early May, so I’ll wait till after the Olympics to see it because security all over town is utterly insane for the duration of the Olympics.
Monsters appear through time and across cultures. Fear, paranoia and the triumph of good versus evil manifests itself in violence, polarized societies and intolerance giving rise to monsters in folklore, mythology, legend, literature, art and popular culture. This exhibition includes works by Canadian and international artists who explore monstrous sensibilities in their practice.
Yet another good looking event is Ed Pien’s Tracing Night, at the newly rebranded Museum of Vancouver:
Tracing Night is a large maze-like installation that combines drawing, video and sound to recreate the phenomenon of night and darkness. It invites viewers to walk around and through its evocative environments, filled with fanciful creatures, to discover its multi-layered, labyrinthine interior. At its core are ancient ideas, pulled from Chinese and Inuit mythology, that confront uncertainty and fear.
But one event that isn’t part of the Cultural So-and-So, but should be (thanks to pal Mark Pilon for the heads-up on this one) is an art-crawl called ArtWalk Vancouver, and it starts on the same day the Olympics do. I’m looking forward to seeing this:
ArtWalk Vancouver provides a platform to promote and aid the insanely fantastic work of all the visual artists working in Vancouver’s Downtown East side, Chinatown and Gastown communities. You are invited to explore the galleries, retail spaces, studios and temporary “pop up” galleries involved and to see the work of over 250 artists from a full spectrum of disciplines. Join us on our first annual ArtWalk and support the hard work and passion of all who spends their life creating and making for the sake of art.
