Public Art

A work of interventionist public art. On the traditional exhibition grounds of the Vancouver International Sculpture Biennale. 

To review: in mid-November stormy weather caused a barge to break loose and run aground at Vancouver's Sunset Beach. Efforts to remove the barge failed. By this time the barge had become a meme, and to honour that, Vancouver Park Board employees whipped together one of its official park signs as a "holiday gift," its name -- Barge Chilling Park -- based on the Dude Chilling Park gag played on a Mount Pleasant park some ten years ago, long enough that its original name has been forgotten, much like the pre-contact name that marked the area known as Sunset Beach was erased (and forgotten) by successive generations of settlers.

On January 2nd someone spray painted the Beach's Indigenous name (pronounced ee-ay-ul-shun) over the Park Board's "holiday gift" sign, and immediately after that we heard from Indigenous artists Ronnie Dean Harris and Cease Wyss about how long they have waited to have the Indigenous name of that area displayed on municipal signage. Yesterday, the Park Board scrubbed away that name and, unfortunately, destroyed a perfectly serviceable monument to discourse and critique.