Public Art
Public art has the power to energize public space, promote thinking and debate, and celebrate an area’s past, present or future. It transforms our community by enlivening streetscapes, parks, built forms and community spaces. Burnaby is host to many works of art stemming from a range of sources. The most recent civic public art commission is shown above: James Harry and Lauren Brevner’s, Shù7mayus, created in 2022. The title is a Skwxwú7mesh word that translates as “come face to face with spirit. ” Artwork like this has the ability to offer a statement of presence, linking pasts and futures for people in the place now known as Burnaby.
Temporary public art
FLEET in Edmonds Park
FLEET is a mobile artist studio produced by a team of artists and the non-profit organization Other Sights for Artists’ Projects. FLEET has been planned, designed, and created in order to offer working studio spaces for artists. FLEET takes a creative approach to address a lack of access to space by making the studio itself mobile, so that it can be situated for short and long stays wherever opportunities for artists to do their work can be found.
The City will locate a FLEET studio in Edmonds Park (7433 Humphries Ave) from May 2024 until September 2025, with the aim of creating a space for cultural connection and expression. Located in the park behind the Edmonds Community Centre, the studio will host working artists and be regularly activated as a site for community participation. Information about ongoing programming and studio access is available at fleetstudios.org.
Visitors can expect opportunities to engage with visiting artists through events such as open studios, talks, presentations, and performances.
Upcoming events
Studio Launch
Saturday, May 25, 12-4 pm
The launch will feature a territorial welcome by Chief Janice George at 1pm, followed by an opening performance by Tsatsu Stalqayu (Coastal Wolf Pack), remarks by Mayor Mike Hurley, Burnaby Public Art, and Other Sights and more!
Fun activities will be happening throughout the day such as the chance to make a print with our mobile printing press, BAG on a Bike, or create your own “fold-a-FLEET.” Visitors are welcome to check out the studio-in-progress as we open our doors.
Open House
Sunday, May 26, 12-4 pm
Join us for a casual open house. Visitors are able to view the studio-in-progress, contribute their insights and ideas, and find out more info about our Open Call for Artists and Community Members. There will also be information about projects by Other Sights, and what is to come with future visiting artists Eliot White-Hill, Simranpreet Anand, and our community partner Alegria Soy.
Please submit your project proposal by July 15, 2024.
Info sessions
May 30 - online at 6 pm. Details at fleetstudios.org
July 4 - in person at 4 pm at the FLEET Studio in Edmonds Park
Questions
[email protected] or 604-297-4969
About FLEET
FLEET is a multi-year project that is planning, designing, and building moveable studios for working artists. Responding to the loss of arts and culture spaces in Vancouver, this project will place studios on a temporary basis throughout the Lower Mainland and manage their ongoing use. The studios are designed to fill a range of arts and culture uses and needs. A robust program of activity will be developed in collaboration with artists, organizations and the local communities they are located within.
For the inaugural year of operations for the first two FLEET Studios, one will be activating the Chain and Forge Triangle on Granville Island from mid-June 2024 until early spring 2025. Activities at this studio will include artist residencies, project rentals, open house days, special events in partnerships with local Granville Island artists and festivals, workshops, talks, listening sessions, and more.
The second studio will be headed to Edmonds Park in Burnaby, where Other Sights and FLEET have partnered with City of Burnaby Public Art to program the studio with residencies, talks, open house events, and multiple exciting community events and activities from mid-June 2024 until September 2025.
FLEET construction was supported by British Columbia Arts Council, Canadian Heritage, CMHC-Granville Island, The City of Burnaby, The City of Vancouver and the Canada Council for the Arts. Construction was also supported by generous donations from multiple organizations, for a complete donor list visit www.fleetstudios.org. FLEET programming is supported by the City of Burnaby, CHMC-Granville Island, and Canada Council for the Arts.
About Other Sights
Bringing together individuals with expertise in the curation, management, presentation, delivery and promotion of art in public spaces, Other Sights’ mandate is to create a presence for art in spaces and sites that are accessible to a broad public, such as the built environment, communications technologies, the media, and the street. Other Sights is dedicated to challenging perceptions, encouraging discourse and promoting individual perspectives about shared social spaces.
Over the past 6 years Other Sights has been collaborating on and researching the critical need for artists to have access to space for independent creative practice. Other Sights has been a founding partner who has supported and steered the Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency since 2016. Other Sights recently became one of the Blue Cabin Cooperative Founding Members in 2024. FLEET: Mobile Artist Studios has been a project of Other Sights in collaboration with a team of artists, planners and architects since 2019, the first two Mobile Studios are ready for occupancy in the summer of 2024. In addition to Other Sights’ involvement in these long-term projects, the Producer team are also collaborating on an Alberta and British Columbia Artist Residency Network Project, an initiative that brings together artists who are developing non-institutional models of artist support in non-urban locales.
Civic public art collection
Burnaby Art Gallery is responsible for public art, caring for civic artworks through its management of the City of Burnaby Public Art Collection.
Jonas Jones (TsuKwalton), k̓ʷə səlilwətaɬ syəwenəɬ ct - Our Tsleil-Waututh Ancestors, 2023
This artwork was commissioned for Burnaby City Hall to honour the relationship between the City of Burnaby and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh Nation). Conceived as a carving in the style of a traditional Coast Salish house post, the work brings a two-sided wolf design in relief carving and metal.
Nathan Lee, Hak Chu/Pak Chu, 2021
In the 1990s, during a renovation designed to preserve heritage at Deer Lake Park, several artifacts were discovered. Among them was a single white "Pak Chu". These tiny game pieces and their black counterparts, "Hak Chu", were used by early Chinese labourers in games of chance.
Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins, Rite of Passage, 2018
Rite of Passage is a series of integrated public artworks running the full length of Willingdon Linear Park. This public art project draws on themes of braiding and weaving, which were inspired by Burnaby’s setting within a watershed, a river delta, and as a city in transition. Colourful beacons signal gateways to the park and serve as markers for bus stops. Alternating art screens featuring wave and weave variations provide privacy to community members while acting as visual topographies for passersby.
Private sector public art
Our active Private Sector Public Art Program brings new commissions to public space through private sector development. Projects by artists from around the world activate Burnaby’s streets and public plazas.
Ken Lum, The Retired Draught Horse and the Last Pulled Log, 2020
A draught horse that is no longer called to work, this rendering in bronze is a Clydesdale or a Persheron, the largest of draught horses that were commonly employed in British Columbia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The log with chains that has come to rest nearby on the Edmonds street site stands in dialogue with the larger than life-sized horse. Together they signal a bygone era of Burnaby’s modern development.
Marianne Nicholson, Rise and Fall, 2021
This four-part sculpture wraps around the columns at the entrance to the building using blue-green glass cladding. Each pillar is sandblasted with distinct patterns to form a cohesive narrative using symbols that represent national signatories to the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement, pictured as their national animals. The pictographic style is reminiscent of early Indigenous signatures on international treaty agreements.
Julian Hou, Crossroads, 2021
This triptych of stained glass pictures memorializes figures in the fashion that was popular during the early 1990s, the time of the artist’s youth, which was spent loitering around Lougheed Mall. Resonating with the fashion of today, the work speaks to historical echoes and to the continued history of cultural diversity that marks Burnaby as unique within Canada.
Selected projects in private sector public art:
Brentwood
- Vanessa Brown, Bird House Screen commissioned by Amacon
- Gunilla Klingberg, Title to be Determined, commissioned by Onni
- Maskull Lasserre, The Visitors, commissioned by Ayoun
- Eva Rothschild, Open Arms, commissioned by Onni
- Nancy Rubins, Untitled, commissioned by Concord Pacific
- Kambiz Sharif, Growth, commissioned by Beedie
- Catherine Widgery, Wind Veil, commissioned by Marcon
- Soo Sunny Park, Title to be determined, commissioned by Shape
Edmonds
- Susan Point, Salish Spirit, commission by Open Road Properties
- Illarion Gallant, Title to be determined, commissioned by Ledingham McAllister
Lougheed
- Xwalacktun, Eshlhihkw'iws - Making Connections, commissioned by Shape
- Jun Kaneko, Heads, commissioned by Shape
Metrotown
- Marian Penner Bancroft, WindWaveWeave, commissioned by Rize
- Thomas Cannell, Sacred Belongings, commissioned by Keltic
- Douglas Coupland, Rock Garden, commissioned by Intracorp
- James Harry, All My Relations, commissioned by Kingborn
- Kimsooja, Unwrapping the Horizon, commissioned by Anthem
- Alicja Kwade, The Measure, commissioned by Bosa
- Random International, public(glass), commissioned by Qualex
- Soo Sunny Park, Title to be determined, commissioned by Anthem
- Debra Sparrow, Weaving the Wind, commissioned by Westland
- Rebecca Bayer, Title to be determined, commissioned by Belford
- Thomas Cannell, To Morrow’s Windows, commissioned by Bosa
- Khan Lee, Reflection, commissioned by Anthem
- Lyse Lemieux, Skirted Herons, commissioned by Concord Pacific
All completed private sector artworks are catalogued in the City’s Public Art Registry.
Civic projects
- Jill Anholt, Gliding Edge at Rosemary Brown Arena
- Adad Hannah, TimeLine at Burnaby Lake Aquatic & Arena
- Susan Point, Vision Quest at Confederation Centre
- Susan Point and Jonas Jones at Cameron Community Centre & Library
Resources
The City of Burnaby Public Art Policy documents provide guidance for the acquisition, installation, interpretation, maintenance and lifecycle planning of artworks in public areas.