Public Art Registry
Home Edition
Photo: Jeffery Chong
Home Edition by Jeffery Chong - photo by Jeffery Chong
Home Edition Didactic Panel  - photo by Jeffery Chong
Home Edition by Jeffery Chong - photo by Jeffery Chong
700 Hamilton Street
CBC Vancouver Broadcast Centre Plaza
On the wall to the right of the main entrance of CBC Vancouver.
Partnership
2022
Digital print on vinyl
Two-dimensional artwork
In place
Privately owned
the WALL at CBC
DowntownWaterfront/Downtown Tour
Description of work

The WALL is a Vancouver Heritage Foundation public art initiative. It is made possible by a partnership between Vancouver Heritage Foundation and CBC Radio-Canada, and is produced in partnership with the City of Vancouver Public Art Program. The WALL features a new artist every year.

Artist statement

Home Edition shows the living room of artist Jeffery Chong’s grandparents, staged as it was on July 2nd, 1964, when Jeffery’s grandfather Ging Chong appeared on CBC’s newscast, “Home Edition”. This public art shares the same title. Ging was working at a hotel near Chinatown and had just witnessed a crime. When the news crew arrived to cover the story, Ging was captured on film for several seconds. The family did not watch the news that evening, nor did they know that such footage existed. After the broadcast, the newsreel remained undiscovered in the CBC vault until Jeffery visited its archives decades later.

Jeffery’s family research has been a long journey, chasing down documents and photographs to fill gaps not found in archives, and learning stories never shared by a silent generation. Inspired by this newsreel and the setting in which it would have been viewed, Jeffery researched photographs and interviewed family members to piece together how his grandparents’ living room appeared in 1964, and to learn about Ging, who died before Jeffery was born.

Most of the furniture and household items are original to this room. The reproduction paintings were acquired using coupons from supermarket purchases. On the mantle, containers that once held Chinese vegetables and distilled spirits are displayed as decoration. Tin juice cans, aluminum pie plates, and a fruit crate are reused for houseplants. These items reflect the working class life of Ging, who held many jobs trying to make ends meet.

The living room is of the Mid-Century Builder vernacular, a modern, inexpensive, mass-produced housing option for working class families in the Lower Mainland. The emergence of the style paralleled the rise of television’s popularity. The furniture placement is focused on how the family planned time together around the television. The clock, a wedding gift to Jeffery’s grandparents, indicates 6:45, the time Ging appeared on television. The television is on but nobody is watching, symbolizing this almost forgotten newsreel, and how the past is fragile if not recorded, or passed down.

Home Edition is the recreation of a time and a place, portraying Jeffery’s family history, identity and values, and a reminder of how technology and the built environments of the past brought together families in a way that no longer exists.

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