Public Art Registry
A False Creek
Photo: Trevor Mahovsky
A False Creek - photo by Trevor Mahovsky
A False Creek - photo by Trevor Mahovsky
A False Creek - photo by Trevor Mahovsky
Cambie Bridge
Ten Cambie bridge pilings & fifteen lampposts along seawall
Civic
2012
Acrylic latex paint
Site-integrated work
In place
City of Vancouver
Changing Times 
SEFCYaletown 
Description of work
Painted chromatic blue stripes, applied to ten Cambie bridge pilings and fifteen lampposts along seawall. The stripe pattern starts at ground level, and runs up each piling and lamppost to a point that is five meters above sea level.
Artist statement
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects sea levels rising between four and six metres as a result of the partial melting of the earth's major ice sheets. False Creek, which once extended as far as Clark Drive before massive infill projects altered its shape, is a site that provides an opportunity to reflect on the past, present and future of Vancouver's highly managed shoreline. "A False Creek" marks the midpoint of these IPCC sea rise estimates (five metres), with painted chromatic blue stripes on the pilings of the Cambie Bridge, and on the lampposts near Cooper's Park. This abstract pattern of stripes inevitably produces a decorative effect, one with an ambiguous relation to the pattern's function as a marker and visualization tool. The work points to the potential and problems of such tools. The scale of the engineering of False Creek and the Cambie bridge, along with the scale of potential future environmental change, are made visually and physically palpable, yet the experience takes on an aesthetic related to philosophical concepts of the sublime.
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