Bruce Constantineau
Sun
STUART DAVIS/VANCOUVER SUN
If you walk by the corner of Burrard and Cordova next summer, you’ll be able to admire the city’s newest hotel tower and read poetry at the same time. The text of an original poem by British artist Liam Gillick will wrap around the southern and eastern exteriors of the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel, running all the way up to the 23rd floor.
The opening line was briefly visible this week, but now is carefully covered up. It reads: “lying on top of a building … the clouds looked no nearer.”
Project developer Ian Gillespie won’t reveal the rest of the text, which will be unveiled when the hotel opens next year. But he expects to spend significantly more than the $767,000 budgeted for the public art component of the Fairmont development.
Gillespie noted the Shaw Tower had a public art budget of about $400,000 but he spent more than $1 million creating an LED light-tube art installation that extends along the entire height of that building.
“The piece I put on the Shaw Tower added more value to the building than I paid and I know the value of the Fairmont piece will add more value than I’m going to put into it,” he said in an interview.
Gillespie, president of Westbank Projects Corp., said public art in Vancouver needs some “pizzazz” and the poetry-onbuilding concept is a step in the right direction.
“Much of the public art in Vancouver is very subtle, but this piece is not subtle and the piece at [the Woodward’s project at Hastings and Carrall] is not subtle,” he said. “I wanted them to grab you by the throat and make a difference.
“You’re going to walk or drive by that building and you won’t forget it.”
Westbank is also developing the Woodward’s project and has commissioned Vancouver artist Stan Douglas to create a large photographic mural of the area’s living history that will be displayed in the development’s public atrium.
Gillespie said the recreated shot of a historical scene speaks to the history of Woodward’s in a “very dynamic way” and Douglas plans to unveil the work at a New York exhibition in October.
He said people will be fascinated by Gillick’s poem on the new hotel building.
“It’s about the fact that whether you’re a billionaire or a regular Joe walking down the street, your perception of reality may be the same,” Gillespie said. “There’s a bit of a social statement there.”
He said art inside the new hotel rooms will “play off” the theme created by the outside text.
