Richmond Winter Festival of the Arts and Lansdowne Centre present

shOP ART

Go shopping. Get culture. Inventive, eye-catching and thought-provoking, these five unique installations will inhabit vacant storefronts at Lansdowne Centre for the duration of the second annual Winter Festival of the Arts:

Suspended Landscape by Jeanette Jarville (Richmond)
(trees, paintings)
Artist's Statement: I paint in a spontaneous way from my imagination. I’m attracted to a rich palette of colors and use expressive brush stokes with dramatic lighting. Art is life – its fluid, constantly changing and reflecting a new level of consciousness. With ‘Suspended Landscape’ the viewer is taken from a busy shopping environment into a different place, familiar, yet unexpected. I would hope the viewer stops and takes a moment to soak in the energy that the artwork gives. My artwork is meant to inspire and uplift the spirits.

Voler by Kristofir Dean (Vancouver)
(branches, twine/mixed media)
Artist's Statement: Voler (a French word meaning both to fly and to steal) emphasizes the awkward clash of urban and natural structures. While the branches and birds clearly reflect their natural origins, they have been painted bright colours and placed in a storefront window, illuminating a human intervention to objectify them as decorations. Humans wish to encapsulate nature in their everyday lives, but at what cost? The resulting juxtaposition aims to remind one of the beauty of nature and of how nature is utilized in the urban sphere.

Squeeze Me by Keith Lau (Richmond)
(adhesive vinyl)
Artist's Statement: This project was formed with the goal to change the perception of a conventional display, by positioning it at a largely un-used area; which in this case, a structural pillar. The second objective was to engage and encourage viewers to interact the artwork without supervision (e.g. giving it hugs, making high fives, etc).

Everydayislaundryday by Gillian McQuade (Coquitlam)
(video/mixed media)
Artist's statement: “… and this is Mom’s office,” he says, opening the laundry room door. Everydayislaundryday combines video with household paraphernalia to explore the domestic domain of a mother, who yearns for creative fulfilment in the midst of an eternal deluge of daily chores. So many of us face the perpetual challenge of reconciling reality with fantasy: adhering to familial responsibilities, while dreaming of personal desires. When the monotony of daily life threatens to overwhelm us, all we can do is pause to reflect on the beauty and humour hidden within it.

Pachinko by Robert D. Brooks (Vancouver)
(rolling ball sculpture/painting/mixed media)
Artist's statement: Ever since a childhood trip to Asia when I was 12, I've always been enthralled with the game of pachinko and those whimsical rolling-ball sculptures you see far too infrequently. I've always thought my geometric abstract paintings looked like roads as viewed from above, kind of like a simple road-map with blocks of colour. All it needed was little cars rolling along the black lines, and the illusion would be complete. 'Pachinko' is my attempt to meld the two: part painting, part rolling-ball sculpture, all smiles...