Stan Douglas’ High Art: “It’s about Public space and who controls it.”
What came first? The Hippie or the smack-down? This giant installation launched January 2010 in the Woodward’s complex by Stan Douglas first began back in 1971 when Vancouver’s police chief got “reports” of long-hairs & degenerates throwing stones through windows. Gastown was slowly becoming residential, squatting being de rigeur. Smoke-ins at Water and Carral St. began in effort to legalize pakalolo. After the clomp and stomp and the broo ha-ha recreated below in this commision by Vancouver artist Stan Douglas, the area was deemed a commercial zone. Gastown became Ghetto-fabulous soon thereafter.
Stan Douglas : “If this neighbourhood had been allowed to have a mixed-use designation, with people living there, I believe it would have a very different character.”
Flash forward 2012 and man, it certainly does! Now you can can get yer lambchops butchered old-school by a young man in a tam and a canvas apron! Never even mind the free peeks at ye olde handle-bar moustache. This is condo living at its’ finest! I picked up brass submarine parts and an old rusty bucket that is going to look so seaworthy above the gas-fire mantle. Then there’s Meat and Bread who, shockingly enough sell bread and meat. I’m calling my pop-up store Cha-Ching! To cut to the chase. You can sit there with your sammich and watch local artists push their kinetic wheeled metal scupltures around filled with repurposed glass and aluminum tubes, performing beat poetry for free! Kinda makes you wonder what all the fuss was about, huh? You know what? Dammit…I think I left my iphone at the drift-wood store.
read from the georgia straight article I got the quotes from here .
see images from the 1971 Gastown riot here
images: “Abbot and Cordova, 7 August 1971” by Stan Douglas.
VANCOUVER GRAFFITI 