Neighbours

Large, lumbering and sweet, four animal-like figures sit on the benches facing Thurlow and Burnaby Streets. As a set of benevolent leviathans, they playfully encourage pedestrians to join them; for a sit, a chat, and/or to take photos. The forms of these creatures are derived from fauna origins, suggesting that, as urban dwellers, we share our lives with entities other than human; some of them real and some of them mythic. Their presence gently prodding us to contemplate who, and what, we consider neighbours.

The benches were chosen as the sites for our friendly giants because they are the liminal space where the public and the residents of the new apartment overlap the site.

The obvious connections to childhood cartoons and offshoots of Kawaii culture are intended to make the artworks accessible to those not necessarily fluent in the parlance of high art. Yet they are also meant to operate on a number of levels, where scale, appropriation of cultural symbols, and other indicators reflect on how media and material not only form our singular and collective imaginations but also reflect our predilections.

In most cultures, mythologies and fables are constructed featuring animals to personify human attributes and foibles, sometimes as deities, sometimes as agents of transformation, as tricksters, sometimes exemplifying purity of ethics, and possessors of charms. Domestically, in the world of baby teethers, children’s toys, books and animations, redrawn as cute reductions, they are fully embraced and become a part of ‘us’.

Although slightly ambiguous, the characters portrayed in this proposed artwork are inspired by urban animals: racoons, skunks, rodents, birds, squirrels, bears. Like all our neighbours, we like some better than others, but they are, nevertheless, endlessly fascinating to observe.