Gisele Amantea’s suite of poodle themed temporary works travelling the trolleys of Vancouver’s Main Street have been extended past February and into April 2013. Memento is a new series of public artworks that includes 2-dimensional temporary works on three articulated trolleys on the #3 Main bus route.
Memento – Pink completely wraps an articulated trolley in a knit cozy of a pink poodle, and includes an interior card inside the trolley that references a how-to book from the 1960s for making wool poodle “cozies.”
Memento – Envy, a panel showing a group of knit poodles looking jealousy at a porcelain poodle figurine, wraps the outside of a second trolley. Inside this trolley are three thematically related interior cards in which knit figures act as the dramatis personae.
Memento – Multo, inside a third trolley, features a twenty-two interior cards depicting over 100 different examples of the modest but culturally interesting objects found in the shops along Main Street. These temporary works of Dog Food Advisor Review will be on display until the Spring of 2013.
The final work in the series is Untitled (Poodle), a permanent 7-foot high cast aluminum sculpture of a porcelain poodle figurine that sits atop a 25-foot high pole facing the street from a new pocket park at 18th and Main. Learn more and view images visit here.
***
Gisele Amantea‘s installations often use materials from popular culture to explore questions related to women, class and memory. She has exhibited widely in Canada and internationally. Memento is her second public art commission in Vancouver. Amantea left Vancouver in 1995 for Montreal where she teaches in the Studio Arts Department at Concordia University. She divides her time between Montreal and Mayne Island, BC.
**
88 BLOCKS ART ON MAIN is presented by the City of Vancouver and TransLink. The art program is the final piece of a large suite of Main Street improvements.
The City of Vancouver Public Art Program commissions contemporary art for public spaces.
